MetaFilter posts tagged with law and copyright

Turnabout is FairPlay

findango — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 13:46:25 -0800

Canadian Recording Industry Faces $60 Billion Copyright Infringement Lawsuit. From the article: The claims arise from a longstanding practice of the recording industry in Canada, described in the lawsuit as "exploit now, pay later if at all." It involves the use of works that are often included in compilation CDs (ie. the top dance tracks of 2009) or live recordings. The record labels create, press, distribute, and sell the CDs, but do not obtain the necessary copyright licences. Instead, the names of the songs on the CDs are placed on a "pending list", which signifies that approval and payment is pending. The pending list dates back to the late 1980s, when Canada changed its copyright law by replacing a compulsory licence with the need for specific authorization for each use.

Illegal Download =/= Lost Sale

Marisa Stole the Precious Thing — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 04:01:25 -0800

"[A]lthough it is true that someone who copies a digital version of a sound recording has little incentive to purchase the recording through legitimate means, it does not necessarily follow that the downloader would have made a legitimate purchase if the recording had not been available for free," said US District court Judge James P. Jones, in response to the RIAA's request for restitution against the former admin of Elite Torrents, Daniel Dove, who has already been found guilty of conspiracy and felony copyright infringement. The RIAA's request for restitution claimed that each download was equal to a lost sale. Judge Jones disagreed, and in part of his ruling stated:

"It is a basic principle of economics that as price increases, demand decreases. Customers who download music and movies for free would not necessarily spend money to acquire the same product. I am skeptical that customers would pay $7.22 or $19 for something they got for free. Certainly 100% of the illegal downloads through Elite Torrents did not result in the loss of a sale, but both Lionsgate and RIAA estimate their losses based on this faulty assumption."

File sharers should nonetheless be wary of opening the champagne just yet.

Who owns your ink?

iamkimiam — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 18:26:03 -0800

Can you copyright a tattoo? Yes, you can. But there's more to it. The idea raises a lot of questions and concerns—for the artists, the inked-skin owners, and certain parties seeking to represent or showcase the work. Shortly after Marisa Kakoulas wrote The Tattoo Copyright Controversy guest article, featured at BMEZINE.com, she encountered a small legal battle of her own. She wrote about it here, and sums up with, "But his story is a good example of how the modified community can fight back against those that violate our rights. I can almost guarantee he won’t mess with us again." Christopher A. Harkins also weighs in, with his paper, "Tattoos and Copyright Infringement: Celebrities, Marketers, and Businesses Beware of the Ink" (PDF). In it, he describes how Matthew Reed (tattoo artist) sued Rasheed Wallace (of the Detroit Pistons), Nike, and Weiden & Kennedy (Nike's ad agency), for violating copyright law, when Rasheed's tattooed arm was repeatedly highlighted in a Nike campaign. "The Reed case—and its nascent theory of a tattoo artist asserting copyrights in tattoos—has a potentially far-reaching impact on any would-be celebrity with a reasonable expectation of fame and on any present-day athlete, actor or actress, as well as advertising agencies and product purveyors and service providers. But the Reed case may also cause alarm for other media industries such as magazines, newspapers, Internet websites, motion pictures, television broadcasting, and the entertainment industry."

copyrite more like copyrong

dersins — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 16:54:38 -0800

"Happy Birthday to You" is the best-known and most frequently sung song in the world. Many - including Justice Breyer in his dissent in Eldred v. Ashcroft - have portrayed it as an unoriginal work that is hardly worthy of copyright protection, but nonetheless remains under copyright. Yet close historical scrutiny reveals both of those assumptions to be false. [Full pdf here.] [via] Over two hundred unpublished documents found in six archives across the United States have been made available on a website that will serve as an online appendix to this article.

Edward Samuel's Illustrated History of Copyright

carter — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 10:49:00 -0800

Edward Samuel's Illustrated History of Copyright A fascinating illustrated historical tour, looking at how different technologies have shaped how we think about copyright and intellectual property.

