copyright

Fri
17
Feb
Dennis Faas's picture

Dirty Movies Can't Be Copyrighted, Lawsuit Claims

A woman accused of pirating an adult-oriented film says the United States Constitution prevents such movies from being copyrighted. Liuxia Wong received a letter last year from Hard Drive Productions, claiming she illegally shared a copy of "Amateur ... Allure Jen" through the BitTorrent file-sharing system. The company then threatened to sue Wong for $150,000 damages -- the maximum for a single copyright infringement -- unless she immediately paid $3,400 in compensation. Accused Woman Strikes Back Wong refused to pay, and instead filed for declaratory relief. A declaratory relief is a ... (view more)

Thu
15
Sep
Dennis Faas's picture

Google Books Dispute Takes Unpredicted Twist

Five universities are being sued for their part in scanning millions of copyrighted books. It's an unexpected development in the ongoing legal wrangling over Google's Book Search service. Google began scanning books and first made them available to ... the public in 2004, with the idea of making it possible to search for phrases in printed books in the same way as on web pages. However, this led to legal action from groups representing both authors and publishers who complained that Google had scanned books without permission. Deal Brought Into Question The two sides eventually reached a ... (view more)

Tue
12
Jan
Dennis Faas's picture

Google Apologizes To Chinese Over Unlicensed Scanning

Google has made a formal and public apology to Chinese authors after including their works in its book search project without permission. It's a striking contrast to the way the firm responded to similar complaints in the United States and Europe. ... Google Book Search involves scanning books with optical character recognition so that the text can be searched. The firm argues that this is simply to make it easier for users to find information in books and that they are limited to seeing the relevant pages rather than it being a free way to read an entire book. The firm has consistently ... (view more)

Mon
21
Sep
Dennis Faas's picture

Government Demands Rewrite Of Google Books Deal

The U.S. Justice Department says it has legal concerns over a proposed deal between Google and American book authors and publishers. While not a killer blow to the deal, the comments significantly decrease the likelihood that it will ever receive ... court approval. The deal would settle a long-running case in which the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers sued Google for scanning books without permission. Pages from these books then appeared as results in the Google Books search service. The proposed settlement would include setting up a registry of copyrighted books, ... (view more)

Mon
13
Apr
Dennis Faas's picture

$222,000 Filesharing Fine Sparks Academic Protest

A professor specializing in copyright law says that the justice system devised for prosecuting illegal file-sharers is out of control. She argues that it "has evolved in a manner that results in too many arbitrary, inconsistent, unprincipled, and ... grossly excessive awards and that reform is needed." The comments came in a paper by Professor Pam Samuelson of the University of California, Berkeley, along with co-writer Tara Wheatland. (Source: publicknowledge.org ) The authors say the biggest problem with the system is that the range of damages which can be awarded for copyright ... (view more)

Tue
05
Feb
Dennis Faas's picture

Swedish Prosecutors Aim To Sink Pirates

Swedish prosecutors have finally begun prosecuting the owners of the popular Pirate Bay website. The peer-to-peer page is one of the leading websites for users of the BitTorrent system of downloading ; in theory the system can carry any type of ... file, though it's most commonly used for copyrighted material such as videos, music and games. The key legal point with such file-sharing systems is that websites such as Pirate Bay don't actually host the files themselves. Instead, they merely provide computers with the information needed to get the files from other users. Four men have been charged ... (view more)

Tue
27
Nov
Dennis Faas's picture

Romantics Show No Love for Guitar Hero

Here's a new one for the copyright infringement crowd: Guitar Hero publisher and long-time video game staple Activision is being sued by 1980s one-hit wonders The Romantics for using a pseudo version of their song "What I Like About You". Needless ... to say, it isn't much of a 'rock and/or roll' attitude. The lawsuit was filed against Activision last Tuesday in a U.S. District Court in Detroit, Michigan. The California publisher is being sued for unspecified damages for the "What I like About You" version it uses in Guitar Hero Encore: Rocks the 80s, a stop-point between the more popular Guitar ... (view more)

Mon
22
Oct
Dennis Faas's picture

One Step Forward, Two Back for RIAA?

A few days ago, I reported on the Record Industry Association of America (RIAA) victory over Jammie Thomas, a single mother and the first defendant in a crusade against a parade of supposed copyright offenders. As expected, many anti-copyright ... groups are now emerging to support Thomas in the fight against the increasingly despised RIAA. For those that missed it, Thomas was recently found guilty of "making available" about 24 songs (not even two full records) on Kazaa's now defunct illegal network. That essentially made the songs free and clear to be downloaded illegally by others, and that's ... (view more)

Fri
19
Oct
Dennis Faas's picture

Could this be the End of YouTube?

When Google purchased popular online video site YouTube for over a billion dollars a year ago, many industry analysts raised eyebrows in disbelief. The Big G is still struggling to make a profit with that investment, and recent copyright lawsuits ... demanding billions more dollars are not helping. That's why Google and YouTube have now officially unveiled a "content identification system," which will give copyright owners control over how their material appears on the video-based site. The new service's official name is YouTube Video Identification, and Google hopes it will calm angry legal seas ... (view more)

Wed
21
Mar
Dennis Faas's picture

Google Hit with $1 Billion Lawsuit

Google Inc. has been dealt a heavy blow in the form of a US $1 billion copyright lawsuit issued by major media corporation, Viacom Inc. The lawsuit specifically targets the unauthorized content found on YouTube.com. The website was purchased by ... Google last November for $1.76 billion. Viacom, whose subsidiaries include MTV, VH1 and Comedy Central, continuously lashed out against the popular video-sharing site for its lack of enforcement when dealing with copyright issues. The lawsuit signals an escalation in long-standing tensions between Viacom and Google and also marks the biggest ... (view more)

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