In The News

["Jack Boeve" <JBoeve@xxxxxxxx>]

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AP sues US news aggregator for copyright infringement and trademark abuse. By
Thomas Wilburn, Ars Technica, October 10, 2007.
http://tinyurl.com/226k3g

The Associated Press stated today that it has filed suit against Moreover
Technologies, a news aggregation service owned by Verisign. AP says that the
suit comes in the wake of a cease-and-desist letter sent to the service on
September 11 and insists that Moreover is infringing on the news giant's
"proprietary news reports," as well as "falsely associating themselves with
AP."

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File-Sharing Students Fight Copyright Constraints. By Rachel Aviv, New York
Times, October 10, 2007.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/10/education/10students.html?ref=education

When Zachary McCune, a student at Brown, received an e-mail message from the
university telling him he might have broken the law by downloading copyrighted
songs, his eyes glazed over the warning and he quickly forgot about it. "I
already knew what they'd say about file-sharing," he said. "It's become a
campus clichi."

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Minnesota woman to appeal $220,000 RIAA award. By Greg Sandoval, CNET News,
October 8, 2007.
http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9792759-7.html

Jammie Thomas, the Minnesota woman who last week was ordered to pay the
recording industry $222,000 for copyright violations related to sharing songs,
has decided to appeal the verdict.

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Music industry has Aussie pirates in the crosshairs. By Asher Moses, Sunday
Morning Herald, October 8, 2007.
http://tinyurl.com/3cxy98

The anti-piracy arm of the Australian music industry has threatened to start
suing individuals for illegal downloading if internet providers do not exert
more control over their users.

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Copyright wrongs: Colleges shouldn't have to police illegal downloading.
RockyMountainNews.com, October 8, 2007.
http://tinyurl.com/yrazj6

Congress is in the process of renewing the Higher Education Act of 1965, the
federal law that established a major role for Washington in providing aid to
low- and middle-income college students. As with most legislation that has
large sums of taxpayer funding attached, lawmakers are finding the temptation
to lard it up with regulations impossible to resist.

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You can't use the O-word. By David Edgar, The Guardian, October 8, 2007.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,2185961,00.html

Take care. In reading this article, you may be in receipt of stolen goods. In
fact, the organising committee for a certain upcoming sporting event has
decided it would be "disproportionate" to prosecute the author of a book
called Olympic Mind Games for breach of copy-right. But, under no less than
two acts of parliament, it could if it wanted to.

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Kwik-Fit sued over staff radios. BBC News, October 5, 2007.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/edinburgh_and_east/7029892.stm

A car repair firm has been taken to court accused of infringing musical
copyright because its employees listen to radios at work.

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Record Companies Win Music Sharing Trial. By Joshua Freed, Washington Post/AP,
October 5, 2007.
http://tinyurl.com/2wef4u

The recording industry hopes $222,000 will be enough to dissuade music lovers
from downloading songs from the Internet without paying for them. That's the
amount a federal jury ordered a Minnesota woman to pay for sharing copyrighted
music online.

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NBC's Zucker Calls for Allies in Copyright Battle. By Saul Hansell, New York
Times, October 4, 2007.
http://tinyurl.com/yrdj8d

Jeff Zucker, the chief executive of NBC Universal, made a speech this week
calling for a massive campaign to fight piracy of copyrighted works. Mr.
Zucker was branded as the epitome of mainstream media cluelessness by
bloggers, in part because his statements were made the same week that
Radiohead, the musical equivalent of NBC'S hit, "Heroes," decided to sell its
latest album by letting fans download it for any price they choose.

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Beware Copyright Statistics. By Felix Salmon, portfolio.com, October 4, 2007.
http://tinyurl.com/yotrjd

Dean Baker is unimpressed by studies showing vast losses to the US economy
from piracy of intellectual property. He picks on a Washington Post article by
Frank Ahrens, which quotes a study concluding that "intellectual property
piracy -- theft of music, movies, video games and software -- costs the U.S.
economy $58 billion per year and 350,000 lost jobs in the entertainment
industry and its supplying industries." Baker doesn't like the economics:

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Coming soon to kindergarten class: antipiracy ed. by Anne Broache, CNET News,
October 2, 2007.
http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9789821-7.html

Tired of their antipiracy messages being ignored by the teen- and college-age
set, the entertainment industry is attempting to indoctrinate far younger
disciples.

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Canada's choppy copyright waters. By Michael Geist, P2Pnet.net, October 1,
2007.
http://www.p2pnet.net/story/13504

In a sure sign of an impending throne speech, copyright lobby groups are out
in full force calling on the government to prioritize intellectual property
protection in its fall legislative agenda. Despite efforts to put forward a
united front, however, what is readily apparent to those close to the process
is that copyright reform is rife with conflicts that create a significant
political risk and require the expenditure of enormous political capital.

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Canadians rebuff restrictions on their Internet access. CNW Group, October 1,
2007.
http://www.newswire.ca/en/releases/archive/October2007/01/c6961.html

Most Canadians are unaware of an emerging threat to their ability to access
web-based information and services, according to data released today. A poll
conducted by Leger Marketing found that Canadians are generally unaware of the
concept of "net neutrality," the principle that Internet
service providers should not be allowed to impose restrictions on the web
content or applications consumers can access.

