So you’ve got a Kindle, and you have books on it, and you want to keep those books—no matter what Amazon or a publisher decides you deserve in the future. Your legal options are limited, but you do have some.
copyright
By 7.7.09
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Pez Candy is suing the Pez musuem in Burlingame, CA for copyright infringement. The museum has a 7-foot-tall Pez dispenser that they want destroyed. Maybe Pez should make a new candy flavor called “Copyright Overkill” that tastes like all the joy has been removed. [Laughing Squid] (Thanks to sizer!) (Photo: Hryck.)
ASCAP Wants Royalties On Ringtones
By 7.3.09
Not content to let the RIAA get all the recent publicity for stupid lawsuits, ASCAP has sued AT&T over sales of ringtones, saying each time a ringtone plays it’s a public performance and royalties should be paid. Luckily (?) for consumers, ASCAP wants AT&T, not individuals, to pay—although we wonder what they’ll say when you take a track from your own library and make a ringtone out of it.
Woody Allen Makes More Money Suing American Apparel Than Making Movies
By 5.19.09 — Updated: 11.1.12
Woody Allen found a new way to make ends meet other than that zany “sell movie tickets to people” scheme: He waited until American Apparel made an unauthorized billboard using his graven image, then sued the crap out of them for $10 million and settled for half the amount.
National Federation Of The Blind Mounts Protest Over Kindle 2 Restrictions
By 4.6.09
When the Authors Guild successfully agitated for the right to selectively remove the text-to-speech feature from books read on Amazon’s Kindle 2, they alienated an entire group of potential consumers: people who have trouble reading normal printed works. Now a group called the Reading Rights Coalition is going to storm the Authors Guild’s NYC office tomorrow at noon to protest.
Amazon Allows Publishers To Kill Text To Speech Function On Kindle 2
By 3.2.09
The 8,000 member Authors Guild—the RIAA of the publishing world—has complained about the text to speech feature on the Amazon Kindle 2, which can read aloud your ebook in a computerized voice (something text to speech programs have been doing for years). The Guild says that’s equivalent to an audio book, and that Amazon can’t just allow it without paying extra, so last Friday Amazon caved in and announced they’ll let writers and publishers disable the feature on a title by title basis moving forward.
Shepard Fairey: Being An Art Capitalist Is Hard
By 2.27.09
The guy who made the famous Obama poster? I went to a talk tonight at the New York Public Library between him (Shepard Fairey), Lawrence Lessig, and Steven Johnson about how remixing plays into our, on the one hand, corporate and litigious, and on the other, mashing up and free-wheeling, society. Here are my favorite quotes/ideas from the night:
Apple Wants To Make Jailbreaking Worthy Of Jail Time, $2500 Fine
By 2.14.09
[it] would have the right to claim statutory damages of up to $2,500 “per act of circumvention.” People who jailbreak phones, might even be subject to criminal penalties of as long as five years, if they circumvented copyright for a financial gain.
Hot Topic Steals Yet Another Design And Sells It As Its Own
By 12.31.08
Once again, Hot Topic is selling someone else’s art as original work. The mallternative retail chain purchased the supposedly original design from Newbreed Girl, which has its own history of ripping off designs.
Hot Topic Likes Your Art So Much… They're Selling It!
By 9.30.08
I’m glad I’m bad at everything so I never have to worry about anyone plagiarizing my work. Sadly, this is not the case for Nina Matsumoto. Whoever is in charge of “designing” Halloween merchandise for Hot Topic is apparently a big fan of Nina’s.
3M Steals Viral Image Idea To Avoid Licensing It
By 9.16.08
There is probably nothing more pathetic in the world of marketing than watching a big corporation try to do something “viral”—usually they end up looking like Elaine dancing. But sometimes, they’re so cynical and soulless about it that they don’t just come across as incompetent, but as exploitative cheapskates as well. In 3M’s case, they wouldn’t pay $2,000 to license a well-known photo with its own viral history, and instead recreated a fake version of it to save a grand. We guess they’re just hoping none of the sites and communities that made the photo popular in the first place will notice. Oh wait, this is supposed to be viral or something…
Walmart Says You Can't Scan That 1925 Family Portrait, Because Copyright Lasts Forever
By 8.12.08
If you combine a mindless and petty tyrant with Walmart’s draconian photo rights policies, you get a story like the one Boingboing reported today, where a woman in Florida was told she couldn’t scan an 80-year-old portrait of her dead grandmother, because its copyright is surely held by the studio that took it—and copyrights last forever.
Viacom Retracts Fraudulent Ownership Claims On Indie Filmmaker's YouTube Clip
By 7.30.08
Last week we told you about how Viacom was sending fraudulent ownership claims to indie filmmakers on YouTube. A few days after our post went up about how they were doing this to animator Joanna Davidovich, a Viacom executive got in touch with her to explain what happened.
Viacom Fraudulently Claims Ownership Of Indie Filmmakers' YouTube Clips
By 7.22.08
Viacom is sending bogus copyright ownership claims and illegal posting notices to independent filmmakers posting their own movies on YouTube. These films contain not one iota of Viacom content. Take, for instance, this lovely short animation, “Juxtaposer,” made by Joanna Davidovich for her senior project. It’s completely her original creation. She has copyrighted it and says that she “only entered into distribution agreements that were nonexclusive.” Yet, the media corporation saw fit to have YouTube tell Joanna, “Viacom has claimed some or all audio and visual content in your video.”
Judge Orders Google To Turn Over All YouTube User Data To Viacom
By 7.3.08
Wired’s Threat Level blog says that the judge in the Viacom/Google lawsuit has made a ruling forcing Google to turn over “every record of every video watched by YouTube users, including users’ names and IP addresses,” to Viacom.
Leaked ACTA Treaty Will Outlaw P2P
By 6.6.08
ACTA—the misleadingly named “Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement”—is the worldwide copyright treaty that’s being negotiated behind closed doors, and that will create a sort of global DMCA if continues in its current state. Now Wikileaks has posted a draft of the treaty, and Boing Boing’s Cory Doctorow gives his take:
EMI Says You Can't Store Your Music Files Online
By 4.22.08
Today, MP3tunes’ CEO Michael Robertson sent out an email to all users of the online music backup and place-shifting service MP3tunes.com, asking them to help publicize EMI’s ridiculous and ignorant lawsuit against the company. EMI believes that consumers aren’t allowed to store their music files online, and that MP3tunes is violating copyright law by providing a backup service. (And we’re not using a euphemism here—it really is a backup/place-shifting service and not a file sharing site in disguise.)
