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Irish Collection Society Wants Hotels To Pay Performance Fees For Music Played In Guest Rooms (20 March 09:09) |
| We've seen all sorts of ridiculous claims by performance rights collection societies trying to demand performance rights for things that clearly were not intended as "performances." There w... |
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Hot News Is Back Court Blocks Website From Reporting The News (20 March 08:14) |
| In the last few years, there's been a push by some companies to bring back the immensely troubling "hot news doctrine," that appears to violate everything we know about the First Amendment a... |
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Would UK Politicians Support The Digital Economy Bill If It Applied To Offline Activities As Well (20 March 07:27) |
| The entertainment industry always likes to take the digital world and compare it to the physical world as if the two were the same -- often making claims like unauthorized downloading is "ju... |
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Nestle Discovers The Streisand Effect But Only After Making Things Worse And Worse And Worse (20 March 06:55) |
| Earlier this week, reader Jorvay sent over the news of how food giant Nestle had massively overreacted to an (admittedly disgusting) anti-Nestle video put together by Greenpeace and posted t... |
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More ACTA Leaks Would Create Special Organization To Manage Worldwide Copyright Laws (20 March 06:13) |
| The more of ACTA that leaks, the worse it seems. KEI has the details on another portion of ACTA that had not leaked yet, which focuses on setting up new institutions that would manage ACTA ... |
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People Realizing That Viacoms Filings Take YouTube Quotes Totally Out Of Context (20 March 05:23) |
| I had pointed this out in a comment yesterday, but with so many press reports suggesting that Viacom's filing found some sort of "smoking gun" in the YouTube emails concerning founders talki... |
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The Onion Puts Out An Equally Accurate Report On Recording Industry Revenue Issues (20 March 04:31) |
| Ah, leave it to The Onion to successfully encapsulate the state of the recording industry with a report that is basically as accurate as most of the reports that come out of the RIAA these d... |
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Too Little Too Late Universal Music Finally Realizes That Maybe CDs Were Too Expensive (20 March 03:37) |
| David Herron alerts us to the news that it's finally occurred to the brain trust at Universal Music that, perhaps, CD prices were too high. They've introduced a "new pricing structure," whi... |
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Despite Plenty Of Warning EA Still Decides To Follow Ubisoft Down The Wrong Path With DRM (20 March 02:38) |
| Last summer, we wrote about some reports that EA was going to require a constant internet connection for Command & Conquer 4. At the time, many people argued that this was a bad, bad i... |
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California Court Says Online Bullying Is Not Protected Free Speech (20 March 01:30) |
| There have been plenty of efforts to try to curb "cyberbullying," often through laws that try to make it illegal to be a jerk. Unfortunately, the concept of cyberbullying is so vague that t... |
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Will YouTube Case Lead To FTC Investigation Of Viacoms Questionable Marketing Practices (20 March 12:25) |
| Here's one more point concerning the motions filed in the YouTube case by Google and Viacom. We had mentioned in our analysis that Google highlights the details of Viacom's rather large "st... |
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If ACTA Gets Approved Expect China To Use It As Justification For Censorship (19 March 11:20) |
| While one of ACTA's biggest supporters, Rep. Howard Berman, is now pushing for laws to stop companies aiding in China's censorship, he might want to consider that a better plan would be to b... |
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Tool Maker Loses Lawsuit For Not Violating Another Companys Patents (19 March 10:10) |
| Patent system supporters regularly point (slightly misleadingly) to the claim that the patent system gives patent holders the right to exclude others from using their inventions. And, thus,... |
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YouTube Motions Highlight How Entertainment Industry Lawsuits May Have Slowed Useful Platforms (19 March 08:52) |
| We've already written up an analysis of the motions for summary judgment in the Viacom/Google YouTube lawsuit, suggesting that Google's arguments seem stronger. It still seems unlikely that... |
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Canon Becomes The Online Equivalent Of Madonna Or Prince Becoming The First Single Word Domain Holder (19 March 07:33) |
| It's been a while now since ICANN announced plans to open up the top level domain space. While we've questioned for many years the utility of still requiring limited TLDs, ICANN's plan to o... |
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Ad Age Explains How Copyright Is The Buggy Whip Of The Digital Age (19 March 05:37) |
| Michael Scott points us to a rather surprising (given the source) piece in Ad Age asking if copyright is "the buggy whip of the digital age." Of course, most regular Techdirt readers will n... |
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Legal Fight Over Design Of Disposable Coffee Cups (19 March 02:14) |
