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People who unlawfully download copyrighted material could be disconnected from their internet accounts as part of the Digital Economy Bill, a major overhaul to the UK's technology legislation. The bill, unveiled on Friday, will oblige ISPs to send notifications to customers who are suspected of infringing copyright. ISPs will also be forced to record the number of notifications a user has received and send this data to rights holders, such as record companies, so they can apply for a court order for the user's name and address. The rights holder can then launch civil proceedings against the infringer. The minister...

The internet chapter of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, a secret copyright treaty whose text Obama's administration refused to disclose due to "national security" concerns, has leaked. It's bad. It says: * That ISPs have to proactively police copyright on user-contributed material. This means that it will be impossible to run a service like Flickr or YouTube or Blogger, since hiring enough lawyers to ensure that the mountain of material uploaded every second isn't infringing will exceed any hope of profitability. * That ISPs have to cut off the Internet access of accused copyright infringers or face liability. This means that...

31 years ago, in 1978, the television program 60 Minutes put on an episode about the awful threat of "video piracy" to the movie industry. Featuring the MPAA's Jack Valenti, the episode focused on how the VCR was going to destroy the movie business because anyone could copy and watch a movie in the privacy of their own home. Of course, in retrospect, that episode is hilariously wrong. You would think that, given how wrong they got it thirty years ago on this particular subject, 60 Minutes would be a bit more careful taking on the same subject again. No...

Michael Palin and Terry Jones have complained that Chris Christie, the Republican candidate for the New Jersey governorship, used clips from a Monty Python sketch in a campaign advertisement. Mr Christie, who hopes to unseat his Democratic rival Jon Corzine as governor in an election on Tuesday, removed the video from his website and YouTube page hours after complaints from Michael Palin and Terry Jones. The offending advertisement featured Palin in a vintage Monty Python's Flying Circus piece as a television presenter asking viewers if they had ever suffered from déjà vu and then repeating the question several times. Mr...

Pirate Party hopes for free future By Ian Youngs Music reporter, BBC News The Pirate Party, a political movement born out of music file-sharing, has gained support in Sweden and Germany, and is planning to field candidates in the next UK general election. It wants to encourage all file-sharing and slash copyright - to the horror of many artists and entertainment executives. So are they a significant force or a fleeting bunch of freeloaders? If Rick Falkvinge did not already know what the music industry thought of him, the Pirate Party founder found out at the In The City music...

Turn the Other Cheek Deborah Lambert, October 19, 2009 Until last year, Missouri teenager Jimmy Winkelmann wasn’t planning on being an entrepreneur. But after becoming “frustrated with his classmates’ sheep-like following” of the popular North Face sports clothing, he finally decided to generate his own response. The result was a line of parody sports apparel called “South Butt.” The idea caught on—but thanks to the popularity of his website offerings, Winkelmann might face a lawsuit for trademark infringement, according to ABC TV News. It all started when a lawyer for North Face contacted Winkelmann, saying that the similarity of the...

NEW YORK — Shepard Fairey's claim that he had the right to use a news photo to create his famous Barack Obama "HOPE" poster became a widely watched court case about fair use that now appears to have nearly collapsed. By Friday night, his attorneys – led by Anthony Falzone, executive director of the Fair Use Project at Stanford University – said they intend to withdraw from the case and said the artist had misled them by fabricating information and destroying other material. Fairey himself admitted that he didn't use The Associated Press photo of Obama seated next to...

"Shepard Fairey has now been forced to admit that he sued the AP under false pretenses by lying about which AP photograph he used to make the Hope and Progress posters," Kasi said. "Mr. Fairey has also now admitted to the AP that he fabricated and attempted to destroy other evidence in an effort to bolster his fair use case and cover up his previous lies and omissions." Kasi said the AP would continue to "vigorously pursue its countersuit alleging that Fairey willfully infringed the AP's copyright in the close-up photo of then-Sen. Obama."

