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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...

Days before the Super Bowl, federal authorities blitzed more than a dozen websites illegally streaming live sporting events. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and other agencies announced Thursday that they had seized 16 websites and brought criminal charges against a Michigan man who operated nine of them. Yonjo Quiroa, 28, of Comstock Park, Mich., was arrested Wednesday and charged with criminal copyright infringement. Authorities said he operated websites that streamed pirated telecasts of live sports, including some pay-per-view events. Those included games from the NFL, NBA and NHL as well as World Wrestling Entertainment. Quiroa received $13,000 in profit...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wl9y3SIPt7o&feature=youtu.be&t=58s This video needs to go viral. It's very tough to watch though.

Since their release in 1978, hit albums like Bruce Springsteen’s “Darkness on the Edge of Town,” Billy Joel’s “52nd Street,” the Doobie Brothers’ “Minute by Minute,” Kenny Rogers’s “Gambler” and Funkadelic’s “One Nation Under a Groove” have generated tens of millions of dollars for record companies. But thanks to a little-noted provision in United States copyright law, those artists — and thousands more — now have the right to reclaim ownership of their recordings, potentially leaving the labels out in the cold. When copyright law was revised in the mid-1970s, musicians, like creators of other works of art, were granted...

Something interesting just happened tonight when I just tried posting an entire article from The Des Moines Register... It isn't allowed to because of a copyright complaint... So now I can't point to articles in the largest newspaper in my state because people don't realize you don't post entire articles here (or anywhere) without permission. But let's just continue to whine about excerpts. Here's a question, if we aren't supposed to do it, why does Free Republic give us that option when we post? When we post entire articles it is not fair to the authors of the original content...

The Associated Press has sued several retailers including Urban Outfitters for the unauthorised use of the Hope image created by artist Shepard Fairey. Artist Fairey used an AP photo without permission to create the image, and was sued by the news agency for violating copyright. That case was settled. AP argues that using the image on T-shirts is wilful and blatant violation of the copyright of the photo. A spokesman said that using photos for free devalued the work of journalists. The news agency filed lawsuits against Urban Outfitters, Nordstrom and Zumiez seeking unspecified damages. A Nordstrom spokeswoman said in...

In an effort to meet an Obama campaign promise, Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Julius Genachowski indicated Wednesday that he will propose new regulations for Internet lines. He is expected to give a speech at 10:30 a.m. on Wednesday laying out his proposal. Genachowski's attempt to revive the long-delayed net-neutrality proceeding is a delicate balancing act designed to garner some industry and public interest support without completely satisfying anyone. Genachowski has made concessions to AT&T, Verizon, and the cable industry that could forestall an all-out lobbying blitz by the nation's largest telecom providers. But the concessions have done nothing to...

The most astonishing thing about Sarah Palin’s career, since the conclusion of the 2008 presidential campaign, is how frequently the Left breaks itself to pieces against the sunny rocks of her good humor. The latest example is the website Gawker, which seems on the verge of being sued out of existence because they rushed to leak photocopied pages from her new book, America By Heart, before it was published. When Palin called them on it, Gawker ran a snotty response, complete with an unflattering photo of the former Governor, suggesting she try reading fair-use copyright laws. Mary Sue at the...

While authors have the right to be recognised and rewarded for their work, the purpose of intellectual property protection is the "promotion of literary, scientific or artistic production and ... inventive activity for the sake of the common good", Vatican officials said. A delegation of the Holy See told a gathering of the World Intellectual Property Organisation that Pope Benedict is troubled by the "excessive zeal" with which rich countries have been protecting their intellectual property rights, especially when it comes to health care in developing countries, reports the ZeroPaid website. "On the part of rich countries there is excessive...

