Dear Jay Leno ... "First off, my intention is not to fight you on this. You have more cars than I have dollars, and so I know I don’t stand a chance legally ..." - "An Open Letter to Jay Leno About Stealing My Video and Then Getting It Removed From YouTube" [more inside]
posted by mrgrimm on May 24, 2012 - 103 comments

If you're a DVD/BluRay viewer who is already annoyed by delaying, annoying animated menus or previews, get ready for 20 additional seconds of wait time. Yesterday the U.S. government announced an update to the old FBI copyright warning on home video, which will now appear in the form of two different anti-piracy warnings, each ten seconds long and both unskippable.
posted by XQUZYPHYR on May 10, 2012 - 83 comments

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has shut down nine websites in connection with an ongoing crackdown on internet film and TV piracy. The sites seized are Movieslinks.tv, Planetmoviez.com, ZML.com, Thepiratecity.org, Filespump.com, TVShack.net, Now-Movies.com, NinjaThis.net, and NinjaVideo.net. The feds also seized related Paypal accounts and bank accounts as part of the operation. Ninjavideo was the most notorious of the group, and its admin, Phara, went so far as to record a manifesto in praise of internet piracy.
posted by Pastabagel on Jul 1, 2010 - 197 comments

YouTube allows fair use defense. Under a new policy, users claiming fair use in videos previously taken down due to a copyright claim will be restored, and the claimant forced to file a formal complaint under DMCA. [more inside]
posted by l33tpolicywonk on Apr 23, 2010 - 57 comments

The Tarantino Mixtape from Eclectic Method is not the first mashup to cross the audio/video copyright streams, but they are pretty good at it.
via the always excellent giavasan [more inside]
posted by hypersloth on Apr 30, 2009 - 17 comments

Stage 6, recently linked in a popular FPP, has announced it will shut down today. Rumors about why include their battle against UMG to a "ridiculous battle of egos."
posted by Avenger50 on Feb 28, 2008 - 13 comments

TV-Links website shut down, site creator arrested. Says David Rock, who awaits charges, "It was just a hobby." [more inside]
posted by SassHat on Nov 7, 2007 - 32 comments

The Man Who Could Kill YouTube. Bob Tur is the little guy who is suing one giant (Google) to do what another giant (Viacom) probably never will -- shut YouTube down
posted by srboisvert on Jul 16, 2007 - 206 comments

Fox goes after YouTube pirates. Fox takes a new approach to fight copyright infringers who post illegal content on YouTube. Going after the user who uploaded the copyrighted material instead of forcing YouTube to pull it from the web site should prove a more effective deterrent.
posted by jeyoung on Jan 25, 2007 - 20 comments

Free Movies, Documentaries, Cartoons, TV-Shows, Music & Comedy - 100% handpicked content chosen to inform, educate, shock and entertain you. Most of the old films and cartoons are in public domain: "when a work's copyright or patent restrictions expire, it enters the public domain and may be used by anyone for any purpose." The newer media is probably not in public domain, they are just freely available for some unknown reason. Tomorrow they could be gone.
posted by crunchland on Sep 18, 2006 - 19 comments

[Telecom] has used confusion as its chief marketing tool This quote from New Zealand's Telecom's CEO is used to set up this mashupof one of their advertisements. The original had kids praising the company; in this version they're saying they've been shafted. Telecom, naturally, has been trying ever since to get it off the internet - crying "Copyright!" (mirrors in the comments here)
posted by slightlybewildered on May 26, 2006 - 7 comments

waxy.org vows to fight Bill Cosby's lawyers and continue to provide hosting to House of Cosbys despite receiving a cease & desist letter [PDF]. Andy Baio, founder of waxy.org, discusses this in the NY Times and provides updates on his site. As previously posted, Bill Cosby's lawyers were successful in getting the creators of House of Cosbys to stop hosting and making new episodes of their parody series.

It appears that threatening letters and lawsuits will continue to be filed against internet parody sites as celebrities try to protect what they view as their copyright, according to the Wall Street Journal.
posted by Mijo Bijo on Mar 6, 2006 - 33 comments

You've heard about YouTube's issues with NBC. It seems the words copyright violation have scared them into a stupor, as now several bloggers are complaining, and even calling for a little civil disobedience.
posted by Brittanie on Feb 22, 2006 - 22 comments