In The News

["Jack Boeve" <JBoeve@xxxxxxxx>]

--------------------------
Blog: Speaking of fair use... did you hear about the Harry Potter fair
use case?. By Georgia Harper, Collectanea. December 7, 2007.
http://tinyurl.com/24azsf

Not too much news yet, but Stanford's Fair Use Project has signed on as
co-counsel in a case that pits fan site collected information, in
published form, against the copyright owners of the Harry Potter series:
Fair Use Project to Represent RDR Books in Harry Potter Lexicon Dispute.
This is going to be a very interesting case. It will either join the
cases Jon Band grouped together as broadening the scope of fair use for
creative and transformative works, about which I blogged earlier this
week, or it will throw the progression a curve.

--------------------------
Blog: Jon Band publishes Educational Fair Use Today. By Georgia Harper,
Collectanea. December 5, 2007.
http://tinyurl.com/2ytav4

Jon Band has summarized three recent fair use case holdings in an
article entitled, Educational Fair Use Today, published by the
Association of Research Libraries. He notes that the cases all found
fair uses in commercial contexts (artwork, a search engine case
involving images, and the use of small copies of posters in a coffee
table book) and so strengthen fair use, particularly when fair use is
employed in transformative circumstances. Most importantly, he believes
that transformative is taking on a new meaning beyond the idea of
changing the nature of the work, like a parody changes the underlying
work or scholarly criticism uses another work.

--------------------------
Copyright Claim Erases Parody Video From YouTube. By Lewis Wallace,
Wired Blog Network. December 12, 2007.
http://blog.wired.com/underwire/2007/12/copyright-claim.html

A hit YouTube video that parodied Silicon Valley's Web 2.0 gold rush has
been taken down, launching a freelance photographer and an amateur
choral group into an internet-fueled copyright dispute.

--------------------------
Press Release: Copyright Clearance Center Launches Copyright Labs.
BusinessWire.com. December 12, 2007.
http://tinyurl.com/2279xp

Copyright Clearance Center (CCC), the world's largest provider of
copyright licensing solutions, today announced the launch of Copyright
Labs (www.copyrightlabs.com), a testing ground for new services,
applications and products. The site launched with three applications
already available.

--------------------------
Press Release: Copyright Protection Tool Launched. Daily Research News
Online. December 12, 2007.
http://www.mrweb.com/drno/news7704.htm

In Canada, Destiny Media has launched a version of its Clipstream
software specifically for protecting clients' media content from theft,
copying or reuse when embeded in surveys.

--------------------------
Web Leaders Seek More Searchable Government. By Kim Hart, Washington
Post. December 11, 2007
http://tinyurl.com/27bthb

These days you can Google just about anything, from your favorite
celebrity's pet to your boss's middle name. But using the biggest search
engine to get information about the government often falls short. That's
what leaders from Google and Wikipedia plan to tell the Senate Committee
on Homeland Security and Government Affairs today, urging Congress to
require federal agencies to make their Web sites, records and databases
more searchable.

--------------------------
Porn producer sues YouTube knockoff. By Joseph Menn, Los Angeles Times.
December 11, 2007.
http://tinyurl.com/2yhn3v

A major porn producer filed a lawsuit Monday against an X-rated knockoff
of YouTube, alleging that it profited from piracy by allowing its users
to post videos that include copyrighted material.

--------------------------
EU Online Copyright Bill Coming; Publishers Debate DRMs. By William New,
Intellectual Property Watch. December 9, 2007.
http://www.ip-watch.org/weblog/index.php?p=861

European publishers and copyright holders have a friend in European
Information Society Commissioner Viviane Reding, which she reinforced
last week in describing efforts to push through a new bill on digital
publishing copyrights. At the same event, publishers and cutting-edge US
technology company SecondLife debated IP issues such as the problems of
digital rights management for protecting copyrights.

--------------------------
Charity Forced to Pay Copyright Fee So Kids Can Sing Carols.
TorrentFreak.com. December 9, 2007.
http://tinyurl.com/345ptj

Christmas is known world-wide as a time for sharing, a time for giving.
But for one charity, instead of Santa arriving with gifts, the copyright
police turned up demanding money. Why? Because the charity allows
children to sing carols on the premises and their kitchen radio is a
little loud.