| Whatever happened to actually competing in the market place? Copycense points us to a recent legal battle between Dixie and Huhtamaki over the design of their disposable coffee cups. Serio... |
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Indie Artists Discuss Dealing With File Sharing (19 March 11:36) |
| Unfortunately, I can't find who first sent this in, but the site Inieoma recently had an interesting multi-part "discussion" on how independent artists are dealing with the issue of "piracy.... |
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Courts Stretching Computer Hacking Law In Dangerous Ways (19 March 09:36) |
| Michael Scott points us to a very interesting analysis of how to different appeals courts have very different interpretations of our federal anti-hacking law. The Computer Fraud and Abuse A... |
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Verizon Figures If Its Already Involved In A Patent Lawsuit With TiVo Why Not Sue Cablevision For Its DVR Too (19 March 07:35) |
| Ah, the patent wars. As you're probably aware, TiVo spent years fighting a big legal battle with EchoStar/Dish Networks over some patents on DVR technology. TiVo won big, and then immediat... |
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Georgia Supreme Court Says Its Okay To Put Non-Sex Offenders On The Registered Sex Offender List (19 March 05:50) |
| The question of registered sex offenders lists is a tricky one -- because for those people who really do commit sexually-driven crimes against minors, it's hard to be even remotely sympathet... |
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Kentucky Supreme Court Overturns Ruling That Blocked State Seizure Of Gambling Domain Names (19 March 04:35) |
| As you may recall, in a move that was blatantly designed to protect local gambling interests (no one denies this particular point), Kentucky passed a law allowing the governor to declare any... |
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Apparently The Word Piracy No Longer Sufficiently Derogatory For Entertainment Industry (19 March 03:23) |
| We already wrote about the release this week of a highly misleading report about how many jobs "piracy" was going to "cost" Europe. However, a bunch of folks have been sending in the Reuter... |
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Viacom And Google Make Their Case Over YouTube (19 March 02:16) |
| I've spent the last few hours going through the motions for summary judgment from both Google and Viacom in the YouTube case. If you'd like to kill a few hours yourself:
Viacom Summary Jud... |
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Analysis Of Google And Viacoms Arguments Over YouTube A Lot Of He SaidShe Said (19 March 02:16) |
| I've spent the last few hours going through the motions for summary judgment from both Google and Viacom in the YouTube case. If you'd like to kill a few hours yourself:
Viacom Summary Jud... |
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Steve Albini Explains Why Royalties Dont Make Sense (19 March 01:18) |
| Beyond being a world famous musician, engineer, producer and journalist, Steve Albini has long been pretty outspoken about the music business itself -- and while I don't always agree with hi... |
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WikiPremed Shows How To Make Money From Free Test Prep (19 March 12:10) |
| Glyn Moody alerts us to his interesting writeup of how WikiPremed is successfully making money while offering free premed test prep materials. The story is actually somewhat similar to the ... |
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EU Proposes Criminalizing Inducing Infringement In ACTA Draft Could Outlaw Google (18 March 11:03) |
| While the EU Parliament has decisively denounced ACTA -- both in terms of the process and the substance of the (still secret) draft agreement, it appears that the EU negotiators are still pu... |
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How Googles Anti-Microsoft Lobbying Effort Came Back To Bite Them (18 March 09:44) |
| Two years ago, as Microsoft was trying to buy Yahoo, we were really surprised to find Google making a proactive lobbying and marketing effort to scuttle the deal. As we noted at the time, i... |
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As Expected Ridiculous Wrong Exaggerating And Misleading Report Claims That Piracy Is Killing Jobs (18 March 08:30) |
| As was leaked earlier this week, a study paid for by the International Chamber of Commerce has come out with ridiculously misleading and misguided report about how "piracy" is killing jobs a... |
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Court Rejects PA DAs Attempt To Charge Teens For Sexting Themselves (18 March 07:01) |
| About a year ago a prosecutor in Pennsylvania wanted to bring child porn charges against some teenage girls who had taken some "nude and seminude" photos of themselves with cameraphones and ... |
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Viacom Still Cant Figure Out Which Video Clips Actually Infringed On YouTube (18 March 05:37) |
| As we get ready to see more details about the filings from both Viacom and Google in the YouTube fight, Eric Goldman notes that Viacom has dropped another 187 videos from its complaint. Thi... |
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Disgruntled Ex-Auto Dealer Employee Hacks Computer System To Disable Over 100 Cars (18 March 03:04) |
| Ah, the fun of the electronic age. A few years back we started hearing about tools to remotely disable a car. These were talked about as a security system to recover stolen vehicles, but a... |
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Reporting On Someone Claiming An Opponent Lies In A Heated Debate Is Not Libel (18 March 12:42) |
