©opyBites: Copyright Law Blog

YouTube Announces New Copyright Management Infrastructure

MarketWire:

By the end of the year, professional content creators, including record labels, TV networks and movie studios, will have the opportunity to authorize the use of their content within the YouTube community by taking advantage of YouTube's new tools and architecture. YouTube has been actively working on the operational details and building the infrastructure for this innovative new framework, which will offer media companies the following:

-- Sophisticated tools to help content owners identify their content on
the site;
-- Automated audio identification technology to help prevent works
previously removed from the site at the request of the copyright owner from
reappearing on the site;
-- The opportunity to authorize and monetize the use of their works
within the user-generated content on the site;
-- Reporting and tracking systems for royalties, etc.

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LimeWire Files Countersuit

ZDNet.com:

Lime Wire, which was hit with a lawsuit in August by Warner Bros. Records, Virgin Records America, Sony BMG Music Entertainment and other music labels, filed a counterclaim in U.S. District Court in New York on Monday. The software company alleges in court filings that the record companies have engaged in unfair business practices to scare away its users.

Lime Wire develops peer-to-peer technology, which is often used by individuals to create copies of music and distribute it over the Internet. More than a dozen record companies have joined in the lawsuit against Lime Wire, alleging that its technology provides a means for copyright infringement.

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Google News Loses in Belgium Court

ISEdb:

Last Friday (Sept 15th) a Belgium court dealt a stunning blow against Google and its Google News search service. The court is now forbidding the popular search engine from indexing Belgian newspaper content without paying each newspaper for the use of their content.

The ruling requires Google to remove the plaintiff's newspaper content from its search engine database within 10 days or face threatened fines of 1,000,000- € per day

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Seven Year Sentence For Software Piracy

U.S. Newswire:

The owner of a massive for-profit software piracy Web site was sentenced today in federal court to 87 months in prison, Assistant Attorney General Alice S. Fisher of the Criminal Division and U.S. Attorney Chuck Rosenberg of the Eastern District of Virginia announced.

Nathan L. Peterson, 27, of Antelope Acres, Calif. was also ordered by Judge T.S. Ellis, III of the Eastern District of Virginia to forfeit the proceeds of his illegal conduct and pay restitution of more than $5.4 million. The forfeiture involves a wide array of assets, including homes, numerous cars and a boat, which Peterson had purchased with the profits from his illegal enterprise. Today's sentence is the second recent major prison sentence received for software piracy. In August 2006, Danny Ferrer, 37, the operator of http://www.BuysUSA.com received a six-year prison sentence.

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Kozinski To Speak On Fair Use

The Second Annual Finnegan, Henderson, Farabow, Garrett & Dunner, LLP Distinguished Lecture on Intellectual Property

The Honorable Alex Kozinski
Judge, US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit

"Fair Use Revisited"

DATE, TIME, & LOCATION
September 21, 2006
Reception ~ 5:00 PM | Lecture ~ 6:00 PM
Washington College of Law, 4801 Mass Ave NW | Room 603

REGISTRATION
Email: iplecture@wcl.american.edu
Phone: 202-274-4148
www.wcl.american.edu/pijip/Kozinski.cfm

WEBCAST
The webcast will be available at www.wcl.american.edu/pijip/webcast.cfm.

HBO's Six Feet Under Not Infringing

CVBT:

In an opinion that reads like a television critic’s review of a TV program, a federal court has rejected arguments that the HBO series “Six Feet Under” violated the copyright of a similar show.

While there seem to be similarities in plot between the cable TV series and the script for “The Funk Parlor,” the court says “an actual reading of the two works reveals greater, more significant differences and few real similarities at the levels of plot, characters, themes, mood, pace, dialogue, or sequence of events.”

Those differences, it says, make the HBO series an original work and not one violating the “Funk Parlor” copyright.

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Critics Question RIAA Video

Cnet News.Com:

The music industry's educational video about copyright law is full of baloney, according to several trade and public interest groups.

The Consumer Electronics Association and Public Knowledge are among the groups to issue a joint statement condemning some statements on the Recording Industry Association of America's video, which the RIAA has plans to distribute to the nation's universities.

The RIAA's video, a copy of which can be found on its Web site, suggests that students should be skeptical of free content and that it's always illegal to make a copy of a song, even if it's just to introduce a friend to a new band, said Robert Schwartz, general counsel for the Home Recording Rights Coalition, one of the groups opposed to the video.

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EFF vs. Barney

New York Times:

On Wednesday, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital rights group based in San Francisco, filed a lawsuit in Federal District Court in New York against Lyons Partnership of Allen, Tex., which owns the Barney brand.

The group’s aim is to bring an end to what it characterizes as the partnership’s relentless harassment of Web site owners who parody the Barney character, chiefly through threatening cease-and-desist letters from Lyons’s law firm in New York, Gibney, Anthony & Flaherty.

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Copyright Interest Shut Down Guitar Tablature Sites

The New York Times:

The Internet put the music industry and many of its listeners at odds thanks to the popularity of services like Napster and Grokster. Now the industry is squaring off against a surprising new opponent: musicians.

In the last few months, trade groups representing music publishers have used the threat of copyright lawsuits to shut down guitar tablature sites, where users exchange tips on how to play songs like “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door,” “Highway to Hell” and thousands of others.

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Paramount Claims Infringement Over 9/11 Film

Marken Business:

The final-year Yale student Chris Moukarbel had made a 12-minute film concerning the attack on the World Trade Center on 11 September 2001. The budget was tiny but its influence turned out to be great. The American film studio Paramount perceived the short film to be a potential threat to the success of its own film ‘World Trade Center’ and submitted a complaint against Moukarbel for copyright infringement and danger of confusion. The Paramount production, based on a script by successful director Oliver Stone, should be hitting American screens in August. A marketing campaign costing millions is already under way.

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