Democratic Underground -- represented by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), Winston & Strawn LLP, and attorney Chad Bowers -- was sued by Righthaven on August 10 for a five-sentence excerpt of a Las Vegas Review-Journal news story that a user posted on the forum......... "Democratic Underground is the largest independent discussion forum for liberals on the Internet. (Several) people discuss and debate political issues on our site every day, particularly now during erection season. Online discussion often requires quoting from news sources -- a legal fair use of the material," said Democratic Underground founder David Allen. "By targeting short excerpts...

The 9th Circuit of Appeals has reaffirmed the right of software companies to circumvent the first-sale doctrine by “licensing” rather then “selling” its products. The significance of this ruling cannot be overstated—it could singlehandedly destroy the used software market. In 2005, one Timothy Vernor bought a sealed copy of AutoCAD Release 14 at a garage sale. In 2007, Vernor purchased four used copies of Release 14 from an authorized dealer, Cardwell/Thomas & Associates (CTA). He subsequently placed all but two copies on eBay, and in each instance, Autodesk appealed to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), alleging copyright infringement. In...

If you have any interest in starting a social network of your own, or pretty much any online venture, you better think twice before you try to use the words “Face” or “Book” in your name unless you want Mark Zuckerberg’s lawyers to come calling. News has been spreading around the Web that Facebook’s lawyers have taken up a lawsuit against a yet-to-launch social network for professional teachers called Teachbook.com. The reasoning behind this is explained in the suit: "If others could freely use ‘generic plus BOOK’ marks for online networking services targeted to that particular generic category of individuals,...

ASPEN, Colo.--The Recording Industry Association of America said on Monday that current U.S. copyright law is so broken that it "isn't working" for content creators any longer. RIAA President Cary Sherman said the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act contains loopholes that allow broadband providers and Web companies to turn a blind eye to customers' unlawful activities without suffering any legal consequences. "The DMCA isn't working for content people at all," he said at the Technology Policy Institute's Aspen Forum here. "You cannot monitor all the infringements on the Internet. It's simply not possible. We don't have the ability to search...

For decades jazz cognoscenti have talked reverently of “the Savory Collection.” Recorded from radio broadcasts in the late 1930s by an audio engineer named William Savory... only a handful of people had ever heard even the smallest fraction of that music, adding to its mystique. After 70 years that wait has now ended. This year the National Jazz Museum in Harlem acquired the entire set of nearly 1,000 discs, made at the height of the swing era, and has begun digitizing recordings of inspired performances by Louis Armstrong, Benny Goodman, Billie Holiday, Count Basie, Coleman Hawkins, Lester Young, Bunny Berigan,...

from the going-behind-the-veil dept We recently had a fun post about Hollywood accounting, about how the movie industry makes sure even big hit movies "lose money" on paper. So how about the recording industry? Well, they're pretty famous for doing something quite similar. Reader Jay pointed out in the comments an article from The Root that goes through who gets paid what for music sales, and the basic answer is not the musician. That report suggests that for every $1,000 sold, the average musician gets $23.40. Here's the chart that the article shows, though you should read the whole article...

The struggling music industry may be aroused at the prospect of winning money from the porn industry. Warner Bros. and a number of other record labels filed a lawsuit last week alleging copyright infringement on the part of an adult entertainment company whose porn videos allegedly featured such spectacles as actors lip-synching to Justin Timberlake's "Sexyback" while engaging in sexual acts on camera. The defendant in the legal action is a Florida-based company... Damages claimed on the alleged nasty use of copyrighted music could run in the tens of millions of dollars. ...The defendant specializes in a particular brand of...

The pop band Men at Work has been ordered to pay a music publishing company 5 percent of the royalties it earned in Australia for its song "Down Under." A judge said Tuesday the group must pay Larrikin Publishing because it borrowed without permission a flute riff from the popular Australian nursery rhyme "Kookaburra," penned by the late Marion Sinclair in 1932, CNN said. Sinclair died in 1988. Larrikin holds the copyright to the "Kookaburra" but did not became aware of the similarities between it and 1981's "Down Under" until they were compared on a game show in 2007, the...