A statement emerged tonight from AP concerning its long battle with artist Shepard Fairey over his use of an AP photo as the basic image for his famous Obama campaign poster. AP claims that Fairey's attorneys admit he tried to destroy some evidence, faking others and that his attorneys have sought to get off the case. Statement from Srinandan R. Kasi, VP and General Counsel, The Associated Press, follows. * Striking at the heart of his fair use case against the AP, Shepard Fairey has now been forced to admit that he sued the AP under false pretenses by lying...

What exactly is going on? Jennifer Bendall, executive director of musicFIRST, sums it up rather quickly: "It's unfair, unjustified and un-American that artists and musicians are paid absolutely nothing when their recordings are played on AM and FM radio. Music is their work, their livelihood. They deserve fair pay for air play." Pandora Radio is pushing for passage - they pay royalties yet radio stations do not for the same product.

A judge Tuesday heard arguments in a dispute over software sales that could potentially have repercussions on the secondhand sale of virtually any copyright material. The suit was filed by Timothy Vernor, a seller on eBay, after Autodesk, citing the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, asked eBay to remove some of its software products that Vernor had listed for sale there, and later to ban him from the site. Vernor had not illegally copied the software but was selling legitimate CDs of the products secondhand. For that reason, he argued, he was not infringing Autodesk's copyright. Autodesk countered that because it...

A South Bay lawyer wasn't acting as a Peeping Tom or a member of the paparazzi when he hired an investigator to stake out a Morgan Hill official in an unsuccessful search for evidence of a suspected romantic affair, a state appeals court says. Instead, attorney Bruce Tichinin was exercising a citizen's right to look into possible government wrongdoing, and can sue the city of Morgan Hill for allegedly retaliating against him by denouncing his actions, the appellate panel in San Jose said Monday. Tichinin's lawyer said the ruling by the Sixth District Court of Appeal should be good news...

There was a time, not so long ago, when the term "Internet Freedom" actually meant what it implied: a cyberspace free from over-zealous legislators and bureaucrats.... Those days are now gone; the presumption of online liberty is giving way to a presumption of regulation. A massive assault on real Internet freedom has been gathering steam for years and has finally come to a head. Ironically, victory for those who carry the banner of "Internet Freedom" would mean nothing less than the death of that freedom.... Here is the reality: Because of the steps being taken in Washington right now, real...

Country’s National Assembly passes draft law that kills illegal downloaders’ internet accessThe French National Assembly has passed one of the toughest laws against internet piracy that the world has ever seen.Under the new legislation, backed by President Nicolas Sarkozy, illegal downloaders of games, music and movies will be sent two warnings - first by email and then by recorded delivery. Following these cautions, the offender's details will be passed to a judge – who now has the power to cut off Internet access and issue heavy fines or even prison sentences.The law was narrowly passed by 285 votes to 225....

Some of the world's largest recording companies are suing "The Ellen DeGeneres Show," claiming producers violated their copyrights by playing more than 1,000 songs without permission. Many of the songs were played during the "dance over" segment of the show, when DeGeneres dances from the stage to the interview area, often through the audience. According to the suit filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Nashville, when representatives of the recording companies asked defendants why they hadn't obtained licenses to use the songs, defendants said they didn't "roll that way." "As sophisticated consumers of music, Defendants knew full well that,...

Foreign porn companies refile suit against Korean netizens By Kim Eun-jung SEOUL, Sept. 11 (Yonhap) -- A group of U.S. and Japanese porn companies will refile a lawsuit from next week against South Korean uploaders, their legal representative here said Friday, accusing the country of holding a double standard in investigating copyright violations of local and foreign material. Some 50 foreign firms sued 10,000 Korean Internet users in July for uploading their adult materials onto local Web sites, but prosecutors limited their investigation to those confirmed to have uploaded content more than three times. Only 10 were punished. The porn...

