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Why, Mr. Moderator, is this article found to be objectionable by you? Removing legitimate news articles from legitimate sources should not be the rule here on Free Republic. And, incidentally, it's not free as I contribute to the website on a regular basis.

On Friday, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) published the first public draft of Encrypted Media Extensions (EME). EME enables content providers to integrate digital rights management (DRM) interfaces into HTML5-based media players. Encrypted Media Extensions is being developed jointly by Google, Microsoft and online streaming-service Netflix. No actual encryption algorithm is part of the draft; that element is designed to be contained in a CDM (Content Decryption Module) that works with EME to decode the content. CDMs may be plugins or built into browsers. The publication of the new draft is a blow for critics of the extensions, led...

"Never had standing to sue, Ninth Circuit confirms." http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/05/copyright-troll-righthaven-finally-completely-dead/

Watchers of the Prenda Law saga have been waiting for United States District Judge Otis D. Wright II to issue an order in the wake of his apocalyptic hearing on proposed sanctions against Prenda Law, its putative client entities, and its lawyers. During that wait, doubt has set in. Could Judge Wright's order, after all this drama, possibly live up to expectations? Could any dry memorandum capture the jaw-dropping antics that have come before? Yeeeeop. This afternoon Judge Wright issued an annihilating, hull-breaching order against Prenda Law, its principals, and its plaintiff entities. How does a federal judge assure that...

Harper Lee, the author of To Kill A Mockingbird, has sued her literary agent for allegedly duping her into assigning him the copyright on the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. In the lawsuit filed in federal court in Manhattan, Lee says Samuel Pinkus, the son-in-law of Lee's long-time agent, Eugene Winick, took advantage of her failing hearing and eyesight to transfer the rights on the book, which has sold more than 30 million copies worldwide and became an Oscar-winning film. The 87-year-old says she has no memory of agreeing to relinquish her rights or signing the agreement that cements the purported transfer.

Q: Okay, so what is the Christian account of how revelation occurred?As Elmer Fudd might say, “Vewy, vewy swowly.” Divine revelation didn’t happen in a blinding flash—such as God dropping the Summa Theologiae on top of a mountain and waiting for people to invent the Latin language so they could read it. (Though He could have given them magical spectacles that would translate it for them….) It seems that God preferred to slowly unfold His personality and His will for us through the course of tangled, messy human history. We might wonder why, and call up the divine customer service...

Today the Prenda Law enterprise encountered an extinction-level event. Faced with a federal judge's demand that they explain their litigation conduct, Prenda Law's attorney principals — and one paralegal — invoked their right to remain silent under the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution. As a matter of individual prudence, that may have been the right decision. But for the nationwide Prenda Law enterprise, under whatever name or guise or glamour, it spelled doom. -Hail, Hail, The Gang's All Here- The crowd gathered early outside of the courtroom of United States District Judge Otis D. Wright II. As before,...

Link only due to the subject of the article.

Back in November of last year, Republican staffer Derek Khanna faced a dilemma that, unlike the problems faced by many of his peers in the GOP, had nothing to do with the election. Specifically, Khanna had authored a memo on copyright reform for his then-employers, the Republican Study Committee (RSC) that shot down three “myths of copyright” – that is, that “the purpose of copyright is to compensate the creator of the content,” that “copyright is the free market at work,” and that “the current copyright legal regime leads to the greatest innovation and productivity.” Khanna’s memo was meant to...

WASHINGTON—The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday handed a setback to publishers, ruling in favor of a Thai student who bought inexpensive foreign-edition textbooks and resold them to U.S. students on eBay. The high court rejected arguments by publisher John Wiley & Sons Inc., which accused Supap Kirtsaeng, a former University of Southern California Ph.D. student, of infringing its copyrights on several works, including textbooks on physics, organic chemistry and engineering. The Asian versions of those books were marked with warnings that they were intended for sale only in certain foreign regions. U.S. law has long held that in principle, once...

The rollout of the Copyright Alert System will be delayed until early 2013, according to the Center for Copyright Information (CCI). The system, also referred to as the “Six Strikes” program, is intended to deter copyright infringement committed through illegal file sharing. CCI indicates that the damage caused by Hurricane Sandy is largely to blame for the delays. "Due to unexpected factors largely stemming from Hurricane Sandy which have seriously affected our final testing schedules, CCI anticipates that the participating ISPs will begin sending alerts under the Copyright Alert System in the early part of 2013, rather than by the...

