Page 5 of 11
Should ringtones count as a “public performance”?
Should someone – either you or your carrier – have to pay additionally for a “public performance” of a song when your phone rings?
July 2009 / 2 min.
BlawgIT’s introduction to “fair use”
Brett Trout has a useful introduction to “fair use” up on BlawgIT. The goal is to help you “spot the issues” and avoid some common urban legends. Recommended.
July 2009 / 1 min.
The myth of “original creation”
Techdirt has an interesting article up about the myth of the “original creator” - the idea that copyright protects individual creators working in a vacuum come up with new, unique ideas that are not based on anything that precedes them. This is, as any author, musician, or inventor knows, not the way it works in practice.
July 2009 / 2 min.
Judge Posner: Expand copyright to protect newspapers?
Judge Posner recently suggested that copyright law might need to be expanded to protect the news industry, including barring linking to copyrighted content or paraphrasing it.
June 2009 / 5 min.
“Copyfraud” and Google Books
The Register and Slashdot have picked up a theme from a 2006 law review article by Jason Mazzone on “copyfraud,” extending the idea to explain a new incarnation of it emerging in relation to Google Books.
June 2009 / 4 min.
Amazon’s Kindle and digital rights management
There have been several stories over the last week about issues related to digital rights management (DRM) on Amazon’s Kindle.
June 2009 / 3 min.
Unravelling the Canadian Copyright Lobby
Especially important to everyone in Canada - but important to everyone, since copyright and IP are increasingly international issues due to attempts at harmonization (WIPO, for example) - comes this expose by Michael Geist on the undue influence pro-copyright lobbyist organizations have had on Canadian policy documents.
June 2009 / 2 min.
File sharing and “fair use”
Latoicha Givens writes: In the case of RIAA vs. Joel Tenenbaum, the court is currently accepting an argument that peer to peer file sharing is a Fair Use exception to Copyright Infringement Laws. Essentially, the argument is that file sharing is not commercial use and therefore not copyright infringement. In lay terms, this means that […]
June 2009 / 2 min.
The Thomas file-sharing retrial
The almost two million dollar award is $80,000 per song. $80,000. Damages are supposed to be, well, damages, even if statutory. It strains belief that the record labels really were harmed to the tune of $80,000 per song, even based on wilful infringement. The jury in the retrial of Ms. Jammie Thomas-Rasset deliberated only a […]
June 2009 / 2 min.
Study on file sharing and copyright: weaker protections benefit society
There are many who disagree, but the study appears to raise interesting issues regarding the benefit to society of copyright protections. As Mike Masnick writes, copyright is about balancing benefits (incentives to create with the benefits of distribution).
June 2009 / 2 min.