Righthaven, a litigation factory outfit targeting bloggers for publishing excerpts from Las Vegas Review-Journal, apparently does not have the legal standing to sue for infringement as they do not even own the copyright to the content they are suing bloggers over.
From the heroic Electronic Frontier Foundation:
Over the holidays, video hosting site Veoh won another victory under the DMCA safe harbors, this time against Universal Music Group (UMG). The ruling should put to rest the argument that transcoding and other activities necessary for making content accessible on the web are not covered by the DMCA’s Section 512(c) safe harbor for storing material on behalf of users (i.e., hosting user-generated content). This is good news not just for Veoh, but also for YouTube and every other site that hosts material uploaded by users.
Like many other companies that host content on behalf of users, Veoh has been bedeviled by copyright lawsuits. The copyright owners make the same argument in each of these suits: the hosting service should be liable for every infringing bit uploaded by naughty users and responsible for the full cost of policing for infringement. Fortunately, Congress enacted the DMCA's safe harbor provisions back in 1998 to protect service providers from exactly these risks, offering immunity from copyright damages to those who implement a notice-and-takedown system. In August 2008, Veoh won a big victory against adult video purveyor Io Group, relying on these provisions.
Sites that host user-generated content are protected under the usually draconian Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) from the machinations of the copyfascist RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) and MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America). Liability is limited to the users actually committing the so-called infringement and not the sites that host the content. It is a victory and as mentioned in the article, Google will greatly benefit from this decision in its current suit with Viacom.
To those that are not familiar with Viacom v. Google, Viacom filed a 1 billion dollar lawsuit against YouTube and its corporate parent Google for the actions of its users. Many users that use YouTube are active posters of copyrighted content, remixed or otherwise. In question is whether or not Google or any other similarly built internet-based application or services can be held liable for the same copyright infringement of its users for hosting the infringing content posted by those users. At stake is perfectly legal, valid, and innovative use of such services. If the case goes in Viacom favor (and it can happen, just look at Grokster), this will discourage technology companies from developing a platform that will allow such open access to user-generated content.
I am extremely put-off by any collusion of Big Corporation with Big Government (hence my use of the word copyfascist and copyfascism). Every lawsuit these copy-monopolists file against innovators is a lawsuit filed against innovation, creativity, and the free market itself. These companies are asking for nothing less than an immoral government intervention on their behalf. A targeted bailout meant to mitigate risk to their failing business models at the expense of innovative start-ups and small businesses that pose a threat to their state-sanctioned monopoly.
It is very clear to me that copy-protectionism is incompatible with the free market.
Cross-posted to RedStateElectic.
From Against Monopoly:
Tom Cruise May Face Legal Action Over Hitler Globe reports that the collector who bought the famous "Hitler's globe" may sue for use of a likeness of the globe in Cruise's recent film Valkyrie, "the thriller about a real-life plot to assassinate Hitler." The article reports that in "2007, Pritikin paid $100,000 for the globe and had its likeness copyrighted to keep it from being used in propaganda by sick neo-Nazi groups." Whew, what a relief!
How is it even possible to copyright something you did not create, but purchased?
Yesterday, reports started to trickle in that the Zune 30 GB, a media device sold by Microsoft, was failing everywhere at once. Fans and users have dubbed it the Y2K9 bug.
From Gizmodo:
Apparently, around 2:00 AM today, the Zune models either reset, or were already off. Upon when turning on, the thing loads up and… freezes with a full loading bar (as pictured above). I thought my brother was the only one with it, but then it happened to my Zune. Then I checked out the forums and it seems everyone with a 30GB HDD model has had this happen to them.
Thankfully, a fix has already been posted by Microsoft. That is, simply wait until January 1st, 2009.
But this incident should be a wake-up call, according to Copyfight.
This should be a clarion warning that using proprietary hardware or software (DRM) to restrict peoples' ability to manage their legally owned content is a bad plan. We are all at the mercy of whatever bugs and bad business plans lie behind these locks.
DRM, or Digital Rights Management, are access controls technologies used by publishers, hardware companies, and content creators to restrict the usage of media, files, or data they sell to consumers. DRM goes beyond copy protection (prevention of unauthorized copying). It restricts what devices the files can be accessed with, what applications it can be used, how many copies can be made, how many times something can be used. DRM locks are innocuous enough as many of them are easily broken, if it were not for the fact it is back by the full power of the state apparatus under the draconian Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DCMA) that makes anyone that attempts or succeeds in circumventing these locks a criminal.