Instagram just set off a bomb inside its new privacy policy and terms of service. New wording essentially makes it possible to turn people’s photos posted after Jan. 16 using Instagram into advertisements. In other words, that sutro-toned picture of your beloved Lhasa apso freshly coiffed after her grooming might well become an ad for Classy Canine Dog Salon. The language at issue: [Y]ou hereby grant to Instagram a non-exclusive, fully paid and royalty-free, transferable, sub-licensable, worldwide license to use the Content that you post on or through the Service, except that you can control who can view certain of...

Archaeologist suing makers of Indiana Jones, claiming their Crystal Skull is too accurate Can a fantastical movie be too historically accurate? Dr. Jaime Awe, director of the Institute of Archeology of Belize, has filed suit against Lucasfilm and Paramount Pictures claiming that the prop skull from Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull bears a striking resemblance to one of the "real" Crystal Skulls originally discovered in Belize. So why is that a problem? Well, according to Awe, the skull was stolen, and the filmmakers are profitting off of ill-gotten goods. The Hollywood Reporter broke the news of...

Derek Khanna, the Republican House staffer who wrote an eminently sensible paper on copyright reform that was retracted less than a day later has been fired. So much for the GOP's drive to attract savvy, net-centric young voters. After all, this is the party that put SOPA's daddy in charge of the House Tech and Science Committee. But it's pretty terrible for Khanna -- what a shabby way of dealing with dissent within your ranks. Staffer axed by Republican group over retracted copyright-reform memo [Timothy B. Lee/Ars Technica] (via /.)

If there's been one topic that has entirely dominated the post-election landscape, it's the fiscal cliff. Will taxes be raised? Which programs will be cut? Who will blink first in negotiations? For all the talk of the fiscal cliff, however, I believe the US is facing a much more serious problem, one that has simply not been talked about at all: corruption. But this isn't the overt, "bartering of government favors in return for private kickbacks" corruption. Instead, this type of corruption has actually been legalized. And it is strangling both US competitiveness, and the ability for US firms to...

Illegally downloading a couple dozen songs can earn you a million-dollar fine. Setting some Robert Frost verses to music can make you a criminal. Software or hardware that could possibly be used to copy DVDs -- illegal. And thanks to congressional action every couple of decades, Disney still holds a copyright over Mickey Mouse, whom Walt first created nearly a century ago. The law and law enforcement around copyright has moved far beyond its purpose of promoting arts and sciences and has become a textbook case of collusion between big business and big government. If Republicans took on this issue,...

"In response to the new Facebook guidelines, I hereby declare that my copyright is attached to all of my personal details, illustrations, comics, paintings, professional photos and videos, etc. (as a result of the Berner Convention). For commercial use of the above my written consent is needed at all times!" You may have seen that very message pop up -- perhaps time and time again -- in your Facebook feed. The message has been making the rounds on the social network. It encourages people to copy and paste the text and post it on their own walls if they want...

Outline/Summary: This paper will analyze current US Copyright Law by examining three myths on copyright law and possible reforms to copyright law that will lead to more economic development for the private sector and to a copyright law that is more firmly based upon constitutional principles. 1. The purpose of copyright is to compensate the creator of the content:It’s a common misperception that the Constitution enables our current legal regime of copyright protection – in fact, it does not. The Constitution’s clause on Copyright and patents states:“To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times...

The Righthaven LLC copyright lawsuit saga will continue indefinitely after a judge on Wednesday blocked efforts to have Righthaven's CEO fired and its appeals canceled. Righthaven is known for filing 275 no-warning lawsuits in 2010 and 2011 in partnership with the Las Vegas Review-Journal and the Denver Post. As a company, as opposed to being a law firm, Righthaven had acquired copyrights from the newspapers for lawsuit purposes. It sued individuals, companies and nonprofits it claimed infringed on the copyrights by posting content from the newspapers online without authorization. The company essentially shut down last year after judges in three...

Gloating over what they consider a “colossal blunder,” the Obama campaign has launched a series of ads promising that Obama will save the Sesame Street character from “extinction” at the hands of the GOP. Obama Campaign spokesperson, Jennifer Psaki boasted that “the cruel side of Governor Romney is now on display for every voter with school-aged children to see. The idea that he would even consider defunding this American icon is the unkindest cut of all. We won't let voters forget it.” Whether Big Bird or Sesame Street would face extinction without federal subsidies seems dubious. The Sesame Street operation...