CHICAGO (STNG) -- A Chicago musician claims that a song he wrote in 1968 was later performed by the Jefferson Airplane rock group, included on a concert recording and subsequently made part of the group's repertoire, without giving him him any credit or compensation. Songwriter Syl Johnson is now suing the California-based band to get that recognition and maybe some financial compensation. In a lawsuit filed Wednesday in federal court in Chicago, Johnson claims "Dresses Too Short," a song he co-wrote in 1968 with Carl Smith, was performed by Jefferson Airplane at a 1969 concert. The song, with the name...

The Pirate Party, a political group which hopes to legalise internet filesharing, has attracted a huge number of new members since announcing its plans to contest seats at the next election. Andrew Peter Robinson, the leader of the Pirate Party, said they had been flooded by enquiries from people who wanted to join the group. At its peak, he said, around 100 people an hour were signing up to become party members. "It has exceeded all expectations," he said. "Put it this way – donations have been coming in so fast that PayPal were concerned we were a fraudulent site."...

Foreign porn producers sue SKorean Internet users Posted on - Thu Aug 13, 2009 2:35AM EDT SEOUL (AFP) - Foreign pornography producers are suing South Korean Internet users for breach of copyright by uploading their content onto local websites, police said Thursday. In an unusual case, a local law firm representing 50 US and Japanese porn producers has filed suit against about 10,000 heavy uploaders. The lawsuit was filed simultaneously through 10 police stations in Seoul and the adjoining Gyeonggi province, a National Police Agency spokesman said, refusing to give details. One officer at the agency said the foreign porn...

A federal judge in San Francisco has sided with Hollywood studios and ruled against RealNetworks’ DVD-copying software saying RealDVD allows users to engage in copyright infringement. U.S. District Court Marilyn Patel, in an order issued late Aug. 11, wrote that RealDVD “circumvents a technological measure that effectively controls access to or copying of the studios’ copyrighted content on DVDs.” Patel’s order effectively bars RealNetworks from selling RealDVD in any form, including its Facet DVD player that can create and store DVD copies. Dan Glickman, chairman and CEO of the Motion Picture Association of America, said he was “very pleased” by...

Link only, per FR posting rules. Link to article is here

Jury Awards $675,000 in Music Downloading Case BOSTON – A federal jury on Friday ordered a Boston University graduate student who admitted illegally downloading and sharing music online to pay $675,000 to four record labels. Joel Tenenbaum, of Providence, R.I., admitted in court that he downloaded and distributed 30 songs. The only issue for the jury to decide was how much in damages to award the record labels. Under federal law, the recording companies were entitled to $750 to $30,000 per infringement. But the law allows as much as $150,000 per track if the jury finds the infringements were willful....

In George Orwell’s “1984,” government censors erase all traces of news articles embarrassing to Big Brother by sending them down an incineration chute called the “memory hole.” On Friday, it was “1984” and another Orwell book, “Animal Farm,” that were dropped down the memory hole — by Amazon.com. In a move that angered customers and generated waves of online pique, Amazon remotely deleted some digital editions of the books from the Kindle devices of readers who had bought them. An Amazon spokesman, Drew Herdener, said in an e-mail message that the books were added to the Kindle store by a...

Jackson Browne has settled a lawsuit and received an apology from Sen. John McCain and the Republican Party over use of his song "Running on Empty" during last year's presidential campaign. The settlement announced Tuesday includes a pledge by the GOP not to use any musicians' work without proper permission in future campaigns, a statement that Browne said he hoped would benefit other artists....

The following letter was confirmed to me by Mr. Greenberg with the following statement:"The letter was sent to Senators Sessions, Hatch, Grassley, Graham and Coburn. It was also sent to Cong. Peter King (R) NY. The story is being covered extensively by the photo blogs, the trade publications and the NY Times. No politician has responded. The NY Times quotes attributed to me are accurate and therefore I assume that the quotes of my adversary Mr. Fairhurst are accurate as well."Text of the letter: I am an attorney in NYC who represented White House Photographer Chris Usher in litigation against...

