December 4th 2008
Harvard Law School professor Charles Nesson filed a counterclaim recently against the RIAA. At the heart of that filing is a challenge to the constitutionality of the RIAA’s suits against those who download music from file-sharing services. Nesson, who founded the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard, is going to bat for Joel Tenenbaum, […]
December 3rd 2008
Each quarter, Google issues a brief summary of the legal threats it faces through its quarterly SEC 10-Q filings. Here’s that part of Google’s 10-Q Filing for September 30, 2008. Note 11. Contingencies Legal Matters Companies have filed trademark infringement and related claims against us over the display of ads in response to user queries […]
November 24th 2008
Among the most downloaded of all YouTube videos are anything to do with Monty Python. Thank God. You can see clips from their TV show and movies, all for free. Free, you free-loading cheap bastards. Short on shekels, are we? Too skint to cough up the occasional fiver for quality senseless comedy? You make me sick, […]
November 20th 2008
Toyota wants fan-submitted desktop wallpapers that show Toyota, Scion, or Lexus cars removed from DesktopNexus.com, a popular wallpaper sharing website. In an article on TorrentFreak: The site’s owner, Harry Maugans, contacted Toyota to clarify. He was told that all images featuring Toyota vehicles should be removed, even images with copyright belonging to others. Maugans said: […]
September 1st 2008
LA’s Boy Scout Council has teamed with the MPAA to offer Scouts a patch for learning just how much it costs to make a film and how many people get hurt if you download it without paying. Really, take a look. Notice that the concepts of fair use and public domain are completely absent from […]
August 29th 2008
Two Years in Jail for File Sharing The National Center for State Courts has distributed 50,000 comic books and teachers’ guides to explain how courts work to America’s youth. As the Threat Level blog notes, the plot “reads like the Recording Industry Association of America’s public relations playbook: Download some songs, go to jail and […]
August 17th 2008
FCC Commissioner McDowell Proposed Crackpot Threat to Bloggers While addressing the conservative Heritage Foundation, FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell made a lame attempt to suggest this election is about preventing Democrats from using the FCC to regulate content on Internet blogs. Of course, there’s no legal basis for the FCC to regulate content on personal servers, and […]
August 16th 2008
I’d encourage you to steal Girl Talk’s breakthrough fourth album, but you can’t. It’s pay-what-you-like, so if you like, pay $0.00 to start listening and return to toss in a payment later. Start your download during this golden time before DMCA takedown notices and TROs make this a coveted, though still free, file. Under the name Girl Talk, Greg Gillis creates […]
August 13th 2008
Today, the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has overtured a lower court’s decision in Jacobsen v. Katzer, stating that “Copyright holders who engage in open source licensing have the right to control the modification and distribution of copyrighted material.” From Professor Lawrence Lessig’s blog In non-technical terms, the Court has held […]
August 8th 2008
My interest in JC Penney’s Breakfast Club ad grew from a question one of our readers, Eli, emailed in. He wanted to know if Penney’s had licensed the use of the Breakfast Club scenes they re-enacted in the advertisement. There certainly seemed to be a copyright issue in play. Kate Parkhouse, who manages the brand’s […]
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