There was a case back in 2006 when George Lucas, director of Star Wars, sued Andrew Ainsworth for selling replicas of helmets and armors made for the Stormtroopers in the movie. Ainsworth was the original designer. He had originally made 50 helmets which he sold for £35 each and earned about £30,000 total from the movie whereas the movie earned more than $10 billion. Ainsworth saw a potential in the memorabilia market and sold his replicas in 2004. Lucasfilms charged Ainsworth for copyright infringement since it claims to own all the rights to the uniforms and props in their films. The film company was awarded $20 million in damages in California.
However, the case did not end there when Lucas decided to bring the case to Britain and disappointed to see that the same favorable result did not happen. Instead, he lost the court appeal because Ainsworth’s creations were not considered as art. The models were declared to have been made with “utilitarian’ purposes with ‘industrial design’ and therefore were not copyrightable. Furthermore, Britain’s supreme court said that US Copyright laws cannot be enforced in the UK as well.
This case brings to a broader question regarding movies in Britain. Can companies sell merchandise from movies without being called out on copyright infringement? Also, aren’t movies an artwork itself-shouldn’t its costumes be considered art as well?

Here is the article with more information: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article6958998.ece

After Kate already gave us an insight of the ongoing legal battle between Viacom and YouTube, it seems like the case will go on for a while. With the court documents being public since yesterday (http://static.googleusercontent.com/external_content/untrusted_dlcp/www.google.com/en/us/press/pdf/20100318_google_viacom_youtube_memorandum.pdf), we have more background information available to discuss the matter.

Although YouTube claims to be protected under the DMCA, Viacom still claims that YouTube infringed their copyright en masse. It gets even better, as YouTube accuses Viacom of “secretly uploading it’s content” by hiring 18 different marketing agencies to do so. (http://youtube-global.blogspot.com/2010/03/broadcast-yourself.html).“They are both tearing each other up, and both are scoring points,” said Eric Goldman to The New York Times, which I think is an accurate description of the subject matter.

From a legal perspective, the  battle revolves around DMCA’s Title II (“Online Copyright Infringement Liability Limitation
Act”,http://www.copyright.gov/legislation/dmca.pdf ), which exludes I -and OSP’s from their copyright liability. According to the aforementioned copyright. gov website, Title II limits a service providers copyright liability depending on four categories of conduct:
1. Transitory communications;
2. System caching;
3. Storage of information on systems or networks at direction of users;
and
4. Information location tools.

Since YouTube complies with those regulations, it would technically be covered under the DMCA.
Viacom doesn’t let loose and accuses YouTube to have highly profited from publishing their copyright protected intellectual property to increase their audience and ad revenue. What seems like a public mudslinging is definitely an interesting legal issue, in which, I predict, YouTube ( or Google, given the fact that it owns YouTube), will remain the upper hand.

Nevertheless, I would be very interested in opinions predicting that Viacom will emerge from this battle as a winner.

After I saw the video Pachelbel Rant, I immediately thought about if it was copyrighted, and/or if anyone has gotten in trouble for using this chord progression. It is the most famous piece of music by composer Johann Pachelbel, called Pachelbel’s Canon (aka, Canon in D major). Although it was written in the mid-to-late 1600s, it was forgotten for years and only published in 1919. Now, it seems that the Canon’s chord progression is everywhere.

The fact that it is used in so much music today goes to prove the whole motive behind copyright, since it’s used to “To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries” (US Constitution, Article 1, Section 8). It seems as if we really wouldn’t have a good number of the songs we have today if it weren’t for this music (which may be a good thing, according to Rob Paravonian).

I wondered what the deal was with copyright and chord progressions in general after this. I came across a case where Joe Satriani sued Coldplay for using his melody in “If I Could Fly” in Coldplay’s “Viva La Vida”. Here’s an article about the suit, and here, you can listen to the two songs for yourself. As it turns out, Satriani did not win the case.

I’m not a musician, so I really don’t know how many keys and chords musicians have to work with before they have exhausted all of them. How many chord progressions are there, and how much is too much when it comes to music? Do you think Satriani should have won the case?

Just another interesting piece I’ve had in my iTunes for a while that relates and you all may find interesting is a mash-up of Lady Gaga with a couple of pop songs. Here, however, I don’t feel it’s really fair to criticize Gaga for the similarities in the music—I realize she is more about being a “performing artist” than anything else—but I still wonder if she is at risk for copyright infringement as well.

Since when reading a book aloud is copyright infringement? I came across an interesting article today about the iPad and its capabilities of reading aloud the contents of any page, including e-books. The Author’s Guild, a writer’s advocacy group, questioned whether that amounted to copyright violation. Amazon had the same issue when it released its Kindle 2 e-book reader.