Warning: this one is depressing if you believe in the public domain. You may recall that last year, a district court made a very important ruling on what appeared to be a minor part of copyright law. The "Golan" case asked a simple question: once something is officially in the public domain, can Congress pull it out and put it back under copyright? The situation came about because of (yet another) trade agreement that pulled certain foreign works out of the public domain. A district court had initially said that this move did not violate the law, but the appeals...

<p>The Canadian rock band Rush has sent a letter to Kentucky U.S. Senate candidate Rand Paul, saying his campaign is violating copyright laws by playing their music without permission.</p> <p>The Courier-Journal of Louisville reported that Rush's attorney, Robert Farmer of Toronto, had sent the letter to the Paul campaign. Farmer told the newspaper his objection is not political.</p>

David Byrne is suing the governor of Florida, alleging that he used the Talking Heads' 1985 single "Road to Nowhere" without permission or proper licenses. Byrne is seeking $1 million in damages from Gov. Charlie Crist, who's also Florida's former Attorney General, and his senatorial campaign for use of the song earlier this year in a website and YouTube ad attacking his then-Republican primary opponent, Marco Rubio. Crist has since changed his campaign and is running as an independent candidate. The suit (Case Number 8:10-CV1187-T26 (MAP)) was filed early Monday afternoon in the United States District Court for the Middle...

Leaked documents reveal draft text of secret global copyright deal ) OTTAWA — As negotiators from 37 countries prepare to meet in New Zealand on Monday to discuss a top-secret trade agreement, a draft text of the document has found its way onto the Internet. While bits and pieces of the agreement, called the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), have been leaked in the past, this is the first time a full draft is available to the public. The agreement, negotiated privately for the better part of two years, aims to create a global organization to oversee worldwide copyright and intellectual...

The Australian band Men at Work are facing a big legal bill after a court ruled it had plagiarised a Girl Guides' song in its 1983 hit, Down Under. Larrikin Music had claimed the flute riff was stolen from Kookaburra Sits in the Old Gum Tree, written by Marion Sinclair in 1934. The federal court in Sydney ordered compensation to be paid. That amount has yet to be determined but Larrikin's lawyer said it could reach 60% of income from the song. "It's a big win for the underdog," said Larrikin's lawyer Adam Simpson after the judgment. Sinclair, who died...

...Matt Yglesias... proposed that in a perfect marketplace for music,"The price of a song ought to be equal to the marginal cost of distributing a new copy of a song. Which is to say that the marginal cost ought to be $0." In a followup post... He argues that the entire infrastructure of intellectual property law is designed to bring the cost of all creative products down, eventually to zero, where it's best able to serve the most possible consumers; he cites the expiration date on the copyright of creative work as clear legal intent for all intellectual property to...

After a packed screening of the Saints' NFC Championship victory at Uptown's Prytania Theatre [in New Orleans], co-owner Robert Brunet has had hundreds of requests for tickets to view the Super Bowl at the historic theater this Sunday. But instead of preparing for the game, Brunet has been haggling with NFL lawyers for more than a week after he received a cease-and-desist letter telling him that the free screening had violated copyright laws. A similar story played out at the Sheraton New Orleans hotel, whose managers had planned a massive projection of the game on the side of the Canal...

This year will host numerous events that could well change the course of the music industry. From the future of music giant EMI to the impact of the Performance Rights Act, many events that will occur in 2010 could have deep, long-term consequences. In no particular order, they are: 1. The Ticketmaster-Live Nation Merger If the Department of Justice gives the merger a greenlight it would instantly create less competition in ticketing in the near term as Live Nation’s fledgling ticketing division ceases to be a competitor to Ticketmaster. In the long term, a combined Ticketmaster-Live Nation will be able...

