With Europe preparing for a big vote next week on ACTA, the sweeping online copyright and counterfeit trade treaty, today the UK regulator Ofcom set out a proposal for how large ISPs in this country (ie more than 400,000) should tell their users when they’ve been found to be infringing on copyright — illegal activity that the government estimates costs the industry up to £400 million per year in… → Read More
Pinterest has had trouble brewing for a while over what some people say are frequent copyright violations that happen when users ‘pin’ photos on the site without permission from the photo’s owner. But as one photographer/lawyer/Pinterest user recently discovered, the copyright problem at Pinterest is even more complicated than that.
Kirsten Kowalski blew the whistle on this conflict in a blog… → Read More
The Denver Post has sued the Drudge Report—still one of the best link repositories—for copyright infringement. Normally, who cares, right? Well, Drudge might care, being that he’ll be stuck in the legal system one way or another for a little bit now, but us non-aligned folks? No matter. But that’s not quite the case now, given the lawsuit’s nature. Since when is linking to a… → Read More
Apparently there was some sort of media summit in Abu Dhabi recently, and a big topic of discussion was copyright infringement. (I think we need to reserve the word “piracy” for actual, sea-faring piracy, not kids grabbing the random Sublime song off LimeWire.) Rupert Murdoch called on governments to stop copyright infringers, asking them to punish them as they would shoplifters. I guess Murdoch… → Read More
The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry is sorta like a worldwide RIAA, representing record labels, artists, and musicians to make sure their agenda is always out there. That, of course, makes it pure evil. It just published its Digital Music Report 2010, which tries to detail the situation vis-à-vis digital music, piracy, and so on. The big, scary headline: music piracy is… → Read More
The Feds have stricken a huge blow against piracy, friends, protecting the sanctity of life here on planet Earth for yet another day. Sing! Let’s go back to 2004, when Operation Fastlink shut down various release groups, including Fairlight. The last guy from all that mess, one Greg Hurley, pled guilty last week, but is unlikely to face jail time. His crime? “Criminal copyright infringement,”… → Read More
YouTube is chock full of amateur videos. It’s easy to make a video and upload it to YouTube. Making a quality soundtrack for your video is considerably more difficult, though, which is why many folks punt and just use a song from their favorite artist. Don’t be surprised, though, if your recent uploads are silent. → Read More
Go ahead and read this court transcript. It’s a 35-page PDF of the London-Sire Records. Does 1-4 copyright infringement case. It’s the same song and dance you’re all familiar with: RIAA catches someone downloading a song, which entitles it to thousands upon thousands of dollars in remuneration. Only this time, the presiding judge, Nancy Gertner of the U.S. District Court for the… → Read More
Bad news for Electronic Arts today, with word that the composer of the University of Nevada at Las Vegas (UNLV) fight song is suing the publisher for copyright infringement. The suit, which alleges that EA used the song “Win With the Rebels,” asks for $150,000 per violation. That totals to $1,500,000 since the suit claims the song can be heard on 10 EA games. The games are NCAA Football… → Read More
Companies offering online file-storage may want to pull out of the Japanese market real soon. A recent court ruling in Tokyo deemed a company called Image City guilty of copyright infringement. Why? JASRAC, an organization that collects the bucks for public music performances, sued Image City because their online file-storage service MYUTA lets you listen to your music files over your cellphone. → Read More
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