Free Republic

A Texas appeals court has ruled that the University of Houston does not have to pay the photographer of a picture it has been using in online and print promotional materials. Houston photographer Jim Olive says the university removed copyright markings from an image downloaded from his stock library, failed to credit him when it was used and wouldn’t pay when he sent a bill, but the university claims it has sovereign immunity and that it can’t be sued. The case surrounds an aerial image Olive shot from a helicopter hired specifically for making pictures for his library. In an...

Craig S. Wright has been granted U.S. copyright registrations for the famed original Bitcoin white paper, and most of the original Bitcoin code (version 0.1). Importantly, the registrations issued by the U.S. Copyright Office recognize Wright as the author – under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto – of both the white paper and code. This is the first government agency recognition of Craig Wright as Satoshi Nakamoto, the creator of Bitcoin. In addition to being Bitcoin’s creator, Wright is currently Chief Scientist of nChain, the global leader in advisory, research and development of blockchain technologies, which focuses on massive adoption of...

The European Union's new Copyright Directive stands to dramatically change the way we consume news and other online content. Although originally intended to ensure creators and news organizations are fairly compensated for their work, the directive will more likely make quality news harder to find, throw financial and technical roadblocks in the way of smaller online publishers and creators, stifle free speech and negatively impact internet culture. Article 11 requires online news aggregators like Google, Facebook or Twitter to pay licensing fees to news organizations when showing snippets of their coverage, and forces news organizations to charge these fees. ....

Music Modernization Act Signing Ceremony. With Kid Rock, Michael Love and other musicians standing beside, President Trump Signs the Orrin G. Hatch-Bob Goodlatte Music Modernization Act

Beijing leans on an array of levers to extract intellectual property—sometimes coercively DuPont Co. suspected its onetime partner in China was getting hold of its prized chemical technology, and spent more than a year fighting in arbitration trying to make it stop. Then, 20 investigators from China’s antitrust authority showed up. For four days this past December, they fanned out through DuPont’s Shanghai offices, demanding passwords to the company’s world-wide research network, say people briefed on the raid. Investigators printed documents, seized computers and intimidated employees, accompanying some to the bathroom. Beijing leans on an array of levers to pry...

“Real estate brokers and agents invest resources into obtaining property listings,” wrote NAR, which counts 1.3 million real estate agents as members. As such, NAR said agents have “rights and responsibilities to control the distribution of their listings.” Any “appropriation of a commercial entity’s data, work product, or intellectual property for exploitation by another commercial entity is not justified,” NAR added. But while Zillow argued for the “democratization” of data, NAR said calls for greater access to MLS data are “based on faulty expectations that unrestricted access to listing data will help consumers.” Instead, NAR said, “forcing brokers to provide...

The phrase "haters gonna hate" is too "banal" to be copyrighted, a US judge has declared. Judge Michael W Fitzgerald made the comments while dismissing a copyright case against Taylor Swift. Songwriters Sean Hall and Nathan Butler sued the star last year, arguing her single Shake It Off stole from their composition, Playas Gon' Play. They said the chorus of her song relied on their lyric, "playas, they gonna play, and haters, they gonna hate". Although short phrases are generally immune from copyright claims, the writers argued that combining the two thoughts was original enough to warrant protection. Fitzgerald disagreed...

On January 23rd, a jury verdict entered in the Central District of California awarded $710,000 in damages for trademark and copyright infringement to Grumpy Cat Limited, the entity holding the rights to the Internet cat celebrity Grumpy Cat. The lawsuit targeted the sale of unlicensed coffee beverages marketed under the Grumpy Cat name by a Los Angeles-area beverage company. The complaint filed in December 2015 notes, the firm entered into a license agreement with Grenade Beverage in May 2013, which granted Grenade limited rights to the copyrights and trademarks covering the cat’s name and image to develop a line of...

Providing a link to content is a pretty standard way of pointing your friends, family, or colleagues to an interesting article you read, a funny picture you saw, or information you want to share. I know that I provide links on a daily basis, including them in blog posts, emails, articles, and briefs, or on Facebook and Twitter. While I assume that the material I share does not infringe copyright, to be honest, I typically don’t give it much thought when I share an interesting blog post or a stunning picture by providing the link to the page I originally...

