The U.S. House of Representatives has
drafted their version of Senator
Leahy's Protect IP Act,
renaming the bill the
E-Parasites Act. Among other changes discussed
previ
ously, the bill
now makes internet service providers and websites liable for activities of their users that infringe upon copyrights, effectively overturning parts of the 13-year-old Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
posted by jeffburdges
on Oct 27, 2011 -
120 comments
Andy Baio: “Kind of screwed”. Baio produced a
chiptune tribute to Miles Davis’ classic album
Kind of Blue. He licensed all of the tracks and assigned all profits directly to the five musicians on the album.
The one thing he didn't do was check about the cover art, a pixelated rendering of the photo on the original album cover.
Jay Maisel, the photographer who shot the photo in question, sued Baio for $150,000 per download plus $25,000 for DMCA violations. Baio settled for $32,500, not because he wasn’t convinced he was in the right (this almost certainly qualifies as fair use), but because it was “the least expensive option available”.
[more inside]
posted by spitefulcrow
on Jun 23, 2011 -
302 comments
Google Alleges That Viacom ‘Secretly Uploaded Its Content to YouTube, Even While Publicly Complaining About Its Presence There’ Zahavah Levine, chief counsel for YouTube in its litigation with Viacom, explains:
For years, Viacom continuously and secretly uploaded its content to YouTube, even while publicly complaining about its presence there. […] Viacom’s efforts to disguise its promotional use of YouTube worked so well that even its own employees could not keep track of everything it was posting or leaving up on the site. As a result, on countless occasions Viacom demanded the removal of clips that it had uploaded to YouTube, only to return later to sheepishly ask for their reinstatement. In fact, some of the very clips that Viacom is suing us over were actually uploaded by Viacom itself.
[
via DF]
posted by ocherdraco
on Mar 18, 2010 -
49 comments
New Zealand may soon implement legislation very similar to the DMCA , if the latest draft of the Copyright Amendment Bill is passed. It would appear that the New Zealand government is about to make the same mistake made by the USA several years ago. Most specifically, they propose:
[To] introduce an offence (carrying a sentence of a fine not exceeding $150,000 or a term of imprisonment of up to 5 years, or both) for commercial dealing in devices, services, or information designed to circumvent technological protection measures
Her
contact details are available online. We have a small window of opportunity to point out the
problems and unintended consequences with similar legislation in other countries, and hopefully circumvent the same problems in New Zealand.
posted by pivotal
on Dec 6, 2006 -
17 comments
The new DMCA: the Intellectual Property Protection Act of 2006 The 24-page bill is a far-reaching medley of different proposals cobbled together. One would, for instance, create a new federal crime of just trying to commit copyright infringement. Such willful attempts at piracy, even if they fail, could be punished by up to 10 years in prison.
posted by beth
on Apr 26, 2006 -
36 comments
Judge: Stealing a password does not constitute hacking. David Egilman is a highly-regarded expert in occupational medicine; he was the plaintiff's witness in a recent $253-million verdict in Texas against Vioxx. After two opposing law firms stole a password to his private website containing confidential information for his clients and students, he sued them under the DMCA.
He lost.
posted by docgonzo
on Dec 14, 2005 -
50 comments
Blackhat Search Engine Optimization Techniques. Through the use of a
DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) complaint, you can have competing web sites thrown out of Yahoo's search index. If you file a DMCA report against a site, Yahoo will quickly remove the "offending" site, leaving no trace of the site in its index. This has led to a rise in so-called "Blackhat
SEO," wherein one seeks to become the leading search result not by improving one's own site, but by having competing sites removed through the DMCA.
posted by nlindstrom
on Jul 12, 2005 -
15 comments
Endangered Gizmos via the
EFF (warning, they do want your money to continue fighting "
to defend our rights to think, speak, and share our ideas, thoughts, and needs using new technologies, such as the Internet and the World Wide Web.")
Lawsuits have driven some excellent consumer products into extinction, like the
ReplayTV 4000,
DVD X Copy and the lamented wild and crazy
Napster 1.0 including what drove them into extinction. They also list endangered gizmos like the
HD TV PCI Card,
Morpheus and
Generic FireWire,
open Wifi hot spots and CD burners.
Among the "saved" gizmos is the
Skylink garage door opener which had been
attacked under the DMCA.
posted by fenriq
on Feb 8, 2005 -
5 comments
A google search for kazaa lite now yields the following disclaimer (scroll to the bottom of the results page):
In response to a complaint we received under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, we have removed 9 result(s) from this page. If you wish, you may read the DMCA complaint for these removed results.
posted by totee
on Sep 2, 2003 -
35 comments
SecurityFocus is talking about Niels Provos, a graduate student well known for his work in steganography and for creating the honeyd program, having to move his research for his PhD from his U of Michigan
homepage to a server in the Netherlands and keep U.S. citizens from viewing the information. Why? Because the state of Michigan passed
their version of
DMCA.
