Beastie Boys Can’t Escape ‘Paul’s Boutique’ Sampling Lawsuit — Great summary (as usual) by Eriq Gardner of a recent decision involving allegedly infringing samples used in the Beastie Boy’s classic album Paul’s Boutique. A link is provided to the actual decision, which will delight hardcore copyright nerds, as it extensively discusses the law’s substantial similarity doctrine and how it applies to sampling.
“Artists Should Expect Nothing†from Spotify says George Howard — The Trichordist has an excellent answer to that claim from Howard.
The end of kindness: Weev and the cult of the angry young man — Greg Sandoval has written a compelling and thoroughly disturbing (don’t read if you don’t have a strong stomach) piece on internet abuse and free speech. “‘I have this beef with a lot of organizations, including EFF,’ Aurora said. ‘This is another case where they’re saying, ‘The cases we care about are the ones white men are interested in. We’re less interested in protecting women on the web.’'”
About that “graduated response doesn’t work” paper — Say you found evidence of a murder on Google maps, and the Internet will work tirelessly until it has debunked the claim. Say you found evidence that copyright protections don’t work, and that’s apparently good enough. Fortunately, IPI’s Tom Giovanetti takes a closer look at a recent study that claims graduated response efforts are ineffective and finds, among other shortcomings, that the study’s author “ignores or disparages data that disagree with her prevailing bias, and … draws predetermined conclusions.”
Which music services are growing, which are shrinking — Paul Lamere has an interesting collection of graphs showing search trends over the past decade for a number of major online music services. See which services are apparently growing in popularity and which ones seem to be struggling to stay relevant.
FilmOn Turned Off: Another Court Rejects Aereo’s “Unique Copies” Interpretation — Details on last week’s decision from a DC District Court enjoining FilmOn X after finding that it was likely publicly performing television broadcasts without permission.
Randolph May & Seth Cooper: Copyright’s Constitutional History and Its Meaning for Today — The Originalism Blog notes that May and Cooper’s excellent article, Literary Property: Copyright’s Constitutional History and its Meaning for Today, is now available at SSRN. Recommended.
Five Things Congress Could Do for Music Creators That Wouldn’t Cost the Taxpayer a Dime Part 4: Pay Unclaimed Royalties to State Unclaimed Property Offices — The latest installment in Chris Castle’s multi-part series on practical, common sense updates to the copyright laws that would improve the situation for musicians and songwriters.