Rebecca Black has been the source of public scrutiny since she burst onto the mainstream music a few weeks ago. The public has criticized everything about her, from her overly produced singing voice to her lyrics and legitimacy as an artist. Love her, hate her, or simply love to hate her, no one can deny that Rebecca Black has become a success. She partnered with ARK Music Company and her parents purchased the song “Friday” for $4,000.

Ark claimed they have every intention of turning over the masters to Black. But according to the Blacks, Ark has yet to follow through with that promise. Ark has attempted to build their reputation within the music industry by creating tween superstars. They do this by handing kids prewritten songs and attempting to build a fan base for them. Many question how Ark intends to profit.

This is where the issue of copyright infringement comes in. Rebecca Black and her parents are suing based on the fact that in addition to Ark not turning over the masters of Rebecca’s recording that they are exploiting Rebecca’s image on the internet. The Blacks also allege that Ark is claiming to have exclusive rights to Rebecca as an artist. Ark has responded that the agreement they entered was not court approved. They are claiming that if the Blacks attempt to copyright or licensing is committing copyright infringement against Black. Do you believe that the Blacks own the song? Or are they committing infringement against Ark by attempting to capitalize on Rebecca’s fame and license the song?

In 2008, Matell received $100 million against MGA Entertainment, claiming that MGA stole the idea for Bratz.

Yesterday, however, the 9^th circuit overturned that verdict. According to an article in AM Law Daily, the courts “found that Mattel does not own the rights to the Bratz dolls and MGA did not steal Mattel’s trade secrets.”  Also, according to an article on Perez Hilton, the courts “even found that the toy company stole MGA’s secrets through a campaign of corporate espionage, awarding them with $88.4 million in damages.”

I studied the original case last semester in an NYU Stern class, so I found this new verdict very interesting. It shows that an original verdict is not always the final decision. In fact, this decision came to the exact opposite conclusion from the original decision. It shows that the fight is not always over after one trial in court.

In November 2007, the Red Hot Chili Peppers filed a lawsuit against Showtime Networks over the name of their TV Show, “Californication”, which is also the name of the band’s 1999 hit song. The band noted many similarities between a character sometimes used in their music, “Dani California”, who is also a character on the TV show. They alleged, that under United States IP understandings, the series “constitutes a false designation of origin, and has caused and continues to cause a likelihood of confusion, mistake, and deception as to source, sponsorship, affiliation, and/or connection in the minds of the public”[1].

In 1971, a Bollywood movie titled, “Hare Rama Hare Krishna” which is about a young man from Montreal who goes to Nepal in search of his hippie sister, featured a chart-busting song, “Dum Maaro Dum” (puff, take a puff). The video of the song shows images of the sister singing and smoking marijuana out of a pipe in Kathmandu with other people dressed in hippie outfits. Here’s the video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LXvvA7dRVtc

Two days from today, on April 22^nd, Bollywood is anticipating one of it’s biggest releases of the year. The movie, which features some of the biggest stars of the industry, is about six people who meet in the Indian state of Goa and get involved with the drug mafia. The movie is titled, “Dum maaro Dum”. Here’s the trailer to the movie:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OvRBeWDh5dU

Even though the movie clearly seems to be inspired by the song, and is named after the it too, are the film-makers going to be sued by the record label owning the rights to the 1971 hit?

Probably not.

In fact, this practice of basing a movie on the message or story of an older song is very common in Bollywood (More examples here). Therefore, if Californication was to be a TV show in India, and the Chili Peppers a band from India. There would be little chance of their being a lawsuit.

While this might all sound very strange, one must understand the most basic difference between Hollywood and its Mumbai counter-part, Bollywood, to be able to comprehend the lack of legality involved here. In the United States, the movie industry is segregated from the music industry. In spite of songs being licensed in movies, both the industries exist independently. In Bollywood, the movie and music industry are integrated into one giant media business. Every movie has seven to eight songs written specifically for it. The lyrics talk specifically about the plot of the movie or the characters of the movie. Movie script-writers make sure they make room for a dramaticized and picturized song or two during the plot of the movie. Essentially, these full-length songs are vital to the story-line. The songs also work as advertisements for the movie itself. The movie stars in the music videos, act as promotion for the songs themselves. There’s no way one industry can exist without the other.

Arguably, this is why scripting movies based on older songs is acceptable in Bollywood. In class we spoke about the possible impacts of enforcing American and/or Western intellectual property understandings and laws on developing markets. This is a perfect example of why such enforcement would not work in India. In every country, laws are based on ethics, and morals. However, US IP laws are incongruent with some of the fundamental cultures and ethics of Bollywood. Therefore, if the ACTA was to be imposed on Bollywood, the industry would surely oppose it because it would compromise the ability of works to build off each other. It would compromise how creativity happens in Bollywood.

