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copyright
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Studio Dismisses More Than 21,000 Sued For Downloading "Hurt Locker"
By Phil Villarreal on October 4, 2011 9:15 AM
85 Comments
The studio that produced The Hurt Locker sued 24,583 unnamed people for illegally downloading the film. Now more than 21,000 of those John Does can breathe a little easier because the studio has dismissed them from the suit, leaving more than 2,300 in its sights. More »
Authors Guild Sues Universities For Amassing Digital Book Library
By Phil Villarreal on September 13, 2011 10:15 AM
76 Comments
Authors who believe they are being ripped off by institutions of higher learning are taking four universities to court for scanning about 7 million copyright-protected books into a digital library, allowing students and faculty to download out-of-print work. More »
Hells Angels Sue L.A. T-Shirt Maker For Copyright Infringement
By Phil Villarreal on August 26, 2011 9:15 AM
54 Comments
It seems the Hells Angels aren't cool with the idea of an L.A. fashion boutique slapping its name on a t-shirt. The notorious motorcycle club is suing the designer and several online retailers for copyright infringement. The shirt in question bears the message: "My boyfriend's a Hells Angel." More »
Magazine That Stole Writer's Story Likely Shutting Down; Blames Writer
By Chris Morran on November 17, 2010 6:10 PM
174 Comments
Some people don't know when to leave bad enough alone. Earlier this month, we brought you the story of a freelance writer who not only found out that a small cooking magazine had lifted her entire story without permission or payment, but then insulted the author saying she should have paid them for the tiny bit of editing they did on her text before printing it. Now the editor at the magazine says it's likely curtains for the publication — and you'll never guess who she's blaming. More »
Magazine Copies Entire Story From Web, Tells Writer She Should Pay Them For Publishing It
By Chris Morran on November 4, 2010 2:20 PM
181 Comments
A writer was recently surprised to find that a piece she'd written about apple pies for a website in 2005 had been picked up wholesale by a small cooking magazine without anyone telling her. She was even more surprised by the reaction she received from one of the mag's editors. More »
College Libraries Save Money By Ignoring Netflix Terms Of Use
By Laura Northrup on September 22, 2010 8:00 AM
48 Comments
Plenty of Americans have cut their household entertainment budgets by subscribing to Netflix instead of seeing movies in theaters or purchasing DVDs. Now, some college libraries are doing the same thing, sort of. They're using rented DVDs or streaming video instead of purchasing the movies that professors assign. Is this a violation of Netflix's terms of use? Yes. But the librarians don't particularly care, and Netflix doesn't seem to, either. Yet. As a Netflix spokesman said, "We just don't want to be pursuing libraries." More »
(stirwise)
Nintendo To Fansites: Don't Advertise Our Games For Free (Updated)
By Phil Villarreal on September 21, 2010 9:15 AM
53 Comments
Nintendo's legal team is on a quest to stop Pokémon fan sites from posting screenshots from its games. More »
(camknows)
Companies Can Forbid You To Resell Your Software, Court Rules
By Ben Popken on September 13, 2010 3:00 PM
128 Comments
A California court has ruled that software makers can forbid buyers from reselling a copy of a program they bought. This is not about people making illegal copies of games, this is about buying a CD with a program on it and not being able to resell that CD. Expect this to go to appeal, but watch out, Gamestop. More »
Is That Video Of Your Dancing Baby Violating Sony's Copyright?
By Chris Morran on August 4, 2010 1:15 PM
114 Comments
From its earliest days, YouTube was constructed on a foundation of three things — hilarious kittens, stupid teenagers and dancing babies. But now that YouTube plays host to the likes of Oprah, heaven forbid any of your videos have Sony music playing in the background, lest the copyright police come after you. More »
(Ninja M.)