When the Kindle was released, the guild wrote a memo to its members saying that Amazon would be undermining their (the author’s) audio market as it exploits their e-books. According to Paul Aiken, the Author’s Guild Executive Director, “that’s an audio right, which is derivative under copyright law.”

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) disagreed stating that “the electronic reading of an e-book does not amount to the creation of a derivative work.” Both the Kindle and the iPad use speech synthesizer technology – the books are not read by a human being. Audio books surpassed $1 billion in sales in 2007, and the EFF argues that the iPad is unlikely to hurt the lucrative audio book market.

I think the Author’s Guild is making the wrong decision by approaching the matter this way. Authors are still making money by selling their books. It’s not as if Apple and Amazon are building a separate market. This is only a speech synthesizer. I don’t see how this could be copyright infringement, but even if it were I think it could be argued as fair use. It would be the same as someone reading a paper book aloud to someone else. I see it as more of an aide rather than infringement.

It’s no question that technology, the internet specifically, has only aided in individual’s and groups’ ability to spread and distribute  pirated information in the digital millennium. However, have some taken it too far?  Nicholas Wright, a software pirate in the UK, is currently jailed for conspiring to commit burglary resulting in roughly 190 pounds worth of Microsoft software being stolen. He was previously jailed for 15 months over other trademark and copyright infringement accounts settled outside of court with Microsoft as well.

On the other hand, companies like Google are constantly trying to capitalize on the accessibility and speed of the internet. Google, in February of this year, planned to make millions of in- copyright books legal and available to its customers online. Proceeds would be shared with both authors and publishers, but the bigger issue at hand is would this give Google a monopoly over all online book providers, along with other writers and publishers? Initially its project to upload books online and allow the texts to be scannable and searchable was deemed “massive copyright infringement” by the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers. However, restrictions were created to allow this initiative, and a deal that Google would pay $125 million to both the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers. This deal has been revised and represented “substantial progress”. Prominent issues of copyright, class action, and antitrust law arise in this case, and if completed, the digital library will be forever changed. As the most important and influential copyright issue we are currently facing, other genres related to copyright may be effected and possibly altered, including music or photography. Google’s affirmative defense of fair use was argued, “Scanning books to bolster  the quality of search is fair use  under copyright law. Obviously we think there is value in search but I think that to the extent that any competitors feel similarly, they can invest, similarly as we have, in digitizing books,” said Dan Clancy the Google executive in charge of book search. The anticipated decision has yet to be made!

Although not as new as Lady Gaga, Pink Floyd is most likely acknowledged by most of us. An active music group, even before the ARPAnet was commercialized (and turned into what we call the Internet), the groups contract stemmed from a time, where bands often wouldn’t own the rights to their own intellectual property ( such as Beatles songs being owned by Michael Jackson).

The dispute,which took place in London, revolved around EMI selling single songs out of Pink Floyd’s Album as download, rather than selling a whole LP.(http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/12/business/media/12pink.html?ref=business) Selling single songs, as we all know from the Itunes example, brings in quite some money. Despite EMI’s granted request to exclude the press from the case, Pink Floyd successfully hindered EMI from selling their songs as singles.

However,since EMI already sold singles and ringtones in the past, the court ordered an additional $90.000 to be paid to Pink Floyd.

I find it interesting that the internet seems to occupy courts all over the world, disputing, who owns which rights to what intellectual property. On the other side, if the contract forbid EMI to sell the songs in questions as singles, why would the company allegedly break the contract?

Almost three years ago Viacom filed a lawsuit on Youtube, owned by Google, for infringement.  Doesn’t seem too surprising since Youtube harbors an uncountable number of infringing videos because of its enormous amounts of internet traffic.  What is astounding is that Viacom is asking for a hefty $1 billion in damages.  Say what?  Apparently Viacom is calling Youtube out on its negligence of allowing millions of infringing videos over the years to be uploaded and stay uploaded for longer than necessary.  Youtube makes their revenue from advertisements and these advertisers pay more to be displayed on the more popular videos.  Some of the SpongeBob videos of the show had over a million hits per episode.  Viacom claims that Youtube was making money off of these advertisers for these popular videos and either took their time removing them or neglected at all.  Viacom is also saying there is evidence of the employees at Youtube uploading the infringing videos, but there has been no evidence proven in the public light yet.

The first question here is:  Does the site Youtube carry the burden of watching for infringing videos or does the company that the videos infringe have the burden of monitoring for them?