Tae Kim

What is and is not considered copyright infringement in music? Surely, everyone has heard a song on the radio and thought to themselves, “this song sounds very similar to another song I know.” In fact, there are numerous songs that may sound similar to others’ whether it involves melodies, beats, lyrics, harmonies, chords, etc. A group of music comedians also known as Axis of Awesome wrote a song called The Four-chord Song, which is actually composed of existing pop songs from the 60s to pop songs of today. Interestingly, the song is played with the exact same four chords throughout the entire song, which shows that all of the pop songs in The Four-chord Song were written with the same chord progressions. Does that mean that all those songs are subjects of copyright infringement?

In my final paper, I will discuss the many issues that revolve around copyright infringement in the music industry. There are numerous cases that relate to copyright infringement, which in this case is about derivative or similar works of one artist that another artist uses in his or her music, also known as plagiarism. These days, many of these issues can be seen happening when one artist “samples” another artist’s work without consent or license. An example is the Vanilla Ice vs Queen and David Bowie case, when artist Vanilla Ice sampled a part of Queen and David Bowie’s Under Pressure in his song, Ice Ice Baby. However, there are many steps to prove that an artist infringed another’s copyright, along with many cases which may not be considered valid as copyright infringement.

Proving copyright infringement in the music industry can bring extreme results which consider everyone that exploits the song as infringers as well, entitlement to actual damages, etc. Therefore, copyright infringement in music is a huge issue, but is also common. So how can we tell, and who decides if it is infringement? How does that person ultimately decide?

Specifically, I will focus on what are valid as well as invalid components that it is considered copyright infringement. Also, I will provide a number of famous cases that involve this issue and answer whether or not those cases were results of copyright infringement, along with why. In addition, I will specifically provide the steps that are to be made in a case of copyright infringement. And lastly, I will include in my paper what happens to both sides that involve a case of infringement.

I am interested in comparing the function of strong intellectual property rights within developed and developing nations, particularly in regard to the idea of cultural environmentalism that Sunder discusses in The Invention of Traditional Knowledge. Sunder argues that international legal documents passed in an effort to protect traditional knowledge of developing nations still view traditional knowledge from indigenous sources in a problematic way; traditional knowledge is still seen as inert, whereas modern knowledge is seen as forever changing. The problem with this is that copyright law is made in benefit of innovation, the forever changing aspect of knowledge. Moreover, the creation of a public domain separates traditional and modern knowledge by labeling all traditional knowledge as accessible and free to be transformed, simply because it is unchanging. Developing nations find themselves in a position where they are offering knowledge toward the copyrightable innovation of developed nations and not receiving anything for it. What happens if we begin to recognize traditional knowledge as intellectual property? What would become of the public domain and our resources for innovation? Sunder poses a question that I intend to explore: Can intellectual property be a tool for protecting poor people’s knowledge as well? Geographical indications are made in an effort to enforce cultural environmentalism, but there are some ways GI law does not address the natural spread of culture. Is the geographical indication label on products, while giving credit to the historically “authentic” creators of a product, at the same time making it harder for creators outside of the “authentic” region to survive, as consumers will choose to purchase and support products with the GI label? What implications does geographically labeling intellectual property have on how we view intellectual property? The link between property and land continues to grow stronger because of the cultural environmentalist movement, but the relationship property has to land becomes much less significant in a digital era, where there are often no geographical boundaries.

For my final paper, I would like to delve deeper into the subject of piracy—particularly pirated DVDs or movie piracy.  Copyright Infringement of Audio-Visual Works or better known as piracy (as discussed in class) is when unauthorized copies of works are made and distributed widely; these copies can be sold for money, albeit at low prices. Distribution of pirated movies can occur in person as well as digitally; the digital piracy of movies has rapidly grown over the years and has become a great concern for movies studios to the point where they are weary of releasing DVDs. Studios release their DVDs slowly because they do not want the files to be copied. They encrypt the data through watermark, which allows them to trace individual copies, but that is not enough to keep the information safe (information from USA today and CNN news).