Should stations pay artists to play their tunes? Get ready for one of the year's biggest battles. One of the biggest lobbying fights in the nation's capital this year could involve a traditionally non-Washington subject: rock and roll. At issue: whether AM and FM radio stations should pay royalties to performers on recorded music played over the airwaves, and if so, what those rates should be. Right now only composers and their affiliated publishers reap these payments. In one corner is the MusicFIRST Coalition, which includes the Recording Industry Association of America, several artist groups and SoundExchange, the folks who...

WASHINGTON, December 16, 2009 – The U.S. is committed to an inter-agency process for combating piracy of American intellectual property, Vice President Joseph Biden said Tuesday during a press availability with top law enforcement officials. Appearing at the White House complex with U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, Secretary of Commerce Gary Locke, Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano, the directors of the FBI, Customs and Border Protection, and the United States Secret Service, as well as the chief executives of the nation’s largest entertainment companies.The meeting was followed by a closed-door, roundtable discussion on international intellectual property theft.That second meeting...

Chet Baker was a leading jazz musician in the 1950s, playing trumpet and providing vocals. Baker died in 1988, yet he is about to add a new claim to fame as the lead plaintiff in possibly the largest copyright infringement case in Canadian history. His estate, which still owns the copyright in more than 50 of his works, is part of a massive class-action lawsuit that has been underway for the past year. The infringer has effectively already admitted owing at least $50 million and the full claim could exceed $6 billion. If the dollars don't shock, the target of...

At last month's huge U2 show at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, Calif., how could you tell the difference between the professional photographers and your average amateurs? Answer: the professionals were the ones whisked away after Bono and friends finished their third song, and the amateurs were still there, happily shooting to their heart's content. Nearly every person at any show these days is going to have some form of camera with them, be it a point-and-shoot, an iPhone or some other camera phone, and it seems that there is almost no way to imagine keeping all those devices out....

Robert Zemeckis’s A Christmas Carol opens today to a chorus of negative reviews and a rotten rating on Rotten Tomatoes. A particularly harsh assessment comes from Joe Morgenstern in The Wall Street Journal: To put it bluntly, if Scroogely, Disney’s 3-D animated version of “A Christmas Carol” is a calamity. The pace is predominantly glacial—that alone would be enough to cook the goose of this premature holiday turkey—and the tone is joyless, despite an extended passage of bizarre laughter, several dazzling flights of digital fancy, a succession of striking images and Jim Carrey’s voicing of Scrooge plus half a dozen...

Ben Shapiro at Big Hollywood has an interesting report on the Alma Thomas painting "Watusi (Hard Edge). For those who may not recall, the Thomas painting closely resembled the Matisse painting "L'escargot," causing some to say it was copied. Of course this has absolutely nothing to do with the decision to remove the painting from the White House: According to Semonti Stephens, Michelle Obama’s deputy press secretary, the painting was moved “because it didn’t fit the space right.”

The internet chapter of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, a secret copyright treaty whose text Obama's administration refused to disclose due to "national security" concerns, has leaked. It's bad. It says: * That ISPs have to proactively police copyright on user-contributed material. This means that it will be impossible to run a service like Flickr or YouTube or Blogger, since hiring enough lawyers to ensure that the mountain of material uploaded every second isn't infringing will exceed any hope of profitability. * That ISPs have to cut off the Internet access of accused copyright infringers or face liability. This means that...

Say what you want about Republican gubernatorial candidate Chris Christie, but he knows a little something about the good people of New Jersey. In Texas, they may like candidates who strongly defend the right to bear arms. And in Wisconsin, a fine knowledge of dairy issues might secure you votes. But in New Jersey, it's all about referencing vintage British comedy. Why else would Christie's campaign have produced a spot lifting old Monty Python footage wholesale while attacking Senator Corzine's alleged plans to hike tolls? It's all about giving the people what they want. And in a rough and tumble...

The Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday approved a bill to require radio stations to pay royalties to performers when their music is aired, a top priority for the recording industry. The Senate committee vote marks the furthest congressional progress yet for the measure, although it is still far from becoming law. Broadcast radio stations now pay song royalties to songwriters and producers, but they don't pay performance fees for playing the artists' music. In contrast, cable, satellite and Internet radio pay performance royalties. Under the bill, large radio companies such as Clear Channel Communications Inc. and Cox Radio Inc. would...

. . Once Again, Entertainment Industry Looks To Force Massive Copyright Changes Via Int'l Treaties from the how-the-game-is-played dept By now you should know that one of the entertainment industry's favorite tools for forcing ever more draconian copyright laws around the world is to use international treaties. Such treaties are not put together by elected officials, but appointed diplomats, often with tremendous input (to the point of allowing them to write the details) from industries that are protected. Then, once those treaties are in place, copyright maximalists just get to sit back and say "but we must make our copyright...

...Subtitled "The Commercial Revolution in American Music," Suisman's book (Harvard University Press) focuses on the 1880s through the mid-1920, a period that saw the growth of sheet-music publishing from a printer's sideline to a wildly profitable New York-based industry... These innovations made professionally composed and performed music available to a wider range of Americans than ever before. At the same time, music increasingly became something to be passively appreciated rather than actively made. (This story could have been different, if Edison's wax cylinders, which allowed convenient home recording as well as playback, had won out over Emile Berliner’s disc technology.)...

"...The artists deserve it, ...With things the way they are today, everybody needs every little penny they can get." ...Radio personalities such as Tom Joyner, whose "Tom Joyner Morning Show" is owned by Radio One Inc., a black-owned conglomerate, oppose the bill, generating support from their vast listening audiences.... There is also a division within the civil rights community. The NAACP recently passed a resolution supporting the bill, while activists Al Sharpton, whose radio show is syndicated by Radio One, and Jesse Jackson, whose show is syndicated by a subsidiary of Clear Channel Corp., oppose it... The bill's sponsor, Rep....

Jackson Browne has settled a lawsuit and received an apology from Sen. John McCain and the Republican Party over use of his song "Running on Empty" during last year's presidential campaign. The settlement announced Tuesday includes a pledge by the GOP not to use any musicians' work without proper permission in future campaigns, a statement that Browne said he hoped would benefit other artists. Browne sued McCain and the Republican National Committee and the Ohio Republican Party last year over use of "Running on Empty" in a Web ad mocking Democrat Barack Obama's proposed energy policies. McCain's loss in November...

<p>The National Association of Broadcasters said Wednesday that a majority of U.S. House members are now opposed to imposing new fees on radio stations to pay performance artists.</p> <p>Such a bill passed the House Judiciary Committee last month, but the NAB hopes the show of opposition will prevent it from being brought to the House floor for a debate and vote. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's office is monitoring support for the issue but officials there said the speaker has no immediate plan to take action.</p>

Broadcasters are vowing to fight legislation requiring radio stations to pay royalties to performers, even as the recording industry and artist coalitions say the effort is gathering steam. The House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday passed a modified version of a performance royalty bill that gives some exemptions to small broadcast stations. Broadcast radio stations now pay song royalties to songwriters and ...

So the Copyright Office is currently in the middle reviewing proposed exceptions to the DMCA, and one of the proposals on the table would allow teachers and students to rip DVDs and edit them for use in the classroom. Open and shut, right? Not if you're the MPAA and gearing up to litigate the legality of ripping -- it's trying to convince the rulemaking committee that videotaping a flatscreen is an acceptable alternative. Seriously. It's hard to say if we've ever seen an organization make a more tone-deaf, flailing argument than this. Take a good look, kids. This is what...

...These grass-roots music events... have come up against the demands of US copyright law, as enforced by a handful of companies who act as collection agents for songwriters and composers. The law states that no performer in a public venue can present someone else's copyrighted music without their permission and, usually, without compensating them. A number of agencies, chief among them... BMI and... ASCAP, charge music venues an annual copyright "license fee" ranging from $300 to nearly $10,000 for the privilege of presenting someone else's music. Much of the music at those Ragged Edge open mics was written by the...