Viacom believes that due to the sheer volume of videos uploaded that are infringing (and the ones that are re-uploaded nearly right after taken down) it is a gigantic waste of time for such a huge company to have to closely monitor the content of someone else’s website.  I think that Youtube should come up with a system that scans either the content or encoding of videos uploaded to the site, there could be trigger codes, much like a security insert in books or on clothes that is caught by a scanner, and the person trying to upload the video receives a notice that it is possibly infringing.  Maybe they have to prove it is not…or maybe this is just a big waste of time.  I see where Viacom is coming from, it’s not just that Youtube is allowing uploads of Viacom’s show content (we talked about this in class, that Youtube cannot really control up goes up, but they can control what goes down) but Youtube is actually making money from advertisers who are paying more to appear on popular videos.

Fast forward three years, the case is still going on.  Last Friday, March 5th, Viacom filed for a summary judgment, claiming there has been enough undisputed evidence to rule in a party’s favor.  During the case, between depositions, emails and other information, these files were kept secret, away from the public eye.  Since the summary judgment has been made, Viacom wants all but the most important trade secrets out in the open and available to the public within two weeks.  Google is basically having a panic attack, calling it a “logistical nightmare,” and is trying to push the information release to June.   I think there is something fishy going on here.  If Google had nothing to hide, what is the problem?  It sounds like they are trying to get more time to clean up their notes.  Meanwhile the summary judgement still remains in the dark.

Alas the second question:  Isn’t it in our constitutional right to have access to trial information as long as it does not involve government trade secrets or extremely high profile cases?  Is Google or Viacom in the right here?

I think Viacom’s asked for sum of $1 billion is a kind of scare tactic for Google.  They will most likely not get that much (right?) but by aiming high they are assuring that they may receive the highest damages award possible.  Since most cases end up available to the public, I think Viacom will win this one of releasing of information.

Who do you think is right in this clash of the corporate titans?

Best summary: http://news.cnet.com/8301-31001_3-10465492-261.html

More in-depth (another blog post a day before this one is also available on the site): http://copyrightsandcampaigns.blogspot.com/2010/03/youtubekeep-summary-judgment-papers.html

While browsing facebook.com I came across a friend’s page that had a photo of Mariah Carey instead of her own as the profile picture. After analyzing the X17 branded photo, I did notice a striking resemblance to Carey, and proceeded to comment, “Wow, you do look like Mariah Carey!”. I’m sure many of us facebook users are familiar with the popularized “doppelganger celebrity week” during which people change their profile pictures to one of their celebrity look-alike. While this is one of the facebook trends that has caught on like wildfire, it has not caught much copyright infringement backlash. Even though these celebrity photo uploads and displays seem innocent, technically, they are illegal and violate facebook “terms and conditions” that state, “[y]ou will not post content or take any action on facebook that infringes or violates someone else’s rights or otherwise violates the law.” The photo used was from x17online.com, and was an original photo taken by the company (assuming it was a work for hire) giving copyright ownership to X17, and arguably making the use an infringement. Interestingly enough, there was no copyright infringement or take down notification sent to my friend. On another note, the famed Perez Hilton was sued by X17 for unauthorized use of X17 photos on his gossip ridden blog (perezhilton.com) which generates about $9,000 – 16,000 in revenue from ads weekly. In my opinion, no action was taken against my friend, or other doppelgangers because there was simply too many users posting copyrighted photos to their profiles. This seems reminscent of the Code Warrior movement of students that is challenging copyright restrictions. In regards to this topic, a facebook executive was quoted saying, “as always, facebook will respond to requests for removal that it receives from copyright holders. In this case, we have received no such requests.” I think that facebook and photo media outlets chose to ignore the omnipresent copyrighted photos. The contradictory nature of facebook and X17 just go to show that the online copyright lines are thinly drawn.

OK Go is a band that has made their career as musicians from the success of their music videos. One video in particular, for the song “Here it Goes Again,” which I’m sure most in the class have seen or at least heard about, featured the band performing a dance on treadmills. What many do not know is that the band created the video themselves, “posted on the fledgling YouTube without EMI’s permission”, and relied on the viral power of the internet to allow the video to spread. This creative self-promotion was not only innovative, but highly successful, as the band generated the interest of tens of thousands of fans daily, and the video was viewed almost 50 million times.

In a recent New York Times article, Damian Kulash described this successful venture, but also highlighted some of the changes in the music industry that are stifling such creativity in marketing. This article points out two distinct issues that work together in a potentially harmful way: the inability of the music industry to adapt to change, and the stifling of artists’ attempts at creative campaigns. Record labels in the past have followed a well-established business model successfully, but the music industry is shifting, and the model appears to be unable to shift accordingly. In the music industry now, many labels are having financial problems and therefore trying to gain revenue from other sources. EMI saw the success of this viral video as an opportunity to create a new stream of revenue, and brokered a deal with YouTube, who agreed to pay a small amount of money for each stream, but because of the impossibility and unwillingness of blog sites and other websites who post such videos to broker a similar deal, the videos were banned from being embedded on any other blogs or websites.