Piracy has substantially (not to mention rapidly) increased since the 1970s because of technology. For my paper, I will talk about the history of piracy with keeping DVDs as the focus since piracy covers music as well. Years ago when bootlegged films started appearing, movies were illegally provided with the aid of camcorders. “Warez,” or a group of people who sell unauthorized copies, would  enter movie theaters and record the film, which they would either post on a website or sell to others. The quality of these copies was terrible, but that is no longer the case. According to Greg Sandoval, who works for CNET News, the current quality of bootlegged DVDs can rival that of the movie theaters, making it detrimental to the movie industry. In the paper, I will mention the different formats these illegal copies were and are uploaded or sold in. For example, people used camcorders, which was very common back then. However, over time it has changed to the recent common format called BD/BR Rip (wiki)

Besides the history, I will also describe the different types of piracy. There are two types of piracy: Intentionally redistributing for profit (reselling the work) and private/consumptive piracy.  An example of intentionally redistributing for profit is software piracy like leaking the latest Microsoft Windows before it hits the stores. Private piracy means substitution, where infringers take a product and replace it with another one. For consumptive, an example is peer-to-peer sharing. DVD piracy seems to fit the first for those who wish to make money from the sales. Infringers usually use certain sites to sell their pirated DVDs or flea markets, which are known for selling unauthorized DVDs. The authorities have the power to shutdown stalls that sell pirated DVDs in flea markets in addition to the websites. DVD piracy also seems to fit under consumptive piracy because there are websites providing illegal downloads to movies, which is similar to many music peer-to-peer sharing sites.

According to a NYTimes article, approximately $20 billion is annually lost because of global piracy.  The article claims film and music piracy in countries such as India, China, and Russia music are either poorly regulated or tolerated  by the government. In China, for example, there are large organized film pirating groups that make and distribute illegal copies. There are similar groups (also known as Warez) in America, but they are smaller. It is due to these groups as well as individual infringers that certain blockbuster movies were uploaded to websites before they appeared in theaters. Movies such as Wall-E, The Hulk, and X-Men Origins: Wolverine became victims of piracy. Within a week after Wall-E was leaked on the web, there were more than one million downloads worldwide. I will discuss further details about these movies and give more examples in the paper. Moreover, I will discuss some proposed solutions such as implementing methods similar to France (proposed by the Vice President of Directors Guild of America) and creating more legitimate movie streaming sites (2010: Film Bank International LLC’s idea) to counter movie piracy. Although these solutions might not solve piracy entirely, they do create discussions and bring up even more questions that need to be answered.

In my final paper, I am going to explore the legitimacy of peer-to-peer sharing sites, the impact of its existence and its future. As an active Internet user myself, I was always very interested in controversial issue of peer-to-peer file sharing. The peer-to-peer sharing networking is a system where a distributed application such as well known Napster and Limewire allow multiple users to share a file. It works in a system where peers become and make a portion of their resources in the distribution of a file. The peer’s activity let the peer become both supplier and consumer of what is being shared.

Peer-to-Peer sharing has caught my attention even more because of this aspect. The user becomes both supplier and consumer whether he or she intends to do so. When there are more users on one content, the addition of users who downloads the same content lets the downloading process increase its speed. Thus, the more user, the better downloading environment created. The matter of legality of peer-to-peer file sharing is raised when sharing unlicensed types of files. Sharing unauthorized copyrighted content is seen as “direct infringement” of the copyright law. On the other hand, recent court ruling revealed that swap services like Grokster cannot be held responsible for the illegal activities that users are conducting, but the users will be.

Nevertheless some peer-to-peer file sharing networks are said to notify the users of licensing types that can be shared. The licensing types include Creative Commons, Public Domain and try-before-you-buy licensing. These are the maximum amount of detectable effort that the file sharing networks are complying with the copyright laws. The peer-to-peer sharing network has a great impact on every copyrighted material. For example, Netflix, the DVD renting company views these peer-to-peer sites as their competitors because customers who are deactivating their Netflix accounts have said to their survey that they were the users of peer-to-peer sites. The most targeted businesses due to costless sharing include music, movies, and television industries. The peer-to-peer users can only be detected when the Internet provider reveal the identity of the customer. This kind of system should be deeply explored.

As of future of peer-to-peer file sharing sites, I intend to focus my attention to the system of Open Access. After learning about Open Access, I landed on this thought: can peer-to-peer sharing controversy be settled through implementing the system of Open Access? This is only a starting point. As my research progresses, my thought can be proven impractical. Nevertheless, I would like to focus my exploration weighing more on the theoretical future of peer-to-peer sharing compared to hard-fact practical prospects.

My view on the costless file sharing is currently on the favoring side. It may be because I am more of a user and consumer rather than the producer of the content. Don’t we all share DVDs if your friends have one? Before beginning this final project, I officially pronounce that I am a supporter of peer-to-peer file sharing. I am curious whether my view might change after researching deeper into the legality of peer-to-peer networks.