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Copyright or Wrong®
The Jefferson Coulter Blog: Copyright Law and Policy
Archive for November, 2007
Friday, November 30th, 2007
After a campaign by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (”CAIR“) to raise money and convince advertisers to withdraw their support from the syndicated show Savage Nation, Michael Savage, brought a copyright lawsuit against CAIR. According to Savage’s complaint, CAIR had rebroadcast a large segment of one of his copyrighted programs to raise funds for their lobbying efforts.
The complaint states that “the segment misappropriated was in excess of four minutes…was used by CAIR for fund-raising purposes and…in a manner designed to cause harm to the value of the copyright material in the long and short term.”
This case will likely raise a lot of interesting questions regarding the boundaries between the first amendment and copyright law. It will certainly generate a lot of publicity for both CAIR and Mr. Savage.
Posted in Fair Use, first amendment, free speech, moral rights | No Comments »
Friday, November 23rd, 2007
The Movie Blog reports that 20th Century Fox has used the takedown notice of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) to suppress negative reviews of “Reno 911!: Miami.”
The Electronic Frontier Foundation already fears the chilling effect that YouTube’s new content filtering system would have on the fair use of copyrighted content. However, 20th Century Fox has gone further still in actively attempting to block the fair use of its content. It will be interesting to see whether The Movie Blog sends a counter notification to YouTube, whether YouTube reposts the content, and what 20th Century Fox does next.
Posted in 20th Century Fox, DMCA | No Comments »
Tuesday, November 20th, 2007
While the FBI is busily throwing downloaders in jail, other users are finding lawful ways to exploit BitTorrent technology. While, I have not evaluated the copyright status of each and every movie available at Public Domain Torrents, the gist is that television and film content that has moved into the public domain may be accessed and downloaded by anyone who visits this site.
Anything registered before 1923 is now in the public domain. Additionally, many works published before 1964 have entered the public domain–either because they were not registered or renewed. For works after 1923 that had not lost their copyright protection, the Copyright Term Extension Act (”The Mickey Mouse Act” because of Disney’s heavy lobbying) extends copyright terms an additional 20 years. So, Copyrights registered in 1924 and later will not loose their protection until 2019.
Big score for Disney, less so for you.
Posted in BitTorrent, Copyright Term Extension Act, Public Domain | No Comments »
Friday, November 16th, 2007
A seventh defendant has pleaded guilty in connection with Operation D-Elite, the first criminal enforcement action targeting individuals committing copyright infringement on a peer-to-peer (P2P) network using BitTorrent technology.
The Defendant faces a maximum of 10 years in prison and a fine of $500,000. According to the North Country Gazette, the Motion Picture Association of America provided substantial assistance to this investigation.
The policy reasons for putting downloaders in prison are unclear. While jail time may serve some deterrent function, rights holders already have an appropriate mechanism for obtaining financial compensation, through civil litigation. Even more dubious is the MPA’s assistance in putting consumers in prison.
I guess it makes for a good show.
Posted in BitTorrent, CATCH, D-Elite, FBI, ICE, Motion Picture Association, P2P | No Comments »
Thursday, November 1st, 2007
“Every issue that matters to writers, including Internet reuse, original writing for new media, DVDs, and jurisdiction, has been ignored.” - WGAW President Patric M. Verrone
Posted in DVD, WGA, internet reuse, jurisdiction, new media, strike | No Comments »
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