In the News

["Jack Boeve" <JBoeve@xxxxxxxx>]

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RECENT ITEM FROM THE CIP COLLECTANEA BLOG:

Nice writeup of Center for Internet and Society's fair use win in NY
State Court. By Georgia Harper, Collectanea, August 14, 2008.
http://tinyurl.com/6yr8ue

The Bridgeport decision -- the one that famously proclaimed that there
was no such thing as a de minimus use of music recordings (ie, no matter
*how small* your use, it needs to be licensed) got some comeuppance
yesterday: New York Supreme Court Rejects EMI's Bid to Enjoin Expelled.

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IN OTHER NEWS:

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TinEye image search helps ferret out copyright ripoffs. By Jacqui Cheng,
ArsTechnica, August 19, 2008.
http://tinyurl.com/6pt54h

Another day, another new search engine makes the rounds. This time, it's
an image-based search engine called TinEye, which has recently been
opened up to the public in beta form. TinEye claims to do for images
what Google does for text, which is to find web pages containing a
specific image that you supply.

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Blog: Open Access textbooks, provincial ministers of education and
Access Copyright. By Rusell McOrmond, IT World Canada, August 19, 2008.
http://tinyurl.com/6ax5zf

There is an interesting article by Gale Holland in the Los Angeles Times
talking about the "eye-popping costs" of college and university
textbooks. Caltech economics professor R. Preston McAfee offers a
solution, which is to create textbooks that can be freely distributed
given the bulk of these costs come from copyright costs and the costs of
largely unnecessary intermediaries.

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AP settles online copyright lawsuit with VeriSign. By Jeremy Herron,
Forbes, August 19, 2008.
http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2008/08/19/ap5337895.html

The Associated Press has settled a copyright lawsuit against a company
that aggregates and redistributes news online. The AP had accused
Moreover Technologies Inc. and its parent company, VeriSign Inc., of
improperly using copyright-protected headlines, stories and photos. The
terms of the settlement were not disclosed.

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How Screwed Is Muxtape? Litigation Will Be Costly But Worth It, Experts
Say. By John Clarke, Rolling Stone, August 19, 2008.
http://tinyurl.com/6aon7g

While Muxtape is temporarily shut down, sidelined with RIAA problems
similar to that of Pandora, attorneys familiar with the territory say
the make-your-own mixtape site may be on solid legal ground with a
potential case against the RIAA.

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Secrecy claims on copyright treaty. By Karen Dearne, Australian IT,
August 19, 2008.
http://www.australianit.news.com.au/story/0,24897,24202770-15306,00.html

The Bush administration's plans for a copyright treaty, dubbed
"Hollywood's Christmas list" by privacy advocates, may be disrupted as
protests over "secret negotiations" emerge in participating nations,
including Australia, Canada and New Zealand.

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Critics launch cyber battle over copyright bill. The Canadian Press,
August 17, 2008.
http://canadianpress.google.com/article/ALeqM5h7CsgA7OoONV1TzESRr5Q37omD
wA

Critics of the Harper government's proposed changes to the Copyright Act
have launched a cyber crusade to fight the controversial bill. They're
using everything from Facebook to YouTube to Wikipedia to blogs to get
their message out. They want the government to either scrap or make
serious amendments to Bill C-61 when Parliament resumes next month.

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Giant of Internet Radio Nears Its 'Last Stand.' By Peter Whoriskey,
Washington Post, August 16, 2008.
http://tinyurl.com/6877xq

Pandora is one of the nation's most popular Web radio services, with
about 1 million listeners daily. Its Music Genome Project allows
customers to create stations tailored to their own tastes. It is one of
the 10 most popular applications for Apple's iPhone and attracts 40,000
new customers a day. Yet the burgeoning company may be on the verge of
collapse, according to its founder, and so may be others like it.

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Some Media Companies Choose to Profit From Pirated YouTube Clips. By
Brian Stelter, New York Times, August 15, 2008.
http://tinyurl.com/6hylre

After years of regarding pirated video on YouTube as a threat, some
major media companies are having a change of heart, treating it instead
as an advertising opportunity.

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New magazine-sharing site may violate copyrights. By Jeremy Herron, AP,
August 15, 2008.
http://tinyurl.com/6257x2

The magazine industry, already facing a decline in newsstand sales and
falling ad revenue, is being besieged by a new foe: digital piracy. A
fledgling Web site called Mygazines.com encourages people to copy and
upload popular magazines that are currently on newsstands.

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Olympic committee rethinks copyright infringement claim on YouTube.
Posted by Stephanie Condon, CNET News,  August 15, 2008.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-10018234-38.html?hhTest=1

The International Olympic Committee has retracted a Digital Millennium
Copyright Act takedown request it sent to YouTube over a Tibetan protest
video.

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Open Source Wins Landmark Legal Validation. By JR Raphael, LinuxInsider,
August 14, 2008.
http://tinyurl.com/5hmv47

The validity of open source software licenses won a major court victory
when a federal judge ruled this week that copyright law allows
programmers to control the modification of their software even though
it's free. The ruling makes legal sense, said copyright attorney Ross
Dannenberg.

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Open Source Advocates Hail Appeals Court Ruling. By Jeremy Kirk &
Elizabeth Montalbano, IDG News Service/PC World, August 14, 2008.
http://tinyurl.com/5g8clo

Free software advocates are praising a federal appeals ruling that
allows greater protection for open-source software against copyright
infringement.


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