CHICAGO (MarketWatch) — Tucked into the U.S. Supreme Court’s busy agenda this fall is a little-known case that could upend your ability to resell everything from your grandmother’s antique furniture to your iPhone 4. At issue in Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley & Sons is the first-sale doctrine in copyright law, which allows you to buy and then sell things like electronics, books, artwork and furniture as well as CDs and DVDs, without getting permission from the copyright holder of those products. Under the doctrine, which the Supreme Court has recognized since 1908, you can resell your stuff without worry because...

CHICAGO (MarketWatch) — Tucked into the U.S. Supreme Court’s agenda this fall is a little-known case that could upend your ability to resell everything from your grandmother’s antique furniture to your iPhone 4. At issue in Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley & Sons is the first-sale doctrine in copyright law, which allows you to buy and then sell things like electronics, books, artwork and furniture, as well as CDs and DVDs, without getting permission from the copyright holder of those products. [snip] That’s being challenged now for products that are made abroad, and if the Supreme Court upholds an appellate court...

NBC tells Obama not to use footageBy DYLAN BYERS | 10/6/12 1:47 PM EDT **SNIP** In a letter sent Friday night to Obama campaign manager Jim Messina, NBC told the Obama campaign to cease using network footage in a new 30-second spot, released shortly after Wednesday’s debate, in which Andrea Mitchell is shown on air citing an independent, stating that Mitt Romney’s tax plan would cost $4.8 trillion over 10 years, a source said. **SNIP** “NBC News has not granted any campaign permission to use our news material. As is our practice, we have requested that the Obama campaign refrain...

If you've downloaded even one movie, song or TV show using the BitTorrent file-sharing system, chances are, it didn't go unnoticed. A U.K. study has found that pretty much all files shared with the help of popular torrent sites like The Pirate Bay are monitored — mostly by large internet service companies likely acting on behalf of copyright enforcers or private corporations.

Anyone using file-sharing service BitTorrent to download the latest film or music release is likely to be monitored, UK-based researchers suggest. A Birmingham University study indicates that an illegal file-sharer downloading popular content would be logged by a monitoring firm within three hours. The team said it was "surprised" by the scale of the monitoring. Copyright holders could use the data to crack down on illegal downloads. The three-year research was carried out by a team of computer scientists who developed software that acted like a BitTorrent file-sharing client and logged all the connections made to it. BitTorrent is a...

Las Vegas copyright lawsuit company Righthaven LLC suffered another setback Wednesday when an appeals court dismissed one of its appeals. The dismissal was requested by the nonprofit Center for Intercultural Organizing (CIO) in Portland, Ore., which won a key fair-use ruling last year against Righthaven. The dismissal was granted Wednesday by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, which cited case law that appeared to back arguments by the CIO that Righthaven could no longer participate in the case since creditors had seized the copyrights it sues over. In layman’s terms, the CIO argued Righthaven no longer...

Righthaven LLC founder Steven Gibson insisted Monday he remains in charge of the Las Vegas company and asked a judge to block efforts to fire him as CEO. Gibson filed papers in federal court in Las Vegas challenging recent actions by Lara Pearson, a Lake Tahoe-area attorney appointed by the court last year to take control of Righthaven assets and to sell them for the benefit of creditors.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court has refused to take up a Boston University student's constitutional challenge to a $675,000 penalty for illegally downloading 30 songs and sharing them on the Internet. The high court on Monday refused to hear an appeal from Joel Tenenbaum, of Providence, R.I., who was successfully sued by the Recording Industry Association of America for illegally sharing music on peer-to-peer networks. In 2009, a jury ordered Tenenbaum to pay $675,000, or $22,500 for each song he illegally downloaded and shared.

Aereo could kill TV business model, broadcasters sayBy Andrew Feinberg - 05/11/12 01:22 PM ET Barry Diller's upstart Aereo service, which lets paying customers record and watch over-the-air television stations online, could destroy the economic model behind television, an NBC-Universal exec said in a court filing. Aereo is being sued by all of the major television broadcasters in federal court in New York, where the service was launched. In a sworn declaration, NBC-Universal executive vice president for content distribution Matt Bond said Aereo could alter how cable and satellite companies handle traditional TV stations. He said Aereo could let the...

Received a takedown request from the copyright/trademark holder. Please do not post the Maxine character to FR. Even as parodies. They respect our rights to free speech, but do not appreciate Maxine voicing our opinions. If you spot a post of Maxine (examples: google/search/images/maxine ), please alert the moderators via abuse report so we can remove it. Thanks, Jim

Following outrage from parents; a changed version of "God Bless the USA" has been pulled from an upcoming school assembly concert. According to parents, children at Stall Brook Elementary school were told to sing "We love the USA" instead of "God Bless the USA" during the chorus of the popular Lee Greenwood song.

