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This tactic is in stark contrast to the RIAA's lawsuit campaign which from a human perspective is being lost in obscurity. Yes, the RIAA has sued many, many individuals. But who are they? Do they live near me? All most people know is that over 12,000 individuals have been sued. Other than related sob stories such as the 12 year old Briana Lahara being targeted, these people might as well not even exist.Conversely, the MPAA has gone the exact opposite route. While similarly the MPAA will sue dozens of individuals on behalf of its member companies in a single round, it very cleverly publicly names those individuals that did not respond to the initial lawsuit notification. This paints a very human picture to their lawsuit campaign. It also gets tremendously specific by not only naming the individual, but also pin-pointing their home town.
A federal judge in Cedar Rapids has ordered an Iowa City man convicted in the "Operation Fastlink" case to turn over an assortment of computer equipment.Jathan Desir was the first person convicted as a part of a worldwide crackdown against online software piracy of software, games, movies and music.He pleaded guilty in December to copyright infringement and conspiracy charges.This week, Judge Robert Pratt ordered Desir to turn over 21 items, including computers, disk drives and memory cards for possible destruction. The property forfeiture was called for in the plea agreement.Desir, a former student at the University of Iowa, will be sentenced September 30th. He faces up to 15 years in prison.
Washington (D.C.) - Friends of the decentralized P2P technology community were in short supply on Capitol Hill Thursday afternoon, as all six panelists testifying before the Senate Commerce Committee hearings into the implications of last month's 9-0 Supreme Court decision in MGM v. Grokster--including the P2P industry's own representative--found themselves praising the decision to some degree.
Proposed legislation to regulate p2p by requiring filtering out of unauthorized copyrighted content would amount to a technology ban by would-be Internet police, says the StreamCast ceo, adding:"Any such filtering, whose long-term effectiveness is highly questionable, requires all files to travel through a central server and be checked against a massive database."Does the American Public want Orwellian laws passed where every file on the internet is fingerprinted, every user tagged, every search monitored and every result filtered just to protect the entertainment industry's archaic business model? "It's time for all stakeholders to work together to find business solutions for the digital age rather than try to rely on passing new laws that are difficult to keep pace with technological advances."
A 67-year-old man who says he doesn't even like watching movies has been sued by the film industry for copyright infringement after a grandson of his downloaded four movies on their home computer.The Motion Picture Association of America filed a federal lawsuit Tuesday against Fred **** seeking as much as $600,000 in damages for downloading four movies over the Internet file-sharing service iMesh.The suit was filed after **** refused a March offer to settle the matter by paying $4,000."First of all, like I say, I guess I'd have to plead being naive about the whole thing," he said."I personally didn't do it, and I wouldn't do it. But I don't think it was anything but an innocent mistake my grandson made."*** said his grandson, who was then 12, downloaded "The Incredibles," "I, Robot," "The Grudge," and "The Forgotten" in December, without knowing it was illegal to do so.The Racine man said his grandson downloaded the movies out of curiosity, and deleted the computer files immediately. The family already owned three of the four titles on DVD, he said.
On March 3, the Federal Communications Commission announced that it settled a case against a small North Carolina-based telephone company that was blocking the ability of its customers to use voice-over-Internet calling services instead of regular phone lines.On Sept. 15, the first major draft of proposed changes in the nation's telecommunication's laws was circulated by the House Energy and Commerce Committee. The draft said Internet service providers must not "block, impair, interfere with the offering of, access to, or the use of such content, applications or services."On Nov. 2, another draft of the bill came out, with language specifically addressing the Internet video services that are proliferating as connection speeds increase and the phone companies get into the digital television business. In this draft, the prohibition on blocking or impeding content was gone.If the bill passes as is, tech companies say, the Internet could be forever compromised."Enshrining a rule that broadly permits network operators to discriminate in favor of certain kinds of services and to potentially interfere with others would place broadband operators in control of online activity," Vinton G. Cerf, a founding father of the Internet who now works for Google Inc., wrote in a letter to Congress.The phone companies argue that with their new fiber-optic systems capable of handling huge amounts of bandwidth, they simply want the ability to set aside some of it for their own services, be it television, gaming or anything else.
Quote. The family already owned three of the four titles on DVD, he said.
. The family already owned three of the four titles on DVD, he said.
