In the News

["Amy Mata" <AMata@xxxxxxxx>]

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INTERNET LAW - Another Fine Line: Civil Liberties and the Digital
Millennium Copyright Act
By Alain Megias, Internet Business Law Services, June 2009.
http://tinyurl.com/ldjjzw

"The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which was passed in 1998
in order to police online copyright infringement, has been widely
criticized by civil rights organizations. Among other criticisms, civil
rights organizations contend that the DMCA's anti-circumvention measures
stiffen free speech."
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Virgin Media, Universal to Offer Unlimited Music.
By Kate Holton, Reuters, June 15, 2009.
http://www.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idUSTRE55E29220090615

"British cable TV operator Virgin Media is to launch an unlimited music
download subscription service through a partnership with the world's
largest music company, Universal. The music industry has been desperate
to boost digital sales in recent years to overcome online piracy, and
the agreement comes a day before a British report sets out how the
creative and telecoms industries should tackle the problem."
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Recording Industry: Radio Is Piracy, But Not Playing Our Music Is A
Federal Offense.
By Mike Masnick, Techdirt, June 16, 2009.
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090616/1527385253.shtml

"It appears that the big record labels and their lobbyists aren't
content with just suing and shaking down students across the country --
now they want to threaten them for taking a political stand as well.
Earlier this week, musicFIRST, the big time lobbying group put together
by the RIAA to push for the highly questionable Performance Rights tax
on radio stations, did a neat little publicity stunt where it asked the
FCC to investigate radio stations that apparently were "boycotting"
musicians who supported the Performance Rights tax, claiming that it was
an abuse of the airwaves."
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NY Times 'Corrects' False Article About Pirate Bay Appeal... Still Gets
It Wrong.
By Mike Masnick, Techdirt, June 16, 2009.
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090616/0315085245.shtml

"It my seem like I'm pushing on this one a bit, but it's because I am
honestly surprised that the NY Times got this one so badly wrong, and
that they've been so slow to do anything about it."
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JK Rowling Accused of Plagiarizing Harry Potter... Yet Again.
By Mike Masnick, Techdirt, June 16, 2009.
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090616/0335525246.shtml

"The latest is that Rowling's publisher, Bloomsbury Publishing, has been
sued again for plagiarism over the Potter books, this time by the estate
of Adrian Jacobs. It seems that Jacobs once wrote a book about a boy
wizard called Willy The Wizard that has some distant similarities to
some stuff that happens in the Potter books."
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Entertainment Industry Still Insisting That Gov't Protectionism is the
Only Way to Compete.
By Mike Masnick, Techdirt, June 16, 2009.
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090615/1240385240.shtml

"A few months ago, we responded to an ill-informed opinion piece in the
UK's Independent by Stephen Garrett, who runs a TV production house. In
his essay, Garrett trotted out all the old falsehoods about how file
sharing is the same as theft and that ISPs absolutely need to stop file
sharing or the entertainment industry will die."
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Jammie Thomas takes the stand, admits to major misstep
By Nate Anderson, Ars Technica, June 16, 2009.
http://tinyurl.com/n2ocqj

"Jammie Thomas-Rasset took the stand this afternoon and pleaded total
innocence. She didn't even know what KaZaA was before this case began!
The record industry didn't buy it, in part because of a major problem
during her previous under-oath testimony. Welcome to the 'Tale of Two
Hard Drives.'"
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Google Attacked on All Fronts over Book Search Project.
Posted by Clint Boulton, Google Watch, June 16, 2009.
 http://tinyurl.com/lozhrv

"Google is really getting hammered for its Google Book Search project,
essentially a monumental effort to organize the world's books online and
make money from them. Amazon.com head honcho Jeff Bezos was the latest
to weigh in."
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J.D. Salinger's 'The Catcher in the Rye': Restraining order issued in
copyright case.
By Sean Smith, EW.com, June 17, 2009.
http://tinyurl.com/kqvz38

"A federal court judge in New York issued a temporary restraining order
on Wednesday against the U.S. publication of the book 60 Years Later:
Coming Through the Rye, noting substantial similarities between it and
J.D. Salinger's iconic teen novel The Catcher in the Rye, the Associated
Press reports."
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Study: Piracy Does Not Deter the Production of Music, Films, Books.
By Frederic Lardinois, Read Write Web, June 17, 2009.
http://tinyurl.com/mauvwd

