In The News

["Jack Boeve" <JBoeve@xxxxxxxx>]

-----
Web radio faces its death knell. By Danny Bradbury, The Guardian, July 19,
2007.
http://technology.guardian.co.uk/weekly/story/0,,2129109,00.html

Tim Westergren never thought he'd run a dotcom startup. He was a musician,
sleeping in tour vans on the road and recording the occasional film score.
When he did decide to start a business, he put six years of his life into it.
This week, he is preparing to shut down his nascent UK operation and mulling
the future of the US one, as legislators on both sides of the Atlantic
threaten to kill his business.

-----
Music file-sharers get boost in top EU court. Reuters, July 18, 2007.
http://tinyurl.com/2sf4w9

Telecom companies in Europe are not required to hand over information on
clients believed to be running music-sharing websites in civil cases, an
adviser to the European Union's top court said on Wednesday. The case was
brought by a Spanish music and audiovisual association after telecoms provider
Telefonica refused to hand over the names and addresses of its Internet
clients suspected of running illegal file sharing sites.

-----
Dailymotion Gets Dinged. By Andy Greenberg, Forbes.com, July 18, 2007.
http://tinyurl.com/2h9cms

Dailymotion, a Paris-based video Web site that has served as one of the Web's
biggest sources of full-length copyrighted TV shows and movies, may be
discovering the price of piracy. A French court ordered yesterday that the
site pay 23,001 euros (about $31,700) to the owners of a film that had been
uploaded to Dailymotion's YouTube-style user-generated video platform.

-----

Inmates accused in name copyright scheme. Associated Press, July 17, 2007.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/17/AR20070717016
62.html

Forget about digging a hole with a spoon to escape from prison. Four federal
inmates are accused of going above and beyond that call. The four were
indicted Tuesday on allegations that they copyrighted their names, then
demanded millions of dollars from prison officials for using the names without
authorization.

-----
Putting Hitler back on the shelves. Should Germany republish 'Mein Kampf'? By
David Gordon Smith, Spiegel Online International, July 17, 2007.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,494891,00.html

A leading historian wants 'Mein Kampf' to be republished in Germany. Copyright
issues have kept it off the shelves since World War II, but in 2015 it will
enter the public domain. Then, anyone will be allowed to print it -- including
neo-Nazis.

-----
Second Life gets its first copyright law suit. OUT-LAW News, July 17, 2007.
http://www.out-law.com/page-8297

A dispute over a sex bed has become the first copyright law suit within online
alternative reality game Second Life. The lawyer behind the suit told weekly
podcast OUT-LAW Radio that the nature of the game should not change the issues
at stake.

-----
Webcasters close in on royalty settlement. By Brooks Boliek, Hollywood
Reporter, July 17, 2007.
http://tinyurl.com/2cnsvq

Performers and the record labels are moving closer to a settlement with
webcasters about the royalty some Internet-music delivery services must pay to
transmit music. Negotiations about the royalty continued during the weekend
even as webcasters began to pay the controversial royalty to SoundExchange,
the nonprofit distribution service set up to give musicians the royalty.

-----
Strict copyright laws do not always benefit authors. And they could even
increase risk, study says. The Register, July 17, 2007
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/07/17/copyright_law_study/

A stricter, more author-friendly copyright regime does not guarantee higher
pay for authors, according to a new study which surveyed the earnings of
25,000 writers. In fact, it found that copyright law could exacerbate risk for
authors.

-----
Microsoft Copy Protection Cracked Again. By Jessica Mintz, Associated
Press/Washington Post, July 17, 2007.
http://tinyurl.com/25wowr

Microsoft Corp. is once again on the defensive against hackers after the
launch of a new program that gives average PC users tools to unlock
copy-protected digital music and movies. The latest version of the FairUse4M
program, which can crack Microsoft's digital rights management system for
Windows Media audio and video files, was published online late Friday. In the
past year, Microsoft plugged holes exploited by two earlier versions of the
program and filed a federal lawsuit against its anonymous authors. Microsoft
dropped the lawsuit after failing to identify them.

-----
Oklahoma woman takes sue happy RIAA to the bank. By Austin Modine, The
Register,  July 17, 2007.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/07/17/riaa_pays_legal_fees/

In what appears to be the first known case of its kind, the RIAA has been
ordered to pay a defendant nearly $70,000 in attorney fees and costs after
unsuccessfully suing for copyright infringement.

