Illuminating the Profession: Women in Copyright — As part of Women’s History Month, former US Register of Copyrights Ralph Oman interviews a number of illustrious copyright lawyers, including June Besek, Dale Cendali, Mary Rasenberger, Kate Spelman, Francine Ward, and Nancy Wolff.
Fact checking Michael Geist’s criticisms of the FairPlay site blocking proposal — Canadian copyright attorney Barry Sookman has written a tour de force response to Geist, showing that site blocking is effective, consistent with human rights, and employed by many other countries.
Taking a Look Under the Red Carpet — “Hollywood is synonymous with the red carpet, but the public perception of Hollywood being only the red carpet could not be further from the truth. Behind all the glitz and glamour, filmmaking is difficult, hands-on, down and dirty labor.”
DOJ Antitrust Chief: We Are Reviewing ASCAP, BMI Consent Decrees — At a recent appearance at Vanderbilt Law School, the DOJ’s Delrahim spoke about taking a closer look at the 1,300 consent decrees currently on the books. In particular, he signaled that the decrees governing the two largest PROs would come under scrutiny, saying, “The way music is licensed has been governed by these consent decrees since 1941… So, 77 years of a consent decree, rates being set by a judge in rate court as opposed to free market competition [which he favors] and we are taking a look at that.”
Google Could Owe Oracle $8.8 Billion in Android Fight — Susan Decker of Bloomberg Technology reports on this week’s Federal Circuit decision, “Oracle said its APIs are freely available to those who want to build applications for computers and mobile devices, but draws the line at anyone who wants to use them for a competing platform or to embed them in an electronic device…’There is nothing fair about taking a copyrighted work verbatim and using it for the same purpose and function as the original in a competing platform,’ the appeals court ruled.”