Every awards season, the internet fills up with pristine, pirated copies of Oscar-contending movies, many of them ripped from screeners sent out by the studios to promote the films. One staffer on the Dr. Phil Show who has admitted to leaking a copy of The Revenant online was recently sentenced to fork over $1.12 million to the studio. [More]
copyright
Warner Bros. Demands Copyright Takedown Of Its Own Websites
By 9.6.16
It’s like that scene in a bad 1990s straight-to-video psychological crime thriller where the cop runs a suspect’s fingerprints — only to find he’s the suspect! Except now it’s a major movie studio flagging websites that it created and owns as copyright pirates. [More]
Proposed European Law Change Could Make Google Pay Publishers For Your News Results
By 8.26.16
Regulators in Europe are proposing a big update to copyright law in the region that, if adopted, would likely to lead to major changes in the way your news aggregators, well, aggregate. [More]
“Dancing Baby” YouTube Lawsuit May Go Before Supreme Court
By 8.12.16
The nearly decade-long legal battle over a 29-second YouTube clip of a toddler dancing to a barely discernible Prince song may end up going before the Supreme Court after free speech advocates representing the mother who shot that video petitioned the nation’s highest court. [More]
The Monkey Selfie Case Gets New Life In Federal Appeals Court
By 8.8.16
When a U.S. District Court shot down Naruto the macaque’s copyright claim over one of the internet’s most disputed photographs, it looked like it might be the legal end of the road for the world’s most embedded wildlife photographer. Yet the case has been appealed, with one prominent primatologist arguing that Naruto and other animals “can be the authors of valuable works of art.” [More]
Should “Locked” Digital Content Be Labeled So You Know What You’re Buying?
By 8.5.16
Have you ever “purchased” an ebook, mp3, or video only to found you can only access it on a certain number or type of devices, or that it must be played through a specific player, or only accessed when you’re connected to the internet? Maybe that’s the sort of thing you’d like to know before you paid for this content. [More]
Doll Creator Taking Hasbro To Court Over “My Little Pony” Designs Files Another Lawsuit
By 8.4.16
A doll creator who’s already going to court with Hasbro for allegedly stealing her designs for new versions of My Little Pony and other toys filed an additional lawsuit this week. [More]
Getty Facing Lawsuit Over Unauthorized Licensing Of More Than 47K Images
By 8.3.16
Not long after photographer Carol Highsmith sued Getty Images for $1 billion, claiming the photo agency had copyrighted thousands of her images without her permission, Getty is facing yet another lawsuit over alleged copyright infringement. [More]
Sony, Ghostface Killah Must Face Copyright Lawsuit Over Use Of ‘Iron Man’ Cartoon Theme
By 7.29.16
The composer of the theme song used in the 1966 cartoon version of Marvel’s Iron Man won a minor victory today, with a federal appeals court ruling that Sony Music and rapper Ghostface Killah must face the composer’s claim that they violated his copyright by sampling the 50-year-old ditty without his permission. [More]
Stephen Colbert Says Comedy Central Unhappy With CBS’s Use Of ‘Stephen Colbert,’ So He Introduces New ‘Stephen Colbert’
By 7.28.16
Last week during the Republican National Convention, CBS Late Show host Stephen Colbert brought backhis arch-conservative former alter ego — also named Stephen Colbert — from Comedy Central’s The Colbert Report to comment on the goings-on in Cleveland. The brief stunt apparently didn’t go over well with the lawyers at Comedy Central, forcing Colbert to a new intellectual property work-around: introducing a completely new character who just happens to look and sound exactly like him. [More]
Why Queen & George Harrison’s Estate Probably Can’t Sue Over Having Their Songs Played At RNC
By 7.22.16
Regardless of your political leanings, you’ve probably heard this week that a number of prominent bands were unhappy to find out their music had been used without their permission at the Republican National Convention. However much these artists may not like having their famous tunes used for political purposes, they may not be able to do much about it. [More]
U.S. Navy Facing $600 Million Lawsuit For Software Piracy
By 7.20.16
Let’s be honest here: we probably mostly have a mental picture of the kind of entity that gets accused of software piracy, and that picture is probably someone in their late teens or early twenties. What it doesn’t look like in probably anyone’s head is “like a division of the U.S. military.” And yet that’s exactly who — or what — is being sued for copyright infringement on a massive scale. [More]
Google Fights Piracy By Making It Less Convenient For You — And It Works
By 7.14.16
People, by and large, will do the thing that’s easiest and most convenient to do. In 1999, the easiest way to get digital music was to log onto Napster and leave it running overnight, and so an era of widely-distributed internet piracy was born. These days, it’s pretty easy to access legal digital goods, so more people do that — but piracy still lurks around the edge. So how to quash it? [More]
Former Presidential Candidate Must Pay $25,000 For Using “Eye Of The Tiger” Without Permission
By 6.28.16
A lot of musicians find out after the fact that one of their songs is being used, without permission, by a politician at rallies and other events, but many of those artists don’t go so far as to actually sue the candidate. However, recently released election records show that the campaign for former presidential candidate Mike Huckabee has agreed to pay $25,000 to settle a lawsuit over its use of Survivor’s 1982 fist-pumper “Eye of the Tiger.” [More]
Ford Dealership Swipes Video Game Art For Ad; Doesn’t Understand How DMCA Works
By 6.27.16
We live in an age where a digital copy of just about any piece of artwork is obtainable for free with a couple of clicks and taps on your computer or phone. That doesn’t mean you can just use said artwork in an ad to tell people about some deal on a 2016 Ford Focus. [More]
Star Trek Fan Film Lawsuit Will Live On
By 6.17.16
While the makers of the crowdfunded Star Trek fan fiction film Axanar had once hoped to reach a settlement with Paramount and CBS over a lawsuit accusing the filmmakers of copyright infringement, the much discussed lawsuit will live to see another day, as the two companies told a California federal judge this week that their action remains pending. [More]
Court: Vimeo Not Liable Just Because Employees Watched Possibly Pirated Content
By 6.16.16
Streaming video platforms like Vimeo and YouTube host many more user-uploaded clips than could possibly ever be viewed and vetted for potential piracy by actual human beings, and federal law generally shields websites from liability of piracy they aren’t aware of. Yet, do these companies lose that protection if some employees have looked at content that was posted in violation of copyright? [More]
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AMC Uses Questionable Copyright Claim To Bully Spoiler Site Into Not Revealing That [Redacted] Dies
By 6.15.16
As anyone who watches The Walking Dead knows, the most recent run of the lighthearted AMC romantic comedy ended abruptly with a poorly orchestrated cliffhanger. Since then, fans of the show have been theorizing about which character met his/her untimely end. Now, AMC is using a barbwire-wrapped cease-and-desist copyright demand to prevent one popular spoiler group from revealing that the newly deceased character was… [More]