Pepe is striking back! Late Tuesday evening, the mischievous frog meme appeared on the front of WilmerHale headquarters — the law firm representing Pepe’s creator.

Jerome Lawson, the lead singer of The Persuasions, contends his sampled voice is protected under California law. Apple, Inc., is being taken to court over its use of Jamie xx's "I Know There's Gonna Be (Good Times)" in a televised commercial for the iPhone 6. The lawsuit, filed on Tuesday in Los Angeles Superior Court, may showcase a new legal front in the battle over sampling. When the song, featured on Jamie xx's Grammy-nominated album In Colors, was released in 2015, a small controversy arose over the allegation that the U.K. artist hadn't licensed use of The Persuasions' 1971 recording,...

Donald Trump put fear in the hearts of the left before the election, but since then, his opponents have gone completely off the deep end. They’ve marched through the streets. They’ve destroyed property. They’ve beaten Trump supporters and lashed out at his vice president after he attended a Broadway play. They fear – correctly, it seems, judging from the appointments and other decrees emanating from Trump Tower – that, unlike the current occupant, Trump looks at the presidency as something to do, not something to be. He’s not thinking about having Jay-Z and Beyonce at the White House or which...

Below is the verbatim e-mail I sent to Crown Forum’s publicity office* at Random House on Wednesday, August 10, 2016: SUBJECT: Likely plagiarism by Crown author in form of “refactoring” To the publisher of “Barons of the Beltway: Inside the Princely World of Our Washington Elite—and How to Overthrow Them” Dear Sir or Madam: In case you have not yet been alerted, serious allegations of plagiarism — in the form of the refactoring of others’ work without citations, in lieu of original work of her own — are being made on the Internet about the Michelle Fields book referenced above,...

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFtm1MTBC3E Target: The Corrupters! aired on ABC from September 29, 1961 to June 8, 1962. The Target store brand was an early 1960s outgrowth of a parent company that owned both B. Dalton and Pickwick booksellers. There appears never to have been any legal dispute about the use of the program title "Target: The Corrupters!" or the logo of a dark bullseye on a white background.

Sue Googe is a 2016 Republican candidate who hopes to represent the 4th Congressional District of North Carolina in United States Congress. Also, her surname looks like the Google logo — especially as it's written on her campaign signs, which use a font that's identical to Google's bespoke sans-serif typeface. [She's the one in the middle) [Lots more article and pics at The Verge article] ...

Almost 90 years after it was first performed in Paris, the copyright runs out on Sunday on one of the most popular and unique pieces of classical music, Ravel's "Bolero". "We are accustomed to say that a performance of Bolero begins every 10 minutes in the world. As the work lasts 17 minutes, it is therefore playing at all times somewhere," said Laurent Petitgirard of France's Society of Authors, Composers and Music Publishers (SACEM). "And it is likely that we will hear it even more now, in advertisements or in films".

A Supreme Court order issued today closes the book on (or perhaps merely ends this chapter of) more than a decade of legal warfare between Google and the Authors Guild over the legality of the former’s scanning without permission of millions of copyrighted books. And the final word is: it’s fair use. The order is just an item in a long list of other orders that appeared today, and adds nothing to the argument except the tacit approval of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals 2015 decision — itself approving an even earlier decision, that of the U.S. District Court...

So when I first made a video showing that CrazyRussianHackers idea about using dry ice for an air conditioner was basically suicidal, I really didnt think anything would come of it. Then recently he filed a DMCA takedown of my video. This resulted in a strike against my account and me losing access to certain features. Now thats a special brand of idiot who makes a video about a suicidal way to chill the air, then files a baseless copyright takedown of the only warning about how dumb that idea is. Especially against a guy like me who has a...

When the text of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) was first released in November last year, it included provisions dictating the kinds of penalties that should be available in cases of copyright infringement... What does this surreptitious change from “paragraph” to “subparagraph” mean?...

has Trump 35, Cruz 19, Rubio 17 and the following head-to-head with Hillary Cruz 45 Clinton 44 Trump 45 Clinton 43 Rubio 48 Clinton 42 Kasich 49 Clinton 38 So, BOPe will tell us Kasich does best against Cankles. On the other hand, notion that Trump can't beat her is destroyed.