In the News

["Amy Mata" <AMata@xxxxxxxx>]

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Piracy Puts Film Online One Month Before Open.
By Brian Stelter, The New York Times, April 1, 2009.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/02/business/media/02film.html

"In a case of piracy that some analysts called unprecedented, untold
thousands of people watched a version of "X-Men Origins: Wolverine"
online Wednesday, a full month before its scheduled theater release."
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Yet Another Copyright Lobbying Group Caught Infringing.
By Mike Masnik, Techdirt, April 3, 2009.
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090402/2014424364.shtml

"These days, it's nearly impossible not to infringe on copyright in one
way or another during your regular day -- but it's always amusing when
big-time copyright supporters are caught infringing (and it seems to
happen quite frequently)."
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Murdoch Calls Google, Yahoo Copyright Thieves - is He Right?
By David Kravets, Wired News, April 3, 2009.
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2009/04/murdoch-says-go.html

"Rupert Murdoch, the owner of News Corp. and The Wall Street Journal,
says Google and Yahoo are giant copyright scofflaws that steal the
news."
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Court Rules Part of Copyright Act Unconstitutional.
By Mike Masnick, Techdirt, April 3, 2009.
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090403/1619494384.shtml

"A year and a half ago, we were quite surprised when the 10th Circuit
Court of Appeals actually sided with Larry Lessig, concerning how a part
of copyright law that pulled foreign works out of the public domain was
potentially unconstitutional. This was in the "Golan case," the third of
three big copyright cases Lessig had championed. The appeals court had
sent the case back to the lower court, and that lower court has now
decided that, indeed, a trade agreement (URAA) that pulled foreign
content out of the public domain is unconstitutional as it violates the
First Amendment."
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Google's Plan for Out-of-Print Books Challenged.
By Miguel Helft, The New York Times, April 3, 2009.
http://tinyurl.com/daobe9

"Now millions of orphan books may get a new legal guardian. Google has
been scanning the pages of those books and others as part of its plan to
bring a digital library and bookstore, unprecedented in scope, to
computer screens across the United States."
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Digital Rights Groups Urge Obama to Diversify Appointees.
By Wendy Davis, MediaPost News, April 3, 2009.
http://tinyurl.com/c2ty8d

"A coalition including prominent digital rights advocates wrote to
President Barack Obama Thursday to express concern about the appointment
of former entertainment industry lawyers to key Department of Justice
positions. The groups asked that future appointments to positions
related to intellectual property policy 'reflect the diversity of
stakeholders' affected by such policy."
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Copyright Law Puts Movie Night on Hold.
By Ron White, news-journalonline.com, April 4, 2009.
http://tinyurl.com/czb69p

"When city commissioners appointed Sean Abshire to the parks and
recreation board in January, the 17-year-old brought lots of fresh ideas
with him. But now he's learning little comes easy in public life -- and
exactly why DVDs feature an opening "FBI warning" that many viewers
might fast-forward through."
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Korea: Upload a Song, Lose Your Internet Connection.
By Kim Tong-Hyung, The Korea Times, April 5, 2009.
http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/tech/2009/04/133_42594.html

"South Korea touts itself as one of the most wired and technology savvy
countries in the world. But the Lee Myung-bak government's increasing
attempts to monitor the Internet have the blogosphere and Web industry
reminded of the cold realities of the real world behind the screen. As a
result, Korea has now become one of the first democracies to
aggressively use the law to hold Internet users and Web sites to
account, and the revised copyright law represents the boldest step yet
in this direction."
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Hollywood Warns Bollywood on 'Button' Remake.
Agence France Press, April 6, 2009.
http://tinyurl.com/cmoehg

Mumbai: "US studio Warner Bros on Monday put its Bollywood counterparts
on notice that they would sue for breach of copyright if the hit film
"The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" was remade here."
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AP Board Touts New Effort to Fight Web News Piracy.
By Elliot Spagat, Associated Press, April 6, 2009.
http://tinyurl.com/ceva86

"The Associated Press and the newspaper industry plan an aggressive
effort to track down copyright violators on the Internet and try to
divert traffic from Web sites that don't properly license news content,
the AP board announced Monday."
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Can I Legally Publish My Own Photo?
By Lincoln Specter, PC World, April 6, 2009.
http://www.pcworld.com/article/162509/can_i_legally_publish_my_photo.htm
l

"'If you take a photograph in a public place, and then publish it
commercially, can the people in the photo successfully sue?' That's a
complex issue, with quite a few shades of grey. I talked with technology
lawyer Tate Stickles to get a handle on the issues involved. 'Any
picture you take, you own the copyright to,' Stickles told me, 'but it
gets muddled when you put it to commercial use.'"
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Congress Looks Abroad to Curb Piracy.
By Stephanie Condon, CNET News, April 6, 2009.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-10213367-38.html