NEW YORK (AP) - The Associated Press will collect undisclosed damages as part of a settlement of its lawsuit against All Headline News, a site that allegedly misappropriated AP stories online. The AP considered the lawsuit an important test of the "hot news" doctrine, which was established in a 1918 Supreme Court case involving the AP. That principle holds that while facts cannot be copyrighted, news organizations can sue when competitors copy time-sensitive stories.

If you search for Elvis Presley in Wikipedia, you will find a lot of text and a few pictures that have been cleared for distribution. But you will find no music and no film clips, due to copyright restrictions. What we think of as our common cultural heritage is not “ours” at all. This was never the intent. Copyright was meant to encourage culture, not restrict it. This is reason enough for reform. But the current regime has even more damaging effects. In order to uphold copyright laws, governments are beginning to restrict our right to communicate with each other...

ASCAP Makes Outlandish Copyright Claims on Cell Phone Ringtones EFF Argues Phones Ringing in Public Do Not Violate Copyright Law New York - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) urged a federal court Wednesday to reject bogus copyright claims in a ringtone royalty battle that could raise costs for consumers, jeopardize consumer rights, and curtail new technological innovation.Millions of Americans have bought musical ringtones, often clips from favorite popular songs, for their mobile phones. Mobile phone carriers pay royalties to song owners for the right to sell these snippets to their customers. But as part of a ploy to squeeze more...

"Free-riding is ubiquitous," David says. "These parasitic aggregators are capturing the heart of the stories so that readers have no need to visit the site of the original story." (snip) "It's unfair competition with unjust enrichment," Marburger says. (Snip) "If the copyright law doesn't open the way for originators of news to stop the free-riding, newspapers will die," he said. "No exceptions." (Snip) The Marburgers recommend amending the federal Copyright Act to provide two remedies for unjust enrichment: • Aggregators would reimburse newspapers for ad revenues associated with their news reports. • Injunctions would bar aggregators' profiting from newspapers' content...

According to CNET, the RIAA has emerged victorious in their case against Usenet.com for wholesale copyright infringement. Filed back in 2007, the RIAA took particular issue with the outfit's ads promising "access to millions of MP3 files" for the monthly $19 payment. While the advertising was bad enough, the case was made substantially easier for the RIAA thanks to the fact that Usenet.com was destroying evidence on hard drives, often supplying incorrect information -- and even sent several employees to Europe to prevent them from testifying. In a statement, the RIAA lauds the courts for taking action against Usenet.com's "egregious...

Of all the misguided schemes put forth lately to save newspapers (micropayments! blame Google!), the one put forth by Judge Richard Posner has to be the most jaw-dropping. He suggests that linking to copyrighted material should be outlawed. No, Posner does not work for the Associated Press (which also has some strange ideas on linking). He is (normally) considered to be one of the great legal minds of our time. Posner is a United States Court of Appeals judge in Chicago and legal scholar who was once considered a potential Supreme Court nominee. He is someone who should know better....

ONE'S a pub classic, belted out at top volume by tipsy patrons around closing time. The other is a more dignified affair, a favourite of youth choirs and choral groups. Now, as unlikely as it seems, the classic children's ditty Kookaburra and the Men At Work hit Down Under are set to go head-to-head in court amid accusations part of the rock anthem is a rip-off, The Daily Telegraph reports. Music publishing company Larrikin owns the Kookaburra song and claims the melody that accompanies the line "Kookaburra sits in the old gum tree" is reproduced in Down Under. The case...

A federal jury Thursday found a 32-year-old Minnesota woman guilty of illegally downloading music from the Internet and fined her $80,000 each — a total of $1.9 million — for 24 songs. Jammie Thomas-Rasset’s case was the first such copyright infringement case to go to trial in the United States, her attorney said. Attorney Joe Sibley said that his client was shocked at fine, noting that the price tag on the songs she downloaded was 99 cents...