| Reporter Amy Wallace wrote an article late last year for Wired Magazine about the extremely heated and somewhat controversial debate over child vaccinations. In the course of the article, s... |
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Peeling The Layers Off Piracy (18 March 10:41) |
| We often see critics or industry folks make absolute statements like, "copyright infringement is stealing and it's bad." Of course, this is wrong for any number of reasons, but rather than ... |
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UKs Times Online Starts Blocking Aggregators Hours After Aggregators Win Copyright Tribunal Ruling Against Newspapers (18 March 08:52) |
| There's been something of a battle going on in the UK over news aggregators. Obviously, we've all heard about the various threats by companies like News Corp. in the US to sue Google over i... |
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ACSLaw Keeps Sending Out More Threat Letters -- Condemned By Politicians ISPs And General Common Sense (18 March 07:14) |
| Just as Davenport Lyons lawyers are being sent for disciplinary action over the firm's practice of sending large numbers of "pay up or we sue" pre-settlement letters, ACS:Law, the shady firm... |
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Kodak Says Intellectual Ventures Behind Patent Lawsuit Filed By Shell Company (18 March 05:50) |
| Last year, Zusha Elinson broke the story that, despite Nathan Myhrvold hiding behind the claim that Intellectual Ventures hadn't sued anyone over patent infringement, IV's patents were mirac... |
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Accountant Sues Craigslist Over Negative Post About His Services (18 March 04:31) |
| And here's a lawsuit that's going nowhere fast. Alex points us to the news of a NY accountant, Leo Kehoe, who is suing Craigslist for $1 million because someone insulted him on the site. H... |
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Yet Another DRM Failure Leaves Customers High And Dry (18 March 03:18) |
| By now you should know this -- as DRM'd music service after DRM'd music service has screwed over their customers by shutting off the servers on the music they were supposed to be able to acc... |
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Court Effectively Says No 4th Amendment Protection To Copies Of Emails (18 March 02:08) |
| Earlier this year, we wrote about some Fourth Amendment questions when it came to information stored in the cloud -- and a recent legal ruling provides some new troubling views on this matte... |
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IMAX Threatens Open Source 3D Engine With Bizarre Reasoning (18 March 01:00) |
| Proffer alerts us to the bizarre story of how IMAX (last seen suing competitors and misleading people about what an IMAX film really is) is now threatening the folks behind the Sandy3D open ... |
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Harvard Law Profs Poor Economic Analysis Used As Cover For Unnecessary Fashion Copyright (17 March 11:49) |
| For many years, we've pointed to the fashion industry as a perfect example of how a creative industry can be incredibly innovative and fruitful, even without copyright protections. It's a g... |
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Citizens United Recent Winner Of Free Speech Case Tries To Silence Critics (17 March 10:38) |
| Unless you've bee living under a rock lately, you've heard about the Citizens United decision by the Supreme Court, which reiterated corporate personhood in certain circumstances -- specific... |
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New Study Points Out That Gene Patent On Trial Is Very Very Broad (17 March 09:20) |
| Last year a very important lawsuit was filed, challenging whether or not it was legal to patent genes. While that trial is still (slowly) moving forward, a study has come out pointing out t... |
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Eddy Grant Accuses Gorillaz Of Copying After Gorillaz Manager Threatens People For Copying (17 March 08:06) |
| So, the music press has been busy talking about the accusations from Eddy Grant that the band Gorillaz copied his old tune with one of their recent hits. You can compare the two songs here.... |
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Federal Govt Mostly Ignoring Obama Directive To Be More Transparent (17 March 06:36) |
| One of the first things that President Obama did upon taking office was promise a much more open and transparent administration from what came before. He issued a "directive" to federal age... |
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Angus Proposes iPod Tax Balanced With Greater Fair Dealing Protections (17 March 05:07) |
| As was expected, Canadian MP Charlie Angus has introduced a bill that would expand Canada's "you must be a criminal" blank media tax (they prefer "levy," but it's a tax) to iPods and other m... |
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Publisher Experiments With Free And Sees Book Sales Increase 20x (17 March 02:32) |
| We've pointed to numerous studies, at this point, that have all found that, when done right, free ebooks can greatly increase the sales of physical books (and, in some cases, even of ebooks)... |
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Microsoft Loses Yet Another Patent Lawsuit (17 March 11:19) |
| In the last few years, Microsoft has become a bigger and bigger supporter of patents, which is a bit ironic, given that Bill Gates once pointed out that the software industry never would hav... |
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