In the News

["Amy Mata" <AMata@xxxxxxxx>]

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Songwriters: Piracy dwarfs bank robbery, FBI must act.
By Nate Anderson, Ars Technica, May 4, 2010.
http://tinyurl.com/34e73kd

"The Songwriters Guild of America has a message for the government:
start prosecuting file-sharers, both criminally and civilly, because
file-sharing is much worse than bank robbery."There are numerous
economic crimes of much lesser magnitude (such as bank robbery) that are
routinely and fully investigated, for which law enforcement agencies
such as the FBI have significant resources," complains the Guild (PDF).
"By contrast, online copyright piracy dwarfs bank robbery in causing
economic losses, yet the FBI has limited criminal investigative interest
and no civil mandate whatsoever to pursue this devastating economic
harm. This inequity must change."
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Court Says Album is a Single Work for Copyright Purposes; Each Song is
Not Separate Infringement.
By Mike Masnick, Techdirt, May 4, 2010.
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100430/1509599266.shtml

"In a somewhat surprising case, the Second Circuit appeals court has
ruled that infringing on a full album only counts as a single
infringement for the sake of statutory damages, rather than counting
each song separately. In an era when juries are awarding the record
labels $1.92 million for an album's worth of songs being infringed (and
industry apologists claim this is totally reasonable), it's nice to see
a court recognize how ridiculous this is."
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Google to Begin Peddling e-Books this Summer.
By John Timmer, Ars Technica, May 4, 2010.
http://tinyurl.com/25zk9j7

"Although its copyright settlement with publishers is still in legal
limbo, Google has announced that it will be starting to sell e-books
through an online storefront early this summer. Like Apple and Amazon,
Google's store would see it offer up in-print books obtained from
publishers, which will retain their ability to set the prices for these
works."
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The ACTA Copyright Treaty and Why You Should Care.
By Michael Geist, GigaOm, May 2, 2010.
http://tinyurl.com/2vuco4p

"After years of secrecy, the eighth round of talks aimed at drafting an
international treaty called the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement
(ACTA) recently concluded in New Zealand - and in the face of public
pressure, a version of the text was subsequently made available to the
public."
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Appeal in Salinger Copyright Case.
BBC, May 2, 2010.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/8656820.stm

"An appeal against the banning of a book promoted as a sequel to JD
Salinger's Catcher in the Rye has been given the go-ahead."
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Court OKs Unmasking Identities of Copyright Scofflaws.
By David Kravets, Wired News, April 30, 2010.
http://tinyurl.com/385coby

"A federal appeals court is blessing the legal process by which the
recording industry and other content owners unmask the identities of
alleged peer-to-peer copyright infringers."
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Google Gains Ground in Germany & US on Copyright & Trademark
Infringment.
By Jordan McCollum, Marketing Pilgrim, April 30, 2010.
http://tinyurl.com/33ywo5s

"Google saw two legal victories this week in copyright and trademark
issues. In the first case, a German artist uploaded large images of her
paintings to her website. When Google Image Search displayed thumbnails
of those images, she sued for copyright infringement. The German Supreme
Court ruled against the artist."
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IP-Czar Requested Public Copyright Comments Now Made Public.
By Chris Meadows, Teleread, April 30, 2010.
http://tinyurl.com/2em2oam

"A couple of months ago, Victoria Espinel-the White House's new
Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator-called for public comments
on the state of intellectual property law. As expected, a number of
groups from both sides of the copyright wars have weighed in."
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How to Remove the ICPP Copyright Violation Alert Ransomware.
By Dancho Danchev, Zeropaid, April 28, 2010.
http://blogs.zdnet.com/security/?p=6329

"Who would have thought that on your way to remove a ransomware scam
that affected your PC, you would be one day pirating the application
that was originally using a "copyright violation alert" theme, as a
spreading technique?"
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Copyright Defenders Don't Realize That New 'Fair Use' Report Mocks Their
Own Study.
By Mike Masnick, Techdirt, April 28, 2010.
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100427/1646069201.shtml

"Last year, we had written about how the CCIA had taken the same
methodology used by entertainment industry lobbyists to claim how "big"
the "copyright industry" was and applied it to the "fair use" industry,
to show that it was actually much bigger than the copyright industry.
Both numbers are clearly bogus -- which is effectively the point that
CCIA was making."
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Appeals Court Upholds Ruling in Seinfeld Cookbook Case.
By Megan Miller, CNN, April 28, 2010.
http://www.cnn.com/2010/CRIME/04/28/jessica.seinfeld.ruling/?hpt=Sbin

"The author of a children's cookbook cannot copyright ideas for slipping
vegetables into children's food, a federal appeals court said in
upholding a ruling in favor of the wife of comedian Jerry Seinfeld in a
copyright infringement case."
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Amy Mata
Graduate Assistant
Center For Intellectual Property
University of Maryland University College
Rm. 2293, Largo, 3501 University Boulevard East
Adelphi, MD  20783
(240) 684-2967 office
(240) 684-2961 fax
amata@xxxxxxxx
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