Required Texts:
12/4/12 -- The Center for Copyright Information announced that the roll-out of its "copyright alert system" will be delayed until early in 2013. The center blames Hurricane Sandy for the delay.
11/26/12 -- United States District Court Judge Consuelo Marshall has dismissed a copyright infringement lawsuit against UCLA for unlicensed streaming of videos to enrolled students, on standing and sovereign immunity grounds.
11/19/12 --The "Copyright Alert System" (formerly known as "six strikes" and "graduated response") is scheduled to go live next week. The EFF is alarmed. The Huffington Post is sanguine. Billboard is hopeful. ExtremeTech’s Joel Hruska tells readers what to expect.
11/19/12 --Professor Pam Samuelson has filed a Brief of Amici Curiae Academic Authors in Authors Guild v. Google, arguing that the Second Circuit should reverse Judge Chin’s certification of the plaintiff authors class.
11/19/12 -- Will calls our attention to the strange tale of the Republican Study Committee’s briefly-posted-then-disappeared radical copyright reform agenda.
11/15/12 -- Publishers Weekly reports that the Authors Guild is appealing the district court ruling in the HathiTrust case.
11/13/12 -- The Future of Music Coalition is holding an all-day policy summit in Washington DC. You can watch the summit via video stream or listen via audio stream.
10/31/12 --In connection with our conversation about the first sale doctrine, you may enjoy Peter Brantley’s column from last week’s Publishers Weekly, a blog post on the Kirtsaeng case by Sandra Aistars for the Copyright Alliance, John Villasenor’s column for Slate, Ted Johnson’s column for Variety, or Alex Wexelblat’s post for Copyfight.
10/30/12 -- The Hollywood Reporter reports that William Faulkner’s heirs have filed a copyright infringment suit over Woody Allen’s movie Midnight in Paris. In the allegedly infringing scene, the protagonist says: "The past is not dead! Actually, it’s not even past. You know who said that? Faulkner. And he was right. And I met him, too. I ran into him at a dinner party." This scene is alleged to infringe the copyright in William Faukner’s novel, Requiem for a Nun, in which this passage appears: "The past is never dead. It’s not even past. "
10/29/12 --Most the federal government offices in Wadshington will be closed today in anticipation of Hurricane Sandy, but the Supreme Court plans to be in session. The argument in Kirtsaeng v. Wiley will take place as scheduled. A transcript of the argument will be released later today; you can find it here. An audio recording will be available here late Friday.
10/27/12 -- The Librarian of Congress has issued his new rule designating classes of copyrighted works exempt from the anti-circumvention provisions of section 1201. The exemptions are
10/21/12 -- Joe has located some genuine olfactory art. Read Hugh Hart’s story for WIRED.
10/11/12 -- U.S. District Judge Harold Baer has issued his opinion in Authors Guild v. Hathi Trust, granting summary judgment for defendants on the ground that their use of the digitized copies of plaintiffs’ is privileged by 17 U.S.C. §§ 107 & 121. Worth reading.
10/11/12 -- Melissa calls our attention to two more bicycle racks: Vern Ohlman’s Bike Petal, and Jeff Selzer’s and Joseph Bellomo’s Bike Arc. Both bike racks are patented -- Ohlman’s patent is here and Selzer’s and Bellomo’s is here. Are the bike racks’ aesthetic features conceptually separable?
10/4/12 --Detroit Free Press reports that Youtube blocked the the Pure Michigan Statewide Singalong video on Friday because of a complaint from Songs Music Publishing, the owner of the copyright in the song, Good Time. At least for the time being, though, the video is still available on Vimeo.
10/4/12 --Google and the five publishers that sued it have announced a settlement of the Google Book Search lawsuit after seven years of litigation. The press release is here. Google has not yet reached a settlement of the parallel class action filed by representatives of authors. (Google’s appeal of the district court order certifying the author plaintiff class is still pending before the Second Circuit.) Professor James Grimmelmann, who has watched the litigation very closely, hasn't yet posted a comment, but I expect him to do so soon, either here or here.
9/18/12 -- The Second Circuit has issued a stay of the litigation in the Google Book Search case, pending Google’s appeal of the order certifying the plaintiff class.
9/15/12 -- Variety reports that James Taylor has filed suit against Warner Brothers Records, claiming that the label has sytematically underpaid royalties for digital downloads of his recordings. He seeks two million dollars in damages and a declaration that the musician is contractually entitled to 50% of net receipts for digital downloads and ringtones.
9/11/12 -- The Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit has issued its opinion in Capitol Records v. Thomas-Rasset. The court holds that a damage award of $9,250 for each of twenty-four songs shared on KaZaA, for a total of $222,000, does not contravene the Due Process clause. It rejects the district court’s conclusion that a damage award greater than $2250 per work infringed would be unconstitutionally excessive, and declines as moot the record label's request to rule that making a file available violates 17 U.S.C. §106(3). Worth reading.
9/5/12 -- YouTube’s streaming of the Democratic Convention faltered last night when the company blocked the livestream video feed on copyright grounds. Instead of viewing the proceedings, viewers were treated to the following message:
Since YouTube is the "official streaming partner" of the Convention, the message also showed up in the embedded video links at BarackObama.com and DemConvention.com. The culprit appears to be overzealous content blocking software. A similar snafu disrupted the webcast of the Hugo Science Fiction awards earlier in the week.This video contains content from WMG, SME, Associated Press (AP), UMG, Dow Jones, New York Times Digital, The Harry Fox Agency, Inc. (HFA), Warner Chappell, UMPG Publishing and EMI Music Publishing, one or more of whom have blocked it in your country on copyright grounds. Sorry about that.
8/24/12 -- New York Congressman Jerry Nadler is circulating a discussion draft of a bill that would require terrestrial broadcast radio stations to pay royalties to record labels for the broadcast of their recordings. Current law requires satellite radio and webcasters to pay such royalties but exempts terrestrial broadcasters.
8/1/12 -- The oral orgument in Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley & Sons is scheduled for October 29. Kirtsaeng appeals from a decision in which the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit held that the first sale docrine in section 109 applies only to material objects made in the United States. Scotusblog has posted copies of the briefs here.
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