I can see the routers and firewall software piling up in the trash.
posted by memnock
on Apr 15, 2003 -
10 comments
Black Friday. The meaning of which brings either joy, bewilderment or
disgust. Several retailers have sent DMCA notices to several
deal hunting sites forcing them to remove any ads or information that reveal any specials that will be offered. WTF!? What other inane uses will the
DMCA be used for?
posted by the biscuit man
on Nov 21, 2002 -
17 comments
Let your voice be heard. The Copyright Office is Taking Comments On The DMCA, starting today. You can read the law as a PDF
Here.
They are requesting written comments from all interested parties, including representatives of copyright owners, educational institutions, libraries and archives, scholars, researchers and members of the public, in order to elicit evidence on whether noninfringing uses of certain classes of works are, or are likely to be, adversely affected by this prohibition on the circumvention of measures that control access to copyrighted works.
posted by Blake
on Nov 19, 2002 -
26 comments
The Free World is a resource for hosting all kinds of useful information: security information, cryptographic research, programs for the manipulation of patented or reverse engineered data formats (never mind that only processes can be patented and data format patents aren't legal in the first place) and possibly reverse engineering tools. One problem though. If you are a citizen of the USA, or under the jurisdiction of the USA, the license forbids you access. Why? The DCMA.
posted by salmacis
on Oct 16, 2002 -
3 comments
Apple doesn't seem to think the DMCA bites Apple is using their interpretation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to prevent third party dealers from providing software to Apple users enabling them to burn DVDs on external drives.
They have no problem with them burning DVDs on Apple drives, naturally.
And to think I was just about to
switch, too. Um, yeah.
posted by John Smallberries
on Aug 29, 2002 -
38 comments
The Big Book of Sign Language (from rotten.com). Have you ever wondered how to sign phrases such as "I shovel shit all day long", "I want to pull the shrieking voices from my head and smoosh them", and "Unlock my legs and get it over with"? The Big Book shows you how. Inappropriate? Yes. Hysterical? Yes. (Portions may not be safe for work. Link via
Magnetbox. Thanks, ben.)
posted by moz
on Jul 9, 2002 -
29 comments
When stupid laws attack:
this article points out that
the widely syndicated article about thwarting the copy protection of sony's CDs is a direct violation of the
DMCA. Will news directors at Reuters, Yahoo, and CNN be seeing fines and jail time soon? How many times does it have to be pointed out that the DMCA restricts free speech as it attempts to thwart piracy at any cost? (via
k5)
posted by mathowie
on May 24, 2002 -
10 comments
U.S. Rep. Rick Boucher On Why The DMCA Sucks
News.com has a
Great Editorial by
Rick Boucher who says traditional "fair use" rights are at the foundation of the receipt and use of information by the American people, and those rights are now under attack.
He goes on to say Congress agreed to a fundamentally flawed bill, which created the new crime of circumvention--a crime divorced from over a century and a half of respect for the fair-use rights of consumers. The DMCA, as enacted, quite clearly tilted the balance in the Copyright Act toward complete protection and away from information availability.
"Consider the implications. A time may soon come when what is available for free on library shelves will only be available on a pay-per-use basis. It would be a simple matter for a copyright owner to impose a requirement that a small fee be paid each time a digital book or video documentary is accessed by a library patron. Even the student who wants even the most basic access to only a portion of the book to write a term paper would have to pay to avoid committing a crime."
posted by Blake
on Jan 29, 2002 -
14 comments
Music biz wants tougher DMCA "If the RIAA gets its way, ISPs will be as guilty of copyright violation as their subscribers. "Because of the magnitude of the problem, ISPs can no longer be shielded from the wrath of the law," shrieked Rosen righteously."
posted by Mick
on Oct 8, 2001 -
23 comments
A quick break from all the WTC stuff... Considering the recent events, it's probably been overlooked.
Canada is proposing a
Consultation Paper on Digital Copyright Issues which is similar to the DMCA in the US.
All comments on it have to be received by Sept. 15th. You can read the
EFF Alert, for more information.
posted by Jairus
on Sep 14, 2001 -
2 comments
This NYT article on the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), written by Prof. Lawrence Lessig (author of an excellent
book on copyright law and policy in the digital age), raises concerns that were academic prior to the recent
arrest of a Russian software programmer at a Las Vegas computer security convention for violation of the act's
Sec. 1201(a)(1)(A)'s anticircumvention provision.
Is Lessig right that Sec. 1201 essentially makes coders (and their employers) into
de facto lawmakers and, if so, is this a bad thing? If Sec. 1201 is bad policy, are there any more reasonable alternatives for effectively protecting access to software and/or providing negative incentives for the unauthorized use of software? (NYT article, registration required)
posted by estopped
on Jul 30, 2001 -
16 comments