Canadian Songwriters propose $5 licence fee for P2P

tranquileye — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 11:17:57 -0800

A proposal for the monetization of the file sharing of music from the Songwriters and Recording Artists of Canada. "Most Canadians are aware that the Internet and mobile phone networks have become major sources of music. What they may not know is that songwriters and performers typically receive no compensation of any kind when their music is shared or illegally downloaded... We believe the time has come to put in place a reasonable and unobtrusive system of compensation for creators of music in regard to this popular and growing use of their work."

Infringement Nation

chunking express — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 06:59:15 -0800

Infringement Nation: Copyright Reform and the Law/Norm Gap. [pdf] It's a reasonably short and easy to read essay. Section IV contains a cute little story on just how much stuff falls under copyright law. via Schneier on Security

I fought Vinderen Elektriske, and won

Ljubljana — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 07:01:38 -0800

They stole an image of my son and just had to pay $4000. About a year ago I was surprised when I saw an image of my son in an ad for a shop called “Vinderen Elektriske”, selling electronics.

Challenging the Smithsonian

peacay — Fri, 18 May 2007 12:28:19 -0800

The non-profit group, Public.resource.org, are challenging the Smithsonian Institution by downloading all 6,288 (mostly) public domain photographs from the very restrictive Smithsonian Images site and reposting them to Flickr. [more: here, here] {via Ramage}

Down the memory hole

blacklite — Tue, 15 May 2007 23:24:45 -0800

Gonzales pushes plan to criminalize copyright infringement, making it punishable by life imprisonment; to increase wiretaps; and to require Homeland Security to notify the RIAA in certain circumstances. "To meet the global challenges of IP crime." I'd comment on this, but I'm afraid that someone might think I was copying someone else. The Intellectual Property Protection Act (official press release) appeared previously in a speech (2005) and as a draft (2006) - now the Justice department is pushing Congress to bring it forward. [newsfilter]

The problem with music, redux.

goodnewsfortheinsane — Sun, 04 Feb 2007 14:16:20 -0800

While Courtney pulled an Albini, Jeff handed out the bread. Are the peasants acting like emperors, or do they still want something shiny, aluminum, plastic, and digital? Debacle or cage, something's got to give (pdf). Alternatively, you can just roll your own.

DJ Drama - artists' friend, RIAA foe

caddis — Thu, 18 Jan 2007 07:25:01 -0800

Make a mixtape highlighting a young artist, have that artist proclaim his delight about the project on the CD, reignite that artist's career, repeat, then, the RIAA has you arrested for counterfieting. The RIAA continues its vain struggle to understand the new music economy. In the meantime, at least one company gets it, offering DRM-free CD downloads of obscure titles.

U2, Paul McCartney, Pete Townsend Call For New Copyright Law

zouhair — Sat, 30 Dec 2006 17:15:33 -0800

"U2, Kaiser Chiefs, Maximo Park and about 4,000 other bands have taken out a full page newspaper ad calling for the improvement of British copyright law. " wtf

Thanks, lawyers!

mullingitover — Fri, 27 Oct 2006 17:32:15 -0800

It's over. YouTube is taking down Daily Show and Colbert Report clips.

sunny day...

amberglow — Tue, 15 Aug 2006 06:49:52 -0800

Ernest and Bertram --short film, formerly one of the best films you can't see after debuting at Sundance in 2002, with Sesame's lawyers then cracking down and forcing it to be pulled--now on youtube.

They know it when they see it...

cedar — Mon, 27 Feb 2006 05:47:45 -0800

Last week US District Court Judge A. Howard Matz ruled against Google and found them to be in copyright violation for thumbnailing images from the soft core magazine/site Perfect10 (NSFW)... more inside

Still crazy after all these years

Protocols of the Elders of Awesome — Thu, 16 Feb 2006 14:12:29 -0800

The RIAA would like to remind you that copying purchased music to your iPod is illegal without first gaining permission from the copyright holder. Thank you.