She found substantial similarities with JD Salinger's original novel. The 90-year-old reclusive author emerged from his decades-long public silence to sue the author and publisher of the new book, 60 Years Later: Coming through the Rye, for infringing his copyright. Hearing the case in New York on Wednesday, US District Judge Deborah Batts issued a temporary restraining order against publication for 10 days, at which time she will rule on whether it can go ahead or whether the case must go to trial. In court, lawyers argued over whether Salinger has a right to stop US publication this summer of...

The MPAA apparently said that the “enemies of copyright have really done a good job at creating the false premise that the interest of copyright holders and the interest of society as a whole are antagonistic” during the World Copyright Summit. The worry is that their pro-copyright advocacy perspective is fading away in the public conscious. In an interesting report from IP-Watch where there were a few choice words levelled against those that disagreed with the view-points of the copyright industry. Apparently, Fritz Attaway suggested that it's false to assume that the rights of the industry and the interest of...

I once saw a list of sites that did not permit their content to be fully used on Freerepulic. They were sites where we have to post excerpts, then link back to the site for the full text. In doing a search, I've come up empty. I'd appreciate seeing the list, so I can save it for future reference. Thanks.

Robert A. Mark, the Judge overseeing Psystar's bankruptcy in Florida, ordered a hearing on Apple's Motion For Relief From Stay for June 17. Apple filed the motion in hopes of quickly resuming its case against Psystar for selling PCs with Mac OS X pre-installed. Apple's legal battle was temporarily stalled when Psystar filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection because of mounting legal expenses. Judge Mark would likely lift the stay eventually, but Apple is hoping to expedite the process with its motion and avoid losing more time while waiting for the bankruptcy proceedings to complete. Psystar is still selling PCs...

Sweden’s Pirate Party, which wants an internet filesharing free-for-all, is one of the surprise entrants to the European Parliament after winning 7.4 per cent of the vote. The party, which also wants to beef up internet privacy, was founded in January 2006 and quickly attracted members angered by Swedish laws that criminalise filesharing and authorise the monitoring of e-mails. Its membership shot up after a court in Stockholm sentenced four men in April to a year in jail for running one of the world’s biggest filesharing sites, the Pirate Bay. Voters had their revenge last night by electing at least...

They were taken before Marilyn Monroe became branded as the voluptuous blonde who oozed sex appeal in dozens of Hollywood films. A 24-year-old Marilyn Monroe poses for Life magazine in August 1950. They were taken before rumors of an affair with President John F. Kennedy swirled and her mental breakdowns became public. They were taken before the beautiful actress's mysterious overdose that resulted in her death at the age of 36. In a collection discovered by Life.com last month, unpublished photographs of Monroe reveal a softer, more innocent 24-year-old budding starlet in a more peaceful time, before her fame peaked....

Washington, Apr 25 (ANI): Oprah Winfrey is at the centre of a legal battle with the bosses of an insurance company over the use of her signature catchphrase-the "Aha moment". The talk show queen is known to use the popular phrase for a revelation on 'The Oprah Winfrey Show' and in her O magazine, reports Contactmusic. However, now the same catchphrase has landed the media mogul in a dispute with executives at Mutual of Omaha Bank.

The European Parliament voted on Thursday in favor of extending copyright on music recordings in the European Union to 70 years from 50 at present, diluting a draft law in a bid to reach a final deal. The measure, if it becomes law, will ensure for example that recordings of the early Beatles hit "Love Me Do" do not become copyright-free from 2012. EU Internal Market Commissioner Charlie McCreevy had proposed prolonging performance copyright for singers and musicians to 95 years but many EU states, which have joint say with parliament, felt this was too long. Parliament voted 377 in...