As a presidential candidate, Barack Obama won applause from legal adversaries of the recording industry. Stanford law professor Larry Lessig, the doyen of the "free culture" movement, endorsed the Illinois senator, as did Google CEO Eric Schmidt and even the Pirate Party. That was then. As president-elect, one of Obama's first tech-related decisions has been to select the Recording Industry Association of America's favorite lawyer to be the third in command at the Justice Department. And Obama's pick as deputy attorney general, the second most senior position, is the lawyer who oversaw the defense of the Copyright Term Extension Act--the...

LOS ANGELES — The rowdy Bratz dolls have been evicted. Barbie has regained control of the dollhouse. Toy giant Mattel Inc., after a four-year legal dispute with MGA Entertainment Inc., touted its win in the case Wednesday after a federal judge banned MGA from making and selling its pouty-lipped and hugely popular Bratz dolls.

A video message on behalf of 38,000 UK musicians has been sent... many of whom have worked with major artists, say they risk losing their income under current laws. Performers' copyright runs out after 50 years but for composers and authors it extends for 70 years after their death. The European Commission is backing an extension to 95 years from release, but the UK government is not supportive. Under current copyright laws, royalties will soon dry up for session musicians who played on classic tracks released in the 1960s, campaigners say... Phil Pickett, a musician who played with '80s band...

By Thomas Claburn InformationWeek Thu May 29, 7:25 PM ET Online media company Revision3 says that it is the victim of a cyberattack launched by MediaDefender, a company that fights illegal peer-to-peer distribution of media on behalf of major entertainment companies. Revision3, the host of Internet shows such as Diggnation, was inaccessible over the weekend. Company CEO Jim Louderback blames the outage on a denial-of-service attack initiated by MediaDefender. In a blog post, Louderback explains that with a bit of network sleuthing, his IT staff discovered the source of the attack. "But instead of some shadowy underground criminal syndicate, the...

Mind Your Business: You Will Lose All The Rights to Your Own Art April 10, 2008 By Mark Simon Printable Version Mark Simon. As you know, I usually handle the subjects in my articles with a sense of humor. That is not the case this month. I find nothing funny about the new Orphan Works legislation that is before Congress. In fact, it PISSES ME OFF! As an artist, you have to read this article or you could lose everything you've ever created! An Orphaned Work is any creative work of art where the artist or copyright owner has released...

An Urgent Message From Marilyn Bergman Copyright Royalty Board Begins Critical Mechanical Rates Hearing January 28, 2008 To All ASCAP Members, Over the years, ASCAP has worked tirelessly to convince Congress and the courts that all songwriters, composers and music publishers are entitled to fair compensation for their copyrighted musical works. As you know, ASCAP represents the performing right, a large and growing part of your compensation. But mechanical and synchronization rights are also a critical element of your livelihood. Today, the Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) begins a hearing that will determine mechanical rates for every songwriter and music publisher...

Not content with the current (and already massive) statutory damages allowed under copyright law, the RIAA is pushing to expand the provision. The issue is compilations, which now are treated as a single work. In the RIAA's perfect world, each copied track would count as a separate act of infringement, meaning that a copying a ten-song CD even one time could end up costing a defendant $1.5 million if done willfully. Sound fair? Proportional? Necessary? Not really, but that doesn't mean it won't become law. The change to statutory damages is contained in the PRO-IP Act that is currently up...

Chances are that as you read this article, it is passing over part of AT&T's network. That matters, because last week AT&T announced that it is seriously considering plans to examine all the traffic it carries for potential violations of U.S. intellectual property laws. The prospect of AT&T, already accused of spying on our telephone calls, now scanning every e-mail and download for outlawed content is way too totalitarian for my tastes. But the bizarre twist is that the proposal is such a bad idea that it would be not just a disservice to the public but probably a disaster...