February 1st 2009
The NFL is the champion of claiming copyrights that have no legal reality. Their copyright statement actually requires anyone describing one of their games to get permission. Do you believe I can’t do that? Of course not, but the NFL’s broad claim of rights persists. The NFL threatened law professor Wendy Seltzer for posting their […]
January 28th 2009
We’ve discussed how Brand Obama has been open to being appropriated by its supporters. Now other brands are jumping into what might be called the “O-conomy.” Here are some products drawing on Obama’s brand equity. In a Plea for Relevancy, Pepsi Steals Obama’s Logo Business Week‘s David Kiley writes, “This is a special time in America—difficult […]
January 27th 2009
It seems that Harvard Law Professor Charles Nesson has really put a bee in the RIAA’s bonnet. As part of the Sony BMG vs. Tenenbaum case, Nesson filed a motion to compel a deposition of Matthew Oppenheim, a legal heavy-hitter for the RIAA. As a result, the RIAA countered with the threat of certain sanctions under […]
January 13th 2009
Tim Stanley, Carl Malamud, and the the team at Altlaw.org are tenacious, creative and on a mission. Individually, each is finding creative ways to make America’s vast quantity of legal documents available over the Internet at no charge to the public. Together, they are opening up America’s legal system to the public through the Internet. […]
January 12th 2009
Some time back, Usefularts reported on the failure of the RIAA’s “Making Available” Argument – which stated that simply having files that could be downloaded is the same as if they had been, ignoring any concept of intent. Well, the other shoe has fallen. The RIAA has filed for a voluntary dismissal for the first […]
January 6th 2009
The RIAA has dumped one of its main enforcement units (and I mean “enforcement” as in “Frank Nitty“) by firing MediaSentry. MediaSentry was used by the RIAA to supposedly gather information on suspected illegal file sharers and report the data back to the RIAA. But the tactics used by MediaSentry have caused outrage from various […]
December 22nd 2008
In what could have been a last-second shakedown effort, the RIAA has seen fit to ignore a judge’s order preventing the use of names determined through the discovery phase of Motown Record Company vs. John Doe from being used for anything beyond simple discovery. “The disclosure of such information is ordered pursuant to 20 U.S.C. […]
December 19th 2008
The Wall Street Journal reports that the RIAA has decided to shift an ISP-focused enforcement approach, which would result in prosecution of individual P2P sharers only in extraordinary circumstances. Since 2003, the recording industry has opened legal proceedings against 35,000 people, including children, single mothers, and a dead person. It’s been a PR nightmare, inspired animosity […]
December 11th 2008
Tip of the hat to Gamasutra. A group of students at Redmond, WA-based DigiPen Institute of Technology spent three semesters working on a game that went on to win some awards. Unfortunately, part of the admissions process for this program included signing over the copyright of anything they created for assignments. The students incorporated and […]
December 5th 2008
Naughty or Nice? The recording industry has described the free airplay their songs receive on AM and FM radio as “a form of piracy.” It has sued customers for copying purchased CDs to their own computers, and for selling or simply tossing out unsolicited promotional CDs. In a year in which arguably the best album is […]
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