Plagiarism - or web 2.0 in action?

bwerdmuller — Thu, 19 Jan 2006 08:34:26 -0800

Top Ten Sources takes posts from RSS feeds and aggregates them in full for the public to see. Some take offence; some say it goes beyond expected usage; some call it plagiarism - others say it's legal, that detractors should get a life or are even thinking about investing. Some people don't appear to want their RSS feeds to be aggregated at all. Will this discussion set blogging policy for the future? Or will it block the web 2.0 pipe?

Columbia Law School Music Plagiarism Project

Saucy Intruder — Sat, 17 Dec 2005 18:32:13 -0800

The Columbia Law School Music Plagiarism Project is a repository of the music industry's most famous copyright infringement cases of the past 100 years. Each case contains links to samples of the original song and the alleged infringer, and there's even a song list for easy browsing. (My favorite: Gilbert O'Sullivan v. Biz Markie).

Stand up for your rights-- but wait, what are they?

taursir — Sun, 02 Oct 2005 01:13:02 -0800

A new, controversial law making its way through the Finnish parliament is confusing, but its implementation may infringe on already existing Finnish laws of free speech. With decisions set to be made later this week, a demonstration has already been planned for Tuesday. On the other hand, some sources seem to be saying that this new law should present no major issue. Thus, it seems like there's a small amount of confusing legal voodoo going on: while the law wouldn't make it illegal to copy music to MP3 players, it would mean that "the breaking of copy protection for the copying of the content of a sound or video recording for personal use would be prohibited." It looks like no one knows exactly what they want out of this law, or how to interpret it. DMCA, anyone?

Sign The Pledge

feelinglistless — Thu, 18 Aug 2005 13:53:19 -0800

Electronic rights in the UK A foundation is being set up in Britain to defend our citizens in digital information matters, in a similar way to the US model. This is scary stuff -- the government is trying to push through a data retention proposal which would make all ISPs and telecos retain communications traffic data for up to three years and there are also moves afoot to criminalise copyright infringement -- approaches which are also gaining support in the EU. So thank goodness people are signing the pledge to support the new British EFF.

SinCity in less than 80 seconds

thanatogenous — Tue, 03 May 2005 11:44:55 -0800

Illicit downloading is now tantamount to domestic terrorism. I wonder if "CleanPlay" will still censor my illegally downloaded DVDs.

Open Source Yoga

matteo — Mon, 21 Mar 2005 09:04:42 -0800

Copyright a yoga move? If yoga has been around for 5,000 years, can a 21st century businessman claim to own a piece of it? Bikram Choudhury says yes. The Beverly Hills yoga mogul, who popularized his style of yoga and then franchised a chain of studios bearing his name, has long rankled traditionalists, who dislike his tough business tactics and brash outspokenness. Now Choudhury is facing a challenge in a San Francisco courtroom, where a federal judge is hearing arguments in a lawsuit that some legal experts say could define a new frontier in intellectual property. At issue: Can Choudhury take a sequence of two breathing exercises and 26 yoga poses from an ancient Indian practice, copyright it and control how it is practiced? The Open Source Yoga Unity people say he can't. More inside.

Bring on the lawyers, SOM allegedly steals student's design

plemeljr — Wed, 10 Nov 2004 08:10:37 -0800

Thomas Shine, a former Yale student, is suing David Childs for copyright infringement Mr. Childs of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill for copyright infringement over the design of the Freedom Tower located at Ground Zero. Shine alleges in his lawsuit that the proposed Freedom Tower was "strikingly similar" to his "Olympic Tower" design for the proposed 2012 Olympic Games in New York.

Canada decides to revamp its Copyright Act

stevengarrity — Wed, 14 Apr 2004 10:48:07 -0800

Lobby Now! Alan McLeod, Canadian Lawyer, writes "Make sure you are heard as Canada decides to revamp its Copyright Act." He goes on to encourage Canadians to contact the Heritage Minister and weigh in as the Copyright rules in Canada may be about to change.