"One week after the 20th Century Fox film was found on the Internet, the
House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs held a hearing in
Los Angeles to hear from industry representatives about how to address
piracy."
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Blog: Protesting the Author's Guild over Kindle 2.
Posted by Dave Rosenthal, baltimoresun.com, April 7, 2009.
http://tinyurl.com/cjur7a

"The National Federation of the Blind, which is based in Baltimore, is
busing hundreds of people up to New York City to join the Reading Rights
Coalition's protest of the new restrictions on the text-to-speech
function on Amazon's Kindle 2. Last month, Amazon allowed the publishing
houses to disable the function on a case-by-case basis, after the
Authors Guild argued that the device was meant for e-books, not audio
books. They maintain that copyright was infringed when the two formats
were used in one device."
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Google to Publishers: We're Not Evil or Illegal.
By Caroline McCarthy, CNET News, April 7, 2009.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10213903-93.html

"A day after the editor of The Wall Street Journal referred to online
news aggregators--particularly Google and its Google News product--as
'parasites or tech tapeworms,' and the chairman of the Associated Press
announced an initiative to protect print media content from infringing
use online, Google has fired back in a blog. The gist of Tuesday's blog
post, penned by Google associate general counsel Alexander Macgillivray:
don't point fingers at us."
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Hollywood's Favorite Lawmakers Preparing Next Level of Draconian
Copyright Laws.
Mike Masnick, Techdirt, April 7, 2009.
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090406/2130244412.shtml

"Because (of course) last year's ProIP bill that (once again)
strengthened copyright laws wasn't enough, Hollywood's favorite
lawmakers all got together outside of LA and complained about how
copyright laws needed to be even more draconian."
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World Copyright Summit June 9&10 2009 - DC
Copyrightlaws.com, April 7, 2009.
http://tinyurl.com/c5juhm

"Copyrightlaws.com is a media partner for the upcoming World Copyright
Summit in Washington DC in June. This is an international forum that
brings together those directly involved in creative industries to openly
debate the future of copyright and the distribution of creative works in
the digital era. It is organized by CISAC, the International
Confederation of Societies of Authors and Composers."
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U.S. Offers Peek at Proposed Copyright Treaty.
By Stephanie Condon, CNET News, April 7, 2009.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-10213934-38.html

"After months of secrecy that has rankled public interest groups, the
Obama administration is revealing limited information regarding a
multilateral anti-counterfeiting treaty currently under negotiation."
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Copyrights - Securing the Rights to Your Freelance Work.
By Maryan Pellan, Examiner, April 7, 2009.
http://tinyurl.com/c5gc9j

"An email from a vendor I have heretofore trusted flamed in uppercase
declaration, 'Act NOW! Copyright your writings, your Web site, your very
name. Thwart unscrupulous others bent on stealing your work for their
nefarious purposes.' That's a fate freelance writers, artists and
designers are concerned about. And the brilliance of the vendor's scheme
is - I can hire them to 'copyright' my work for the low, low fee of $150
per copyright. Stiff on a freelancer's budget. My experience as a
writer, some paralegal training and research made me aware that I don't
have to plunk down my bucks to fully protect my work. Neither do you.
Save those dollars to invest in your future."
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Lawyer Argues for Live Coverage in Music Downloading Case.
By Jonathan Saltzman, Boston Globe, April 8, 2009.
http://tinyurl.com/cp3t7t

"A Harvard Law School professor who is defending a Boston University
graduate student accused of downloading music illegally urged a federal
appeals court today to allow live Internet coverage of a hearing in the
lawsuit, something that has never happened in a federal trial court in
Massachusetts."
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Plan to Curb Internet Piracy Advances in France.
By Kevin J. O'Brien, The New York Times, April 8, 2009.
http://tinyurl.com/dmgcyp

"French lawmakers are poised to approve a law to create the world's
first surveillance system for Internet piracy, one that would force
Internet service providers in some cases to disconnect customers accused
of making illegal downloads."
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Tacori Prevails in Second Copyright Suit.
National Jeweler, April 9, 2009.
http://tinyurl.com/cyw5zl

"After being awarded $650,000 in damages from an Ohio ring company
earlier this year, Tacori Enterprises is claiming another copyright
victory, this time nailing the wholesale manufacturer of the rings that
it accused of copying its signature design."
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Amy Mata
Graduate Assistant
Center for Intellectual Property
University of Maryland University College

amata@xxxxxxxx