Son of NewzBin: Another victory for the film-makers — IPKat takes a look at one of the many British copyright decisions to come through this week. In this one, the court ruled in favor of the Motion Picture Association’s action to require a British ISP to block access to a website previously deemed infringing.
Drop It Like It’s Hot[file] — On July 8th, the direct infringement claim against cyberlocker Hotfile was dismissed, leaving only the secondary infringement claims brought by the five major motion picture studios. Christopher Harrison wonders if the court got it right, noting that once a file is uploaded, Hotfile creates five additional copies of the file; this seems to Harrison to be the type of volitional conduct that previous cases weren’t talking about when they found no direct infringement.
Of libraries and writers (and rights) — John Degen notes, with some irony, that when libraries are in trouble, it is authors that come to their aid, while the free-culture movement sits in silence. Good read.
Rogue Site Goes Good — China’s top search engine Baidu, long a concern of rightsholders for its notorious infringement, has recently announced a licensing deal with several major music labels. Steve Tepp calls this a “dramatic step in the right direction.”
Hello Mr. Brightside — Eric Beall gives five reasons to be optimistic about the music industry. “After almost a decade of what has seemed like irreversible decline in the music industry, with each year bringing declining sales, more consolidation, less creative growth, and a growing irrelevance in pop culture, we might finally be turning things around.”
Un-cover-ing — Law Law Land never fails to deliver entertaining and often humorous articles on mostly dry legal topics. Here, Harrison J. Reynolds looks at cover songs of cover songs. That is, sometimes a cover song is so distinctive or different from the original version that it becomes almost like a different song. Are there any legal issues that arise when another artist covers the cover song?
Pittsburgh Transforms into Gotham City — The Steel City is home to the third installment of the new Batman trilogy. The largest film production that Pittsburgh has seen brings with it thousands of jobs and big boosts in revenues for local businesses.
Disruptors disrupted: NLA victory brings common sense back to copyright — Dominic Young cuts through the hype associated with a UK Court of Appeals ruling that a news crawler and its PR clients require a license from newspapers. It is not, as some have characterized the decision, the end of the web as we know it.
The Oddball US Privacy Law That’s Keeping Netflix Away from Facebook — A law that puts limits on publishing a person’s video rental history is making Netflix hesitant to open up its Facebook application in the US. Social networking has really turned the concept of privacy on its head.
Labor is a cost, not a profit — Though geared toward prop-makers, Eric Hart’s (my brother) post is great advice for anyone freelancing in creative fields.
ZapTunes wants deals to sell independent artists’ music — A warning to independent artists. This company was previously in the news for selling what amounted to an mp3 search engine for $25 a month, with the added bonus that some users reported credit card charges after they had cancelled. Not a bad idea to steer clear of this one.
Five Minutes of Fame — Faza at the Cynical Musician looks at fame and the internet. “Musicians have tended to monetise their fame directly: fame meant fans and fans meant sales. Fame can thus be viewed as mind-share, in the marketing sense. If this fame-sales connection is broken – something we seem to be heading towards – then there seems to be little benefit to be had from your short-term fame while it lasts. That is why I say that a non-paying fan is no better than a non-fan. It is best understood when we compare Rebecca Black and Justin Beiber – both are world-famous, but only one of them has a career.”
Lay Judgments of Judicial Decision-Making — The results of a study confirm what many perhaps find obvious. Non-lawyers base their decision of how “good” a judicial opinion is primarily on the result; if they agree with the outcome of the case, they accept the reasoning the court used to get there.