Late Friday, the federal district court in Nevada issued a declaratory judgment that makes is harder for copyright holders to file lawsuits over excerpts of material and burden online forums and their users with nuisance lawsuits. The judgment – part of the nuisance lawsuit avalanche started by copyright troll Righthaven – found that Democratic Underground did not infringe the copyright in a Las Vegas Review-Journal newspaper article when a user of the online political forum posted a five-sentence excerpt, with a link back to the newspaper's website. Judge Roger Hunt’s judgment confirms that an online forum is not liable for...

The '80s have come back to bite Rush Limbaugh in the ass ... Rush (the band) has followed Peter Gabriel's lead and have demanded Limbaugh stop using their music on his radio show ASAP. Rush (the band) was FURIOUS when they discovered Rush (radio guy) was playing their song "The Spirit of Radio" as he ranted about wanting to see sex tapes of Sandra Fluke. The band got even more upset when they learned it wasn't the first time Rush (radio) has used their music on his show. The band has since fired off a cease and desist letter to...

As advertisers, affiliates and the general public continue to raise cain over Rush Limbaugh’s inflammatory comments about Sandra Fluke, another party has added his voice to the protest. A rep for singer/songwriter Peter Gabriel posted a message on his Facebook page insisting that the Brit's music no longer be used on Limbaugh’s radio show. Gabriel’s “Sledgehammer” was utilized in the background of Limbaugh’s now-infamous rant, in which he called the Georgetown student a “slut” and a “prostitute.” The Facebook message reads: “Peter was appalled to learn that his music was linked to Rush Limbaugh’s extraordinary attack on Sandra Fluke. It...

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Wednesday upheld a federal law that restored copyright protection to works that had entered the public domain. By a 6-to-2 vote, the justices rejected arguments based on the First Amendment and the Constitution’s copyright clause, saying that the public domain was not “a category of constitutional significance” and that copyright protections might be expanded even if they did not create incentives for new works to be created. The case, Golan v. Holder, No. 10-545, considered a 1994 law enacted to carry out an international convention. The law applied mainly to works first published abroad...

The takedown of the file-sharing site over copyright violations provides a warning about being careful where you store stuff. Megaupload file seizure shows why many cautious about the cloud Megaupload users are crying foul after their personal files, not necessarily copyright-infringing material, stored with the file-sharing service was seized on Thursday along with a trove of illegally distributed copyrighted works. Some of those users took to Twitter complaining about the loss of their files, as first reported by TorrentFreak. "I had files up there...gone forever..and they were personal recordings! No copyright infringement!" said Twitter user J. Amir. Another user complained...

The United States Supreme Court has ruled that a treaty did not exceed Congressional authority in the copyright clause of the Constitution. In a Jan. 18 ruling on Golan v. Holder, the court held 6-2 that a treaty seeking to equalize copyright protection on an international basis, called the Uruguay Round Agreements Act, did not exceed ...

When the Obama administration announced on Saturday its opposition to major elements of two Congressional bills intended to curtail copyright violations on the Internet, the technology industry, which has been loudly fighting the proposed legislation, could declare victory. But few people in Silicon Valley or Hollywood consider the battle over. The Motion Picture Association of America, which represents Hollywood studios and is a principal proponent of the antipiracy legislation, suggested that it would continue to push the administration to approve a modified version of the bills, known as the Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect Intellectual Property Act. “Look...

A Sheffield student can be extradited to the US to face copyright infringement allegations, a judge has ruled. Richard O'Dwyer, 23, set up the TVShack website which US authorities say hosts links to pirated copyrighted films and television programmes. The Sheffield Hallam University student lost his case in a hearing at Westminster Magistrates' Court. If found guilty in a US court he could face up to five years in jail.

BEIJING - Nine Chinese writers sued Apple Inc for violating copyright and demanded compensation totaling 12 million yuan ($1.9 million). The move was the latest attempt by writers to protect their rights online as more readers turned to e-books, lawyers said. Beijing No 2 Intermediate People's Court has accepted the lawsuit jointly filed by Chinese writers like Han Han, Li Chengpeng and He Ma, an official at the court said on Monday. "The court is examining documents and materials provided by those writers, as each of them has his or her compensation requests," court official Li Zhitao said, adding the...