-----
Hundreds weigh in on net neutrality. By Grant Gross, PC World/Washington Post,
July 17, 2007.
http://tinyurl.com/253j3q

Hundreds of groups and individual Internet users sounded off to the U.S. FCC
on net neutrality in comments filed Monday, the deadline for responding to the
agency's inquiry into the proposed regulation. Net neutrality advocates want
the FCC or the U.S. Congress to prohibit large broadband providers such as
AT&T and Comcast from blocking or slowing Web content from competitors. Many
of the comments Monday came from individual Internet users who asked the FCC
to protect them against new fees that they fear broadband providers could
charge Web content providers.

-----
Alltunes.com claims win in Russian copyright case. By Kelly Fiveash, The
Register, July 16, 2007.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/07/16/alltunes_ifpi_visa_case/

Alltunes.com, which previously operated as AllofMP3.com, has won a court case
against a Russian agent of Visa over its decision to disconnect the online
music stores' payment system. In a court ruling in Moscow, Rosbank Visa was
found to have acted illegally in cutting off transactions made to the store,
according to a statement from Alltunes.

-----
Could YouTube drag Apple into copyright fight? By Greg Sandoval, Cnet
News.com, July 16, 2007.
http://news.com.com/8301-10784_3-9745198-7.html

Here's something that shouldn't surprise many people: The video journalist who
has been in a closely watched legal tussle with YouTube is also peeved at
Apple.

-----
Talks on Internet radio royalties move ahead. Associated
Press/SiliconValley.com, July 16, 2007.
http://www.siliconvalley.com/news/ci_6388709

Internet radio broadcasters and the music industry appeared to be moving
closer yesterday to resolving a dispute over a new system mandating higher
royalty fees for streaming music online. Participants described the
negotiations as constructive and said they hoped to build on the momentum
achieved last week, when both sides promised quick progress on the issue at a
closed-door Congressional meeting held by Rep. Ed Markey.

-----
U.S. Internet radio safe for now ... Well, not really, but there's always
Canada. By Matthew Pioro, National Post, July 15, 2007.
http://tinyurl.com/ysllor

Although the music is still streaming and U.S. Internet radio providers are
breathing a momentary sigh of relief, the future of online radio is still
uncertain. Up to last Thursday, the U.S. Congress and SoundExchange, a group
responsible for collecting music broadcasting royalties, seemed unmoved by
protests against royalty-rate hikes that go in effect today.

-----
File sharing and copyright infringement - A legal perspective. MyADSL.co.za,
July 15, 2007.
http://mybroadband.co.za/news/General/644.html

Recent reports suggested that international watchdogs are monitoring illegal
file sharing from South Africans and are even sending warning emails to ISPs.
But can they really do anything?

-----
Copyright quandary. The Daily Yomiuri/Asia News Network, July 15, 2007.
http://tinyurl.com/292bek

In Japan where fanzines that honour or parody published manga are sold, a
Doraemon fanzine has sounded copyright alarms. Observers have long pointed out
possible copyright violations by such fanzines. Sales of fanzines had never
really caused big problems so long as they were done only at one-day fanzine
exhibitions. However, some fanzines now sell in the thousands or tens of
thousands of copies due to an increase in the number of bookstores selling
them and the popularity of Internet shopping.

-----
Copyright owner fights abuse of 'Cougar Song.'  By Brittani Lusk, Daily
Herald, July 14, 2007.
http://www.heraldextra.com/content/view/228826/4/

You can find the familiar words "Rise and Shout the Cougars are out," a lot of
places. You can even find Web sites that will show you how to program your
cell phone to ring the song. The only problem is that none of the people who
made the song available own the copyright. Dee Sandgren does. And he has given
no person or entity permission to use the song except Brigham Young
University.

-----
Belgacom urged to block illegal music file sharing. Reuters, July 14, 2007.
http://tinyurl.com/25lgnn

Belgian music copyright group SABAM has written to Belgium's dominant telecoms
group Belgacom, urging it to commit to blocking or filtering illegal music
file sharing, Belgian daily Le Soir reported on Saturday.

-----
Top execs of Viacom and Google trade barbs over YouTube copyright infringement
case. Reuters/SiliconValley.com, July 13, 2007.
http://www.siliconvalley.com/news/ci_6369021

Viacom...has hit Internet search leader Google with a $1 billion lawsuit,
saying that Google's popular video-sharing site YouTube is a massive center of
copyright infringement, routinely displaying clips from Viacom shows such as
"The Daily Show With Jon Stewart."  Google's CEO Eric Schmidt said he believed
his company was acting within the law and promised to defend itself
vigorously.