"According to a new study (PDF) by economists Felix Oberholzer-Gee
(Harvard) and Koleman Strumpf (University of Kansas), file sharing and
weaker copyright protections generally benefit societies more than they
hurt them. Among other things, Oberholzer-Gee and Strumpf argue that
file sharing has done nothing to deter the production of books, music,
and films. The two economists argue that weaker copyright is desirable,
as long as it doesn't 'lessen the incentives of artists and
entertainment companies to produce new works.'"
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Canada: Copyright report 'lacked sufficient balance': Conf. Board.
By Sarah Schmidt, Canada.com, June 17, 2009.
http://tinyurl.com/l8gq3w

"The Conference Board of Canada admitted Wednesday there was "undue
reliance" on feedback from a funder with ties to the entertainment
industry for a copyright report that wrongly chastised Canada as the
file-swapping capital of the world."
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Japan Makes Private Copying Illegal
By Mike Masnick, Techdirt, June 17, 2009.
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090616/1544325254.shtml

"Plenty of countries have reasonably pointed out that the entire point
behind copyright laws was to protect again commercial for-profit copying
-- and thus, private, non-commercial personal use copying really
shouldn't be covered by copyright laws. Of course, for an entertainment
industry hell-bent on filing lawsuits against people rather than
adapting to the marketplace, this is a serious, serious problem."
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U.K. to Restrict Internet Access for Repeat Digital Pirates
By Aaron O. Patrick, The Wall Street Journal, June 17, 2009.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124516964471519431.html

"Hoping to cut down on rampant online theft of music and movies, the
British government plans to ratchet up pressure on suspected pirates
with measures that would ultimately restrict the Internet access of
repeat offenders."
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US Pushes India on Copyright Enforcement.
AFP, June 18, 2009.
http://tinyurl.com/mbw5co

"US Commerce Secretary Gary Locke called Wednesday for India to step up
enforcement of copyright laws, warning that piracy and counterfeiting
were discouraging US investors."
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PK & EFF: Keep Copyright Owners from Controlling What I Do With My
Property.
By Jef Pearlman, Public Knowledge, June 19, 2009.
http://www.publicknowledge.org/node/2447

"Perhaps you remember Rashmi's post about how the Ninth Circuit's
decision in Omega v. Costco opened the door to copyright owners taking
control of the import markets for all kind of products, merely by
slapping a copyrighted logo onto everything they make."
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Eight Percent Admit to Downloading Video Illegally.
Reported by Georgina Prodhan, Reuters, June 19, 2009.
http://www.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idUSTRE55I2XG20090619

"Eight percent of all consumers in Britain, France, Germany and the
United States admit to downloading video illegally from the Internet,
according to a survey, showing the scale of the ongoing fight against
piracy."
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The Constitutional Problems with the Award in the Jammie Thomas Case.
By Mike Masnick, Techdirt, June 19, 2009.
http://techdirt.com/articles/20090618/1950315285.shtml

"Like many others, when I first heard about the $1.9 million the jury
awarded the record labels from Jammie Thomas in her trial, my initial
question was how that could possibly be constitutional and not
excessive. However, given the immediate talk of settlements, I figured
that question is unlikely to be asked in a courtroom. The EFF, however,
has taken a look at the specific constitutional issues and how any
appeal might be organized. There are two specific potential problems."
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ASCAP Wants to be Paid When Your Phone Rings.
Legal Analysis by Fred von Lohmann, Electronic Frontier Foundation, June
19, 2009.
http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/06/ascap-wants-be-paid-

"ASCAP (the same folks who went after Girl Scouts for singing around a
campfire) appears to believe that every time your musical ringtone rings
in public, you're violating copyright law by "publicly performing" it
without a license. At least that's the import of a brief [2.5mb PDF] it
filed in ASCAP's court battle with mobile phone giant AT&T."
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Moby: The RIAA Needs to be Disbanded.
Posted by Ernesto, Torrentfreak, June 20, 2009.
http://torrentfreak.com/moby-the-riaa-needs-to-be-disbanded-090620/

"The two million dollar fine handed out to Jammie Thomas by a Minnesota
jury this week hasn't done the music industry's image much good. While
lawyers and high level managers at the major labels cracked open the
Champagne, artists such as Moby and Radiohead shook their heads in shame
at what the music world has become."
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Canada: Design Law and Artistic Copyright.
Lawditreadingroom.co.uk, June 21, 2009.
http://tinyurl.com/n7cv2f

"The law of copyright rests on a very clear principle: that anyone who
by his or her own skill and labour creates an original work of whatever
character shall, for a limited period, enjoy an exclusive right to copy
that work. No one else may for a season reap what the copyright owner
has sown. If your design was an original product of your skill and
labour then you can protect your copyright. However there is "there is
no new thing under the sun". You receive inspiration from elsewhere."
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Amy Mata
Graduate Assistant
Center for Intellectual Property
University of Maryland University College

amata@xxxxxxxx
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