Hard Drive Productions, Inc. v. Doe, 2012 WL 90412 (E.D. Cal. July 11, 2012) In a mass copyright infringement suit, plaintiff served a subpoena on an internet service provider and got the identifying information for the account holder suspected of trading a copy of a movie via BitTorrent. The account holder was uncooperative with plaintiff’s [...]
Looking to make their brand “a little more memorable,” the News Licensing Group is now NewsRight – and is billing itself as an “easy rights clearinghouse for the best news reporting and original journalism on the Web.”
Earlier this month,…
The common law tort of “hot news” misappropriation has been dying a slow and justified death. Hot news misappropriation is the legal doctrine on which news outlets like the Associated Press have repeatedly relied over the years to try to prevent third…
It’s been a few months since we’ve checked in with everyone’s favorite copyright troll, Righthaven.
When we left them in September, Righthaven was resisting paying the $34,000 in legal fees in attorneys fees that the Nevada district court ruled i…
In the debate about the American “Stop Online Piracy Act”, some have hailed the decade-old American DMCA as a law that was somehow beneficial for the development of new services on the net. This is not only a complete misconception, but a very dangerous one at that. The DMCA was basically a wet dream come true for the copyright industry, and the “safe harbor” provisions have gradually shifted the environment to suppress free speech and expression in favor of the suppressing industries: the copyright industries.
Source: Why “Safe Harbor” Laws Are Disastrous For Free Speech
The House’s Stop Online Piracy Act is in Judiciary Committee Markup today. As numerous protests, open letters, and advocacy campaigns across the Web, this is a seriously flawed bill. Sen. Ron Wyden and Rep. Darell Issa’s proposed OPEN Act points out, …
One of my first large keynotes, in 2007, was called Copyright Regime vs. Civil Liberties. In the 15-minute original keynote at OSCON, I outlined all the civil liberties that were at risk because of enforcement of the copyright monopoly, and that the copyright industry brutally understood these liberties needed to be killed to preserve their business. What was fringe paranoia five years ago is now becoming the law of the land.
It is said that those who don’t study history are doomed to repeat it. In the case of the copyright industry, they have learned that they can get new monopoly benefits and rent-seeker’s benefits every time there is a new technology, if they just complain loudly enough to the legislators.
There is proposed legislation in the US that would give broad rights to block entire web sites based on mere allegations that a small part of it might have some infringing content. The legislation is backed by the entertainment industry as an anti-piracy measure. There is a groundswell of opposition against the legislation, but it [...]
Plaintiffs are engaging in aggressive and questionable new tactics in a growing wave of federal copyright “John Doe” lawsuits. In those lawsuits, the obvious objective of the plaintiffs is to discover from Internet Service Providers (ISPs) the persona…