Cross-posted to RedStateEclectic.
The New York Times is being sued by GateHouse Media, a publisher of mostly small, local newspapers, for copyright infringement over its linking and aggregation practices in its Boston Globe online unit.
In its lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Massachusetts on Monday, Fairport, N.Y.-based GateHouse Media, which publishes more than 100 papers in Massachusetts, accuses the Times of violating copyright by allowing its Boston Globe online unit to copy verbatim the headlines and first sentences from articles published on sites owned by GateHouse, including the Newton Tab.
The links, as seen on Boston.com’s Newton site for instance, lead to the original articles on the GateHouse-owned sites, which display advertising. However the lawsuit claims GateHouse is losing advertising revenue as a result of the linking because readers don’t see the ads on the GateHouse site's home page.
The linking also confuses readers, leading them to believe that GateHouse endorses the linking practice, according to the lawsuit.
According Catherine Mathis, senior vice president of corporate communications at the New York Times, the linking practice is common around the web and that GateHouse Media's claim of copyright infringement does not have merit.
Many blogs and news sites like Digg aggregate hundreds and thousands of headlines from all around the web and republishes snippets of news with links back to the original source. The heart of this issue is whether the practice falls under Fair Use or not.
In a similar case last year, Google was sued by Agence France-Presse (AFP) for its practice of republishing summaries of articles in its websites as part of its Google News service. That case was settled and ended with AFP entering a licensing deal with Google.
Cross-posted to RedStateEclectic.
A collection of links related to copyright, copyfight, and copyfascism.
On Reddit:
On Delicious:
I have been reading The Technology Liberation Front (libertarians critiquing developments in the fields of the internet and technology) and came across Tim Lee's repost of the popular webcomic XKCD regarding End-User License Agreements (EULA) with a question, "Legally enforceable?"
Wendy Grossman explained the legal gray area that surrounds every EULA software companies use for their softwares:
If you did read the terms, you might be surprised. Eulas typically specify that the software's publisher is not liable if anything goes wrong. They typically specify the publisher's preferred jurisdiction for legal disputes. And some are even more restrictive: some graphics packages have been known to specify that they cannot be used in the production of pornographic images. Yet these licences are, as Hanlon complained, not really contracts: you generally cannot read them before you buy (rather than use) the software, and you can't negotiate terms.
I have tackled the question before in Copyfascism Watch, where I raised another point that EULAs are not voluntary contracts as they are not agreed upon prior to the purchase of the software. And there is the bizarre claim by manufacturers that consumers are merely purchasing the physical CDs and not the software it contains. I asked, "How legitimate are the claims of manufacturers that consumers are merely buying the CDs and not the permission to install and use the software for which the consumer (rightly, I might add) believed he is paying?"
Jeffrey Tucker of the Mises Blog responded:
[R]estrictive covenants do this all the time with houses for example. You buy the house in a particular neighborhood and it is really yours, but you can't paint your shutters pink and you have to mow your grass and can't leave a sofa on the porch etc. Why can't EULAs amount to a sort of covenant?
In the Mises Blog, Tucker also asked this question, "Are EULAs contrary to property rights?" Tucker seems to be of notion that is similar to a covenant, but therein lies the issue and the difference between physical property covenants and EULAs: covenants are known and agreed upon prior to purchase, EULAs are hidden contracts that is then revealed to you after the purchase.
A commenter named PR raised the same point:
Since the EULA isn't revealed until after the buyer has handed over his money, of course it shouldn't be considered a valid agreement. All the examples of convenants I know of are presented to the buyer before the sale, but a EULA is more like a legal Trojan horse that restricts the use of property one already owns.
Many of the responses seem to miss that point and the important issue regarding this unconscionable agreements: it is secret, it is hidden, and cannot be agreed to prior to purchase. A commenter pointed out that you can always return the software, but most stores I purchase software from only have a return-policy for unopened boxes of software. Of course, one can argue that one can choose not to patronize the store that has taken one's money for a software crippled by an agreement one cannot agree to prior to purchase and afterwards, but since when do libertarians make excuses for theft?
Cross-posted to RedStateEclectic.
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