Vice President Joe Biden lauded Hollywood at a gala dinner in Washington, D.C. on Tuesday evening, assailed movie piracy, and promised film executives that the Obama administration would pick "the right person" as its copyright czar. Just days after four Pirate Bay defendants were found guilty in Sweden, Biden warned of the harms of piracy at a private event organized by the Motion Picture Association of America in the sumptuous, newly renovated Great Hall of the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C. "It's pure theft, stolen from the artists and quite frankly from the American people as consequence of loss...

A court in Sweden has jailed four men behind The Pirate Bay (TPB), the world's most high-profile file-sharing website, in a landmark case.Frederik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Carl Lundstrom and Peter Sunde were found guilty of breaking copyright law and were sentenced to a year in jail. They were also ordered to pay $4.5m (£3m) in damages. Record companies welcomed the verdict but the men are to appeal and Sunde said they would refuse to pay the fine. Speaking at an online press conference, he described the verdict as "bizarre". "It's serious to actually be found guilty and get jail...

...However, there's another type of site engaging in copyright infringement, in a far more defensible way. These are the whole-album bloggers, the modern-day cratediggers who post records long out of print, and so obscure as to have barely existed. These blogs democratise record collecting, making the arcane – Turkish prog, Italian soundtracks, Puerto Rican 45s – accessible to all. The cratedigging bloggers think their posts are on solid moral ground. "If an LP is out of print, there are no sales to be affected, so no one suffers any losses," says Smooth, of My Jazz World. "If the industry cannot...

The French parliament on Thursday voted down an Internet piracy law, which had largely been expected to pass. The "Creation and Internet" law, which won the preliminary approval of the parliament last week, would compel Internet service providers to take graduated actions against customers accused of illegally downloading copyrighted material. After warning a customer against such actions for a third time, an ISP could suspend the person's Internet access for up to a year. Because the bill was expected to pass, few members of parliament were present for the final vote on the bill, according to the Associated Press. Opponents...

The Associated Press is fed up with… the Internet, apparently. And it’s going to do… something about it. At the news-gathering co-op’s annual meeting today, AP chairman Dean Singleton let rip a sort of hellfire-and-brimstone speech in which he announced the AP’s vague plans to stop unnamed scoundrels from making money from their work. The relevant bit: “[The AP's board has] unanimously decided to take all actions necessary to protect the content of the Associated Press and the AP Digital Cooperative from misappropriation on the Internet. The board also unanimously agreed to work with portals and other partners who legally...

A US columnist is out of a job after posting an online review of an illegally downloaded copy of X-Men Origins: Wolverine. Roger Friedman, who wrote the piece on his regular column, had worked at the Fox news website for 10 years.

Taking aim at the way news is spread across the Internet, The Associated Press said on Monday that Web sites that used the work of news organizations must obtain permission and share revenue with them, and that it would take legal action against those that did not. A.P. executives said they were concerned about a variety of news forums around the Web, including major search engines like Google and Yahoo and aggregators like the Drudge Report that link to news articles, smaller sites that sometimes reproduce articles whole, and companies that sell packaged news feeds. They said they did not...

After more than 10 years of acerbic writing, Foxnews.com columnist Roger Friedman has reached a bitter end himself in a film piracy-related incident. The moral of the story is that, if you work for a company that owns a movie studio, it’s not a good idea to download and review a stolen copy of an upcoming movie. But that’s apparently what Friedman did. The entire entertainment industry has been talking about the stolen copy of “X-Men Origins: Wolverine,” which was posted on the Internet about a month before the movie’s planned debut. The pirated version was an early, unfinished, special...

While the studios are getting themselves in a tizzy about the leaked, unfinished version of Wolverine, there were far more heinous events unfolding in the world of copyright infringement. Barack H. Obama, the president of the United States of America, was (allegedly) committing international copyright law, illegally (allegedly) trading intellectual property to the monarch of another country. Over at the Electronic Frontier Foundation's blog, the organization's senior staff attorney Fred von Lohmann explores the legality of Obama's recent gift of an iPod to the Queen of England. Along with the iPod, Obama gifted 40 show tunes ripped from a purchased...