EMI’s decision to not allow embedding of videos is but one example of labels’ knee-jerk reaction in response to decline in record sales and loss of revenue. Rather than recognize the long-term benefit from YouTube, record companies saw immediate opportunity for revenue. Short sighted decisions like this are now common in the music industry, and often prove to accomplish precisely the opposite of what they set out to, as obviously occurred when video views “dropped 90 percent”, and EMI only stood to gross a small amount. Clearly this is bad business, but these decisions have rippling effects beyond the labels’ thinning bottom line. A bottom line that the $5,400 that EMI possibly stands to gain from YouTube streams certainly can’t make up for. EMI has now just limited the availability and buzz of the band, which will lead to a decrease in record and merchandise sales, and concert attendance. Not only has EMI stifled the creativity of the band, but they have also used copyright law as a detriment to themselves. OK Go is a band of musicians that write songs and release records, but they have other creative outlets that have sustained them as a viable touring and recording act. Because of contracts and copyright law, EMI has the option to stifle that creativity, and unfortunately has done exactly that in this instance.

This issue has the potential to harm not only the executives who profit from the artists they represent, but also the future of music altogether. Traditionally, as long as band’s creativity and a label’s opportunity to profit converge, each coexists peacefully. More recently, however, labels have begun to show just how far behind the times their business model lies, and this article highlights one example of this. Bands have an understanding of their audience and an ability to connect with their fans in ways that record labels cannot. Artists’ creativity often extends further, than music and lyrics, and has to nowadays, as evidenced by OK Go’s video project. Stifling this creativity obviously does not benefit either artist or label.

In this course so far, we have learned about copyright in history and the digital era, and examined the effects of copyright owners’ attempts to enforce their rights for personal gain. Whether one believes that the scope of copyright is too broad and is being abused by copyright owners or not, this is certainly a case where the copyright owner validated their own rights, but lost a great deal in the process.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/20/opinion/20kulash.html

I am also posting a link to their new video, which has been getting a lot of attention recently and is, in my opinion, pretty brilliant.

Although you might not have seen it, chances are good, that you know Hurt Locker is a film that has recently been screened in theaters all over the country ( 535 theaters to be precise.) In the movie industry, distributors consider the opening weekend of their movie crucial for the success of a theatre run. An opening weekend that grosses around $10000 per theatre is considered a good opening. Opening in only four theaters, Hurt Locker grossed on average a little over $38000 per theatre, which is a great success for any movie, let alone a rather small ( in comaprison with Hollywood’s studio system) independent picture. It went on to gross $12.67 million domestic and $ 6.56 million in the foreign territories.

Depicting life as a soldier in bomb squad unit in Iraq, the movie managed to grab the audience’s interest, probably due to the country’s involvement.

The turnaround happened yesterday, when Sgt. Jeffrey Sarver filed a Complaint with New Jersey’s Court District http://www.scribd.com/doc/27777754/Sarver-Complaint-NJ-Version-Final-03-02-2010-w-Case).

According to his complaint, the film , which is based on a 2005 story published by Playboy  depicts not only his struggle in Iraq, but also infringes his personal copyright, without any financial compensation or written agreement to do so.

Besides Writer Mark Boal ( who wrote the screenplay and the original Playboy article) and Director Kathryn Bigelow, Sgt. Sarver also sues The Hurt Locker,LLC and the Distributor Summit Entertainment, LLC, amongst others.

The claim made a total of seven counts, all depicting how the plaintiff was used for enriching the defendants. Furthermore, five out of the seven counts ask for financial compensation of $ 75000, as well as attorney fees.

Although the complaint doesn’t include specific US Code referrals, it says that ” The Defendants’ various different uses of Plaintiffs’ name and/or likeness was mainly for commercial or trade purposes, without redeeming public interest, news, or historical value.”

As one might imagine, this formulation excludes a possible claim by the defendant to plead for fair use.

Further information (and commentary) are provided by Business Week (http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-03-03/army-bomb-expert-alleges-he-inspired-hurt-locker-update1-.html) and Playboy http://www.playboy.com/articles/man-in-the-bomb-suit-sergeant-jeffrey-sarver/index.html).

The fact that the original story reolved around Sgt. Sarver excludes the probability, that his life story is similar to the film’s plot. The case, at least the case that his life was used for the motion picture is rather obvious. However, I can’t make any sense out of Mr. Boal’s decision to not alter the script and thereby protecting himself and his fellow filmmakers from a lawsuit.
Anyone?