The Community Broadband Coalition, a diverse group of businesses, special interest groups and local government organizations, sent a letter to Congress today urging the passage of a community Internet bill.The bill's main sponsors are Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-NJ, and Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who say the United States lags behind other industrialized nations in providing broadband Internet to its citizens.Called the Community Broadband Act of 2005, the bill responds to efforts by telephone and cable television firms to pass laws forbidding local governments from providing telecommunications services.Cable and phone firms, including Comcast and Verizon, say government networks undermine their Internet access businesses and unfairly burden taxpayers.But, the coalition's letter said, "Only 30 percent of U.S. households subscribe to broadband services, a reflection of high prices, too few choices, and unavailability of attractive services."Groups that signed the letter included AARP, EarthLink Corp., Intel Corp., The United States Conference of Mayors and others.
The EFF's Deeplinks section has a pretty alarming post about the RIAA and MPAA's attempts to freeze the progress of consumer electronics technology and then start turning back the clock on all of us. Fair use, meet your successor: "customary historic use." The post points to broadcast flag draft legislation sponsored by Senator Gordon Smith (R-Ore.) that contains provisions which appear to limit digital broadcast media reception devices to "customary historic use of broadcast content by consumers to the extent such use is consistent with applicable law and that prevents redistribution of copyrighted content over digital networks." In other words, if it does anything heretofore unheard of with the digital content that it receives, then it's illegal. And if it does anything "customary" that could also possibly lead to unauthorized redistribution, then it's also illegal. So all the bases are covered!
HR 683 has just passed the US House of Representatives, and is now being considered in subcommittee hearings prior to presentation to the Senate Judiciary Committee. This new law, if enacted, will severely restrict the rights of your readers to portray trademarked items and phrases in their work. Quite literally, if someone paints a picture of flowers in a Coke(r) bottle, they may be liable for damages under the proposed statute.
Don Stewart, an Alabama graphic artist, has been drawing "visual puns" for many years, including this picture of a VW Beetle composed entirely of insects. This particular image was created in 1992, so Don was surprised to hear quite recently from Volkswagen's lawyers. They demanded that he stop circulating the image in any way, shape, or form, and suggested that he tear the images out of the coffee table book he sells and send those images to Volkswagen.But Don did not want to rip pages from his book and mail them to a group of attorneys.
"Spyware presents serious new challenges in detection, apprehension and enforcement," Majoras said. "But through litigation, the FTC has successfully challenged the distribution of spyware." The FTC first took action against a spyware company two years ago, when it sued Seismic Entertainment. The company was accused of exploiting a security flaw in Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser to hijack a Web user's home page, display incessant streams of pop-up ads and install other software. "The dissemination of harmful, unremovable programs that frustrate consumers' ability to control their own computers is digital carjacking, and we intend to vigorously prosecute it," Majoras said. The Seismic case is ongoing, and the FTC has filed several lawsuits since it filed its first case. Most recently, the FTC was asked to take action against 180solutions, a maker of ad-serving software.
The Copyright Law of the United StatesFree Searchable VersionSearch and analyze the full text of the Copyright Law of the United States of America & related laws contained in Title 17 of the United States Code. Copyright is a form of protection provided by the laws of the United States (title 17, U.S. Code) to the authors of “original works of authorship,” including literary, dramatic, musical, artistic, and certain other intellectual works. This protection is available to both published and unpublished works. There have been other texts that update this law such as the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The text is extremely useful in a searchable eBook.
California tightened its anti-piracy screws Wednesday when it enacted a new law lowering the felony threshold to 100 counterfeit CDs. Previously, the threshold for a felony copyright violation was 1,000 copies. Under a new measure signed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, the felony threshold is now the same for illegal CDs as it is for movies. "This law ensures that thieves threatening the livelihoods of those in the music industry will face much greater risk of being prosecuted and appropriately punished," Mitch Bainwol, chairman and CEO of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), said in a statement praising the new law. "This law will make thieves think twice about peddling stolen music." The legislation (AB 64), co-sponsored by assembly member Rebecca Cohn (D-Saratoga) and Sen. Kevin Murray (D-Culver City), was approved in the California Legislature with only two dissenting votes before moving to the governor's desk for signature.
On February 8th, U.S. Representative Edward J. Markey (D-Malden), the ranking Democrat on the Telecommunications and Internet Subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, proposed a bill with the potential to rattle the foundation of online marketing. If passed, the “Eliminate Warehousing of Consumer Internet Data Act of 2006? will forbid any website from retaining the personal information of its customers—including credit card numbers, e-mail address, date of birth, home address, and Social Security number—beyond the point which it is necessary for “legitimate business purposes.”The proposed legislation makes no distinction between corporations, individuals, bloggers, nonprofit groups or charities. If it is enacted, the bill will force them all to delete every idle piece of personal identification in their possession, or at least come up with a legitimate business purpose to hold on to it.