-----
BBC to hear open source concerns. BBC News, July 13, 2007.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6897050.stm

Calls to make the BBC's on demand TV service work on all computer operating
systems are to get a fresh look. The BBC Trust has offered to meet with open
source advocates who argue that the corporation has a duty to make the
download service platform agnostic. When the BBC iPlayer, as it is known,
launches on 27 July it will only work with PCs running Microsoft Windows XP.

-----
Sony BMG sues anti-piracy company. BBC News, July 13, 2007.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/6897202.stm

Record company Sony BMG is suing a firm that designed controversial
anti-piracy software used on CDs sold by the label. Sony BMG filed papers in a
New York state court seeking $12m in damages from the Arizona-based Amergence
Group. It says Amergence's Mediamax software landed it with a $5.75m (#2.83m)
bill for compensation after users reported problems with their computers.

-----
Researcher: Optimal copyright term is 14 years. By Nate Anderson, ARS
Technica, July 12, 2007.
http://tinyurl.com/26ue8u

It's easy enough to find out how long copyrights last, but much harder to
decide how long they should last-but that didn't stop Cambridge University PhD
candidate Rufus Pollock from using economics formulas to answer the question.
In a newly-released paper, Pollock pegs the "optimal level for copyright" at
only 14 years.

-----
U.S. court denies Webcasters' stay petition. Reuters, July 12, 2007.
http://tinyurl.com/2asgao

A federal appeals court has denied a petition by U.S.
Internet radio stations seeking to delay a royalty rate hike due July 15 they
say could kill the fledgling industry. While the July 11 ruling by the U.S.
District Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit was a setback,
the SaveNetRadio coalition of Webcasters vowed it would continue fighting the
hikes in Congress.

-----
Warner Music strikes licensing deal in settlement with Web site imeem.
Associated Press, July 12, 2007.
http://www.siliconvalley.com/news/ci_6359720

Warner Music has settled its copyright infringement lawsuit against the social
networking Web site imeem by agreeing to license its music and video content
to the site for a slice of its ad revenue. Under the agreement, imeem Inc. can
carry music and videos from all of the record company's artists, who include
Madonna, Linkin Park, and Red Hot Chili Peppers.

-----
Is the Pirate Bay going to be shut down again? By Bobbie Johnson, The
Guardian, July 12,  2007.
http://technology.guardian.co.uk/weekly/story/0,,2123664,00.html

Swedish anti-copyright Web site the Pirate Bay has been targeted by police
before, most notably last year when it was shut down for three days. However,
this week it survived a different sort of challenge, after reports emerged
suggesting that officials in Stockholm were considering whether to add it to
the country's Internet child abuse blacklist.

-----
Pirated Music Helps Radio Develop Playlists. By Sarah McBride, Wall Street
Journal, July 12, 2007.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118420443945664247.html

Earlier this year, Clear Channel Communications Inc.'s Premiere Radio Networks
unit began marketing data on the most popular downloads from illegal
file-sharing networks to help radio stations shape their playlists. The theory
is that the songs attracting the most downloads online will also win the most
listeners on the radio, helping stations sell more advertising. In turn, the
service may even help the record labels, because radio airplay is still the
biggest factor influencing record sales.

-----
Microsoft strikes deal to add 35 Disney movies to Xbox 360. Associated
Press/SiliconValley.com, July 11, 2007.
http://www.siliconvalley.com/news/ci_6348446

Microsoft Corp. said Tuesday it struck a deal to make 35 Disney movies, such
as the animated hit "Aladdin" and the action title "Armageddon," available for
download on its online video game service. The high-definition movies will be
available to U.S. subscribers of Microsoft's Xbox Live, said Peter Moore, a
corporate vice president in Microsoft's entertainment and devices division,
which is responsible for the Xbox business. The agreement with Disney-ABC
Domestic Television will also allow Xbox 360 owners to rent films on demand as
they become available from Walt Disney Pictures, Touchstone Pictures, Miramax
Films and Hollywood Pictures.

-----
British ISPs stand firm after file-sharing ruling. By David Meyer, CNET
News.com, July 11, 2007.
http://news.com.com/2100-1038_3-6196042.html

A group representing ISPs in the UK has reasserted that ISPs should not be
responsible for illegal file-sharing that takes place over their networks.
Speaking yesterday in the wake of a recent ruling in a Belgian court, a
representative of the Internet Service Providers' Association maintained that
ISPs should not be "set up to play judge and jury" over alleged copyright
infringement.

-----