--------------------------
The Copyright Gift Basket: What's In It For You?  By Janko Roettgers,
NewTeeVee.com. December 8, 2007.
http://tinyurl.com/2ygzmz

Lawmakers from both parties just introduced an intellectual property
bill that reads like it's straight off the wish list of the entire
entertainment industry. Also advancing in Congress is a controversial
bill that aims to strengthen copyright enforcement at universities. And
finally, there's been a few gifts from the courts this week, as well.
Google won against dirty picture publisher Perfect10, and the same
company also suffered a defeat against Visa and other billing service
providers. So what does all of this mean for you?

--------------------------
Blog: Just An Online Minute... DOJ's Flawed Argument On Copyright. By
Wendy Davis, MediaPost, December 7, 2007.
http://blogs.mediapost.com/online_minute/?p=1622

The Bush Administration has weighed in on the side of the record
companies in their copyright infringement lawsuit against Jammie Thomas,
a single mother recently found liable for uploading 24 tracks to Kazaa.
In papers filed this week, the Department of Justice urged the judge to
uphold the jury's award of $220,000, or $9,250 per track. Thomas argues
that figure is so disproportionate to the retail value of each track -
99 cents on iTunes - that the award is unconstitutionally excessive.

--------------------------
House Bill Would Create Govt. Copyright Czar. By Chloe Albanesius, PC
Magazine. December 6, 2007.
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2704,2229544,00.asp

If members of the House Judiciary Committee have their way, there will
be far fewer vendors hawking illegal copies of your favorite holiday
blockbusters in Times Square this time next year.

--------------------------
Nielsen To Offer Copyright Protection System For The Web. By Antone
Gonsalves, InformationWeek. December 5, 2007.
http://tinyurl.com/yp76eo

Nielsen, best-known for its rankings of TV programming, said Wednesday
it is developing a system that would police Web sites for copyrighted
material, and notify site owners and content providers when video has
been posted without authorization. Nielsen is developing the system with
Digimarc, a provider of digital watermarking technology. The service,
which the companies plan to start rolling out in the second quarter of
next year, would tap into technology Nielson currently uses in the
services it sells to advertisers and TV networks.

--------------------------
Professor uses Youtube, Facebook in copyright fight. By Rafael Ruffolo,
ComputerWorld. December 5, 2007.
http://tinyurl.com/24clrj

In an effort to combat the Canadian government's impending copyright
reform bill -- legislation which some say could affect privacy and
property rights for Canadian consumers and businesses -- one industry
activist is taking his fight to the digital streets.

--------------------------
File-Sharing Operator's Lawsuit Against Record Labels Dismissed. By Alex
Veiga, The Associated Press on Law.com. December 4, 2007.
http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1196762667705

A federal judge on Dec. 3 threw out an antitrust lawsuit that the
operator of the LimeWire online file-sharing service filed against a
coalition of major record labels. U.S. District Judge Gerard E. Lynch in
New York ruled that Lime Group LLC failed to make its case that it has
been harmed by the recording companies' business practices, and he
granted the companies' motion to dismiss the claims.

--------------------------
Oregon Challenges RIAA's Tactics in Music Piracy Claim. By Jaikumar
Vijayan, Computerworld/PCWorld.com. December 1, 2007.
http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,140173-c,copyright/article.html

Oregon is fast becoming Ground Zero in the contentious battle between
the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and the tens of
thousands of consumers it accuses of illegal music sharing. The state
Attorney General's office this week filed an appeal in U.S. District
Court in Oregon calling for an immediate investigation of the evidence
presented by the RIAA when it subpoenaed the identities of 17 students
at the University of Oregon who allegedly infringed music copyrights.

--------------------------
==========
(C)ollectanea Blog. Collected perspectives on copyright.
http://chaucer.umuc.edu/blogcip/collectanea/
Center for Intellectual Property, UMUC