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Copyright lawyer tells universities to resist "copyright bullies". By Nate
Anderson, Ars Technica, September 28, 2007.
http://tinyurl.com/yqbzva

Wendy Seltzer, the founder of the Chilling Effects Clearinghouse and a former
EFF staff attorney, gave a talk yesterday at Cornell (RealPlayer required) on
"Protecting the University from Copyright Bullies." The bullies in question
are the RIAA, and the issue is the recording industry's current campaign of
both litigation and political pressure. Should universities assist the music
industry in identifying the "pirates," or should they do everything in their
power to resist?

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British Library books go digital. By Cristina Jimenez, BBC News, September 28,
2007.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7018210.stm

More than 100,000 old books previously unavailable to the public will go
online thanks to a mass digitisation programme at the British Library. The
programme focuses on 19th Century books, many of which are unknown as few were
reprinted after first editions.

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Amazon begins selling digital music without copy protection.
SiliconValley.com/AP, September 25, 2007.
http://www.siliconvalley.com/news/ci_6993832?nclick_check=1

Web retailer Amazon.com Inc. launched its much-anticipated digital music store
Tuesday with more than 2 million songs, all without copy-protection
technology. The store, Amazon MP3, lets shoppers buy and download individual
songs or entire albums using Amazon's 1-Click button. The tracks can be copied
to multiple computers, burned onto CDs and played on most types of PCs and
portable devices, including Apple Inc.'s iPod.

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First U.S. GPL lawsuit heads for quick settlement. LinuxWatch.com, September
24, 2007.
http://www.linux-watch.com/news/NS3761924232.html

The first U.S. GPL-related lawsuit appears to be headed for a quick
out-of-court settlement. Monsoon Multimedia admitted today that it had
violated the GPLv2 (GNU General Public License version 2), and said it will
release its modified BusyBox code in full compliance with the license. Monsoon
Multimedia has stated that it is currently in settlement negotiations with the
BusyBox project to resolve the matter without going to court. The company also
said in a statement that it intends to fully comply with all open-source
software license requirements. The company plans to make its modified BusyBox
source code publicly available on on its website in the coming weeks, it
said.

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Online CD Seller Fights Suit: Record Firm Says Its Promotional Albums Are Not
for Resale. By Mike Musgrove, Washington Post, September 22, 2007.
http://tinyurl.com/24a5w9

An eBay seller and Universal Music Group are battling in a legal case that
could have wider implications for a consumer's right to resell purchased
music. Los Angeles area resident Troy Augusto makes a living by scooping up
collectible albums at used-record stores, then selling them for a profit on
the eBay online auction site. Many of those compact discs, marked "for
promotional use only," were originally given away by record companies to radio
stations and music publications as a means of promoting the music.

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Consumers one step closer to burning digital movies onto DVD.
SiliconValley.com/AP, September 20, 2007.
http://www.siliconvalley.com/news/ci_6953837

The group that licenses DVD security software cleared the way Thursday for
movies bought over the Internet to be burned onto a DVD that can play on any
machine - a move that could dramatically change the way movies are sold.

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NBC to offer free downloads of some primetime shows. SiliconValley.com/AP,
September 20, 2007.
http://www.siliconvalley.com/news/ci_6947240?nclick_check=1

NBC will start offering limited free downloads of shows such as "Heroes" and
"The Office" as part of its bid to expand the digital distribution of its
programs and compete with Apple Inc.'s iTunes store, the network announced
Wednesday.

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RIAA Sends Another Wave Of Settlement Letters. By Susan Butler, Billboard.biz,
September 20, 2007.
http://tinyurl.com/2aogph

The RIAA sent a new wave of 403 pre-litigation settlement letters on behalf of
the major record companies to 22 universities today. The labels also filed 24
copyright infringement lawsuits against individuals who previously received
letters but did not settle the claims.

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Thailand seeks to block YouTube videos again. Reuters, September 21, 2007.
http://tinyurl.com/2sgqly

Thailand is seeking to block clips on video-sharing Web site YouTube that
accuse the chief royal adviser of masterminding last year's bloodless coup, a
top Justice Ministry official said on Friday. The government, which lifted a
five-month ban on YouTube in August after it agreed to block clips deemed
offensive to revered King Bhumibol Adulyadej, was seeking a court order to
block two video clips posted recently on YouTube.

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Blog: Kiss your privacy goodbye. By Jack Kapica, Globe and Mail, September 19,
2007.
http://tinyurl.com/3bpm5s

Music download services, e-books and software, says the Canadian Internet
Policy and Public Interest Clinic (CIPPIC) of the Faculty of Law at the
University of Ottawa, use digital rights management technologies, or DRM, to
protect their intellectual property. And some of them violate federal law, the
Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA). CIPPIC
has just released a study called Digital Rights Management and Consumer
Privacy: An Assessment of DRM Applications Under Canadian Privacy Law, which
looked at the DRM technologies used in 16 digital products and services.
CIPPIC found that that many mechanisms to protect intellectual property sold
here actually pose threats to your privacy.

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Apple defends iTunes in Berlin, Brussels. CNET News.com/Reuters, September 19,
2007.
http://www.news.com/2100-1027_3-6208959.html

Apple CEO Steve Jobs reiterated his commitment to charging the same price for
iTunes downloads across Europe as his lawyers defended the company on
Wednesday against allegations its prices are not uniform.

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