AP and 28 News Groups To Collect Fees From Aggregators The Associated Press and 28 other news organizations have launched a project to collect fees from aggregators who are reposting their content around the Web. The project, knowns as NewsRight, will be a separate business that will license original news from the media companies, and collect royalties from aggregators, according to Poynter. The project was formerly known as the News Registry and News Licensing Group, and has been in the pipeline for several years now.

Almost missed this one, but Eric Goldman alerts us to the dozen comments filed with the US Copyright Office concerning its plan to force everyone to keep re-registering their official DMCA agent in order to keep retaining the DMCA's safe harbors. As we've discussed in the past, in order to make use of the DMCA's safe harbors, you have to register an official DMCA agent with the Copyright Office. In fact, we've suggested that anyone running a blog or forum site do exactly that. Many of the companies that were successfully sued by Righthaven (before it was discovered Righthaven didn't...

The court-authorized dismantling of Las Vegas copyright company Righthaven LLC appeared to be under way Thursday, with the company losing control of its website to a receiver. As noted by the Righthaven Victims website critical of Righthaven, the righthaven.com website on Thursday was no longer operational and that domain name was “parked” at domain name hoster GoDaddy.com — apparently so it can be auctioned. Records at Network Solutions, which tracks domain names, showed control of Righthaven’s website domain name was transferred Wednesday to Randazza Legal Group, which represents Righthaven creditor Wayne Hoehn. However, attorney Marc Randazza said that information...

Copyright lawsuit filer Righthaven LLC of Las Vegas faced more problems Monday after a federal judge granted a defendant’s motion that Righthaven be placed under control of a receiver and that its copyrights be auctioned off, giving it nothing to sue or appeal over. U.S. District Judge Philip Pro granted the motion made by attorneys for defendant Wayne Hoehn, who said a receiver was needed to run the company and that its assets should be auctioned. That was after Righthaven failed to pay their attorney’s fees and U.S. Marshals were unable to round up enough Righthaven assets to cover their...

Look for changes in the proposed antipiracy legislation that has giants in the entertainment and technology industries squared off against each other, but nothing extensive enough to please all of the legislation's opponents. That was the message from Michael O'Leary, the senior executive vice president for global policy and external affairs of the Motion Picture Association of America, during a telephone news briefing on Wednesday. "We will come forward with language that will address some of the legitimate concerns" of technology companies that have opposed the Stop Online Piracy Act in the House, and a similar Protect I.P. Act in...

The worst bill in Internet history is about to become law. This bill is a workaround to net neutrality and is bigger than net neutrality. PROTECT IP (S. 968)/SOPA (HR. 3261) creates the first system for Internet censorship - this bill has sweeping provisions that give the government and corporations leeway and legal cover for taking down sites. This is the worst piece of Internet legislation in history - the lawmakers who have been sponsoring (Leahy, Lamar Smith, Conyers) are wasting taxpayer dollars on a bill that would break the very fabric of the Internet, create an Internet blacklist, kill...

A must read for bloggers of all stripes: how Donald Douglas from American Power  whupped the copyright trolls in court... 'Beating Righthaven' -here-

Justin Bieber says Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar should be "locked up" and led away in "handcuffs!" And, we agree with him on this issue. The senator (pictured, right) is trying to pass the "Bieber Bill," which would ban people from singing other people's songs --specifically online, in places like YouTube. "Whomever she is she needs to know that I'm saying she needs to be locked up," he told Clear Channel's Kane of The Kane Show today. "I just think that's ridiculous."

WASHINGTON—Supreme Court justices riffed on artists from Shostakovich to Jimi Hendrix in arguments Wednesday about whether Congress can grant copyrights to works by foreign authors never before protected in the U.S. . Solicitor General Donald Verrilli, defending the law, said it brought the U.S. into a convention that can protect American intellectual property abroad and amounted to "the price of admission to the international system." Several justices, however, doubted that taking books and music by long-dead authors out of the public domain could promote the "progress" the Constitution sought to spur through copyright. .

Samsung targets iPhone 4S sales ban in France, Italy 9:29am EDT SEOUL (Reuters) - Samsung Electronics said it will file patent-infringement claims in France and Italy to ban the sale of Apple's new iPhone less than a day after it was unveiled, intensifying a legal battle between the two top brands. It will also file legal cases in other countries to stop the sale of the iPhone 4S after further review, the South Korean maker of Galaxy smartphones and tablets said in a statement. Samsung has emerged as a credible challenger to Apple's mobile devices and the two companies are...