Copyhype

As Batman so sagely told Robin, “In our well-ordered society, protection of private property is essential.”

Ninth Circuit, holding that Batmobile is protected as a copyrighted character. ¹DC Comics v. Towle, No. 13-55484 (9th Cir. 2015).

Kim Dotcom case is ’simple fraud’, court told — “Gordon said Megaupload, the now-defunct site at the heart of Dotcom’s online empire, was part of a scheme to steal copyright-protected material. ‘The respondents took part in a conspiracy,’ she said. ‘They deliberately introduced copyright-infringing material to their website, they deliberately preserved that material, they deliberately took steps to profit from that material and made vast sums of money.'” See also Let’s Get Real about Kim Dotcom: The Indictment Clearly Alleges Felony Copyright Infringement.

Behind the Authors Guild’s New Proactive Approach — “Since Mary Rasenberger took over as executive director of the Authors Guild last November, the writers’ group has undertaken two significant projects: its Fair Contract Initiative and the first survey of guild membership in six years. Both efforts, Rasenberger said, are designed to help the organization better represent the interests of its 9,000 members, not just with publishers, but with government officials and other groups that can affect the livelihood of all authors.”

Valuing Music in a Digital World — Cary Sherman: “Compounding the harm is that some major online music distributors are taking advantage of this flawed system. Record companies are presented with a Hobson’s choice: Accept below-market deals or play that game of whack-a-mole. The notice and takedown system—intended as a reasonable enforcement mechanism—has instead been subverted into a discount licensing system where copyright owners and artists are paid far less than their creativity is worth.”

This free online encyclopedia has achieved what Wikipedia can only dream of — Spoiler: It’s the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, which predates Wikipedia by six years. Unlike Wikipedia, the Stanford Encyclopedia manages to be authoritative, comprehensive, and up-to-date, and does so by relying on a hierarchy of editors and expert authors rather than “the wisdom of the crowd.”

USTR Releases Detailed Summary of TPP Objectives — Included are the objectives of the free trade agreement’s copyright chapter.

GroupM And TAG Partner To Fight Piracy, The “Seed That Grows Into Ad Fraud” — “’The people who create pirate sites are the same ones who perpetrate clickbot fraud – they’re the ones who spread malware and create the armies of bots that generate most of the automated clicks in the business,’ said John Montgomery, chairman of GroupM Connect, North America , and co-chair of the Trustworthy Accountability Group’s (TAG) antipiracy working group.”

The Fake Traffic Schemes that are Rotting the Internet — “’I can think of nothing that has done more harm to the Internet than ad tech,’” says Bob Hoffman, a veteran ad executive, industry critic, and author of the blog the Ad Contrarian. ‘It interferes with everything we try to do on the Web. It has cheapened and debased advertising and spawned criminal empires.’ Most ridiculous of all, he adds, is that advertisers are further away than ever from solving the old which-part-of-my-budget-is-working problem. ‘Nobody knows the exact number,’ Hoffman says, ‘but probably about 50 percent of what you’re spending online is being stolen from you.'”