New Government Rules Allow Jailbreaking Of iPhone & Other Devices
By Chris Morran on July 26, 2010 1:00 PM
96 Comments
While Apple may oppose the idea, the federal government announced today that hacking your iPhone to accept third party software not approved or sold by Apple isn't a violation of the company's copyright. More »
Judge Slashes RIAA's $675,000 File Sharing Award To $67,500
By Carey Alexander on July 10, 2010 5:45 PM
98 Comments
A federal judge yesterday bench slapped the Recording Industry of America, calling a jury's $675,000 verdict against file sharer Joel Tenenbaum both eye-popping and unconstitutional. The judge struck a strikingly populist tone in reducing the verdict to $67,500, arguing that the same legal reasoning that protects large corporations from excessive punitive damages also protects "ordinary people" like Tenenbaum. More »
4 Years And 2 Trials Later, The $1.92 Million RIAA Case Continues
By Meg Marco on June 22, 2010 1:45 PM
86 Comments
Remember Jammie Thomas-Rasset? She was accused of sharing 24 songs on Kazaa in 2006. Two trials and four years later, the case still isn't over. They're now trying to avoid a third trial. More »
(amazon.com)
Hurt Locker Lawyers: Time Warner Cable Hearts Pirates
By Marc Perton on June 2, 2010 12:34 PM
71 Comments
If you're one of the 5,000 "John or Jane Does" accused of illegally downloading copies of The Hurt Locker, and your ISP is Time Warner Cable, you may be safely airlifted out of the battle zone. According to the law firm representing Hurt Locker producer Voltage Pictures, TWC is "a good ISP for copyright infringers" because it won't hand over the names of its customers as quickly as the lawyers would like. More »
(imdb.com)
Hurt Locker Producer Sues "Moron" Downloaders
By Marc Perton on June 1, 2010 4:57 PM
186 Comments
Nicolas Chartier, the movie producer who was banned from the Oscars for sending nastygrams about Avatar, and more recently, told a critic, "you're a moron who believes stealing is right. I hope your family and your kids end up in jail," is nothing if not consistent. Chartier has made good on his earlier threat to sue people who downloaded copies of The Hurt Locker, by filing a suit against 5,000 anonymous downloaders in Washington, D.C. More »
What To Do When A Company Pulls Your Fair Use Video From YouTube
By Chris Walters on April 26, 2010 8:38 AM
37 Comments
Last week Constantin Films got YouTube to pull almost all the Angry Hitler parody clips by using the website's Content ID tracking system. The process is automatic, and YouTube immediately takes down a video once it's been tagged. However, that also means you can use this system in reverse to get your clips back up, at least for as long as you're in dispute with the copyright holder. Whether you do this or not will depend on how willing you are to risk a potential lawsuit later on. More »
YouTube: Viacom Uploaded Some Of The Videos They're Suing Us Over
By Chris Morran on March 19, 2010 6:09 AM
37 Comments
It's a showdown of new media and sorta-old media as YouTube defends itself against Viacom in the TV leviathan's billion-dollar copyright infringement lawsuit against the site that showed the world that cats can indeed play the piano. More »
(dM.nyc)
Big Media To Crack Down On Copyright Pirates
By Phil Villarreal on March 5, 2010 9:26 AM
81 Comments
On his Reflections of a Newsosaur blog, Alan Mutter says a company called Attributor has rounded up several big media companies and is set to go after sites that hock their content for free. More »
Hot Topic Steals Adorable Designs From Webcomic
By Laura Northrup on February 27, 2010 5:00 PM
37 Comments
Update: Meghan and Hot Topic have settled this situation. Fans of the adorable webcomic Kawaii Not were surprised to discover buttons made from comic panels for sale at Hot Topic. The problem? The artist sort of didn't license the designs to Hot Topic, and they are copyrighted. Artist Meghan Murphy does sell her own buttons...and these aren't those. More »
Google Pulls Plug On Several Blogger Pages For DMCA Violations
By Chris Morran on February 11, 2010 2:48 PM
19 Comments
The folks at Google are a busy bunch — in the same day that they made your Gmail contact list a public matter with their Facebook wannabe Google Buzz, they pulled the plug without warning on a handful of popular music blogs in their blogger.com network for alleged violations of that holiest of Internet grails, the Digital Millenium Copyright Act. More »
Blade Runner is a good movie.
Google Names Phone After Blade Runner, Irritates Copyright Holder
By Meg Marco on January 6, 2010 12:56 PM
124 Comments
Phillip K. Dick wrote a book called "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?," which is too long to put in the title of this post, but was adapted into the film Blade Runner (which is awesome.) In this book, the android model in question is called the "Nexus-6." Google's phone, which runs an operating system called "Android" is called the "Nexus One." This has pissed off Phillip K. Dick's daughter. More »
