Goodlatte to unveil sweeping music copyright reform package next month — Looking to cap off his term as House Judiciary Committee Chairman and his five year copyright review process, Rep. Goodlatte is expected to move a package of bills aimed at updating music licensing provisions and addressing inequities in the current law.
Fixing Our Broken Small Claims System with the CASE Act — There’s is also hope that we will see legislation creating a copyright small claims process move through Congress this year. At IPWatchdog, Isaac Rubin lays out the case for the CASE Act.
The Father Of The Internet Sees His Invention Reflected Back Through A ‘Black Mirror’ — NPR interviews Vint Cerf about how the internet has turned out. “There is a kind of optimism that it takes to be an inventor. But the father of the Internet thinks inventors need the artists. ‘It’s the mind-stretching practice of trying to think what the implications of technology will be that makes me enjoy science fiction,’ Cerf says. ‘It teaches me that when you’re inventing something you should try to think about what the consequences might be.'”
Money Laundering Via Author Impersonation on Amazon? — Large internet platforms have enabled a new era of creativity in scams, fraud, and other criminal activity. Here, Brian Krebs notes one particular scheme that appears to use Amazon’s self-publishing platform to launder money. Unfortunately, the scheme involves impersonating innocent third parties, who then have to deal with 1099 forms showing income they’ve never received.
Studios Must Face Trimmed Lawsuit Over CG Characters in Blockbuster Movies — This case has so far flown under the radar, somewhat surprisingly, given that the plaintiffs had alleged a novel claim of copyright infringement: that, as owners of the motion capture technology that allows filmmakers to translate a human actors body movements into fantastical computer-generated characters, they owned the copyright in the final output. This week, a federal judge in California rejected those copyright claims, though patent and trademark claims survived the motion to dismiss.