Showing posts from the beginning of time.
Copyright Basics in the Digital World
01/25/2009 by Pamela Parker @ copyrighttalk.com
Copyright. The concept is pretty simple – copyright provides a territorial claim to intellectual property (creative ideas set down in a fixed medium) that allows the creator to profit from the creation. In practice, it’s a tough concept for...
Illegal Downloading Court hearing may be Webcast
01/22/2009 by Pamela Parker @ copyrighttalk.com
Although the RIAA has recently said that it will stop suing individual who may be illegally sharing music files - in other words, people the RIAA believes may be infringing their copyright but not as a commercial piracy operation - it is still...
There's No Law Against Being Stupid
01/08/2009 by Pamela Parker @ copyrighttalk.com
Or anti-social, or even just plain mean. We tend to collectively cringe at the thought of great art treasures being destroyed, and yet we allow private ownership of art works and the concurrent truth that private ownership means many of those works...
Obama's Appointments
01/06/2009 by Pamela Parker @ copyrighttalk.com
Washington lawyer Thomas Perrelli has been nominated by President-elect Obama for the position of associate attorney general, third in command at the Justice Department. Perrelli has much experience with copyright and media law, primarily as legal...
DRM for books?
01/01/2009 by Pamela Parker @ copyrighttalk.com
A recent column in the New York Times considers whether the ease of finding used copies of books is causing - or at least contributing to - the cratering of the publishing business. Although there has always been a used book market - and there is a...
Lawsuits to End?
12/21/2008 by Pamela Parker @ copyrighttalk.com
The Wall Street Journal reports that the RIAA is planning to end its controversial anti-piracy strategy of filing copyright infringement lawsuits against any and all small time possible infringers, including young teenagers who send copies of...
Google Settlement Draws Ire
11/30/2008 by Pamela Parker @ copyrighttalk.com
The proposed settlement between Google and various book publishers (which still needs final approval from the Court) is slowly getting more and more clear. There are more than 300 pages in the agreement, so much of it is still lacking full analysis...
College Test Files
11/25/2008 by Pamela Parker @ copyrighttalk.com
There's a difference between access and copying. But the difference is not so intuitively obvious in the case of online archives. It is critical, however, in determining the possibility of copyright issues. This article in the University of...
Song-Swapping Lawsuits Face [real] Challenge
11/17/2008 by Pamela Parker @ copyrighttalk.com
The quick recap:* peer to peer file swapping is huge* recording industry believes song swapping interferes with sales* Song swapping really is a copyright infringment in many cases* Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has sought to...
Google Agreement
11/11/2008 by Pamela Parker @ copyrighttalk.com
Remember the big dust-up over Google's plans to digitize all books everywhere in the world and beam them into everyone's head so all information throughout time would be universally available?Okay, that wasn't quite the plan, but close. Google...
Limited Editions
11/02/2008 by Pamela Parker @ copyrighttalk.com
Can there be a Limited Edition of information products? I thought about this after I came across a site that discusses nothing but limited edition foods. I didn't realize this was the big business that it is. I'm certainly familiar with the...
Viacom and Google are Fighting
10/28/2008 by Pamela Parker @ copyrighttalk.com
If you pay any attention to digital technology and copyright issues, you know that there is and has been a huge issue regarding the posting of copyrighted material without permission on user sites - and YouTube has been the lightning rod for this...
An Alternative to Copyright Police
10/26/2008 by Pamela Parker @ copyrighttalk.com
Cheers to the University of Arizona, which has just created an office copyright education, staffed and housed in the University library. The University that says the role of the new office's "exclusive role will be to educate students, faculty and...
Recession Proof
10/23/2008 by Pamela Parker @ copyrighttalk.com
Okay, maybe not quite recession proof, but conventional wisdom holds that entertainment fares better than many industry sectors during a recession. And of course, that is good news for the many individual copyright holders out there plugging away at...
A Big Day For Copyright
10/21/2008 by Pamela Parker @ copyrighttalk.com
Tomorrow, October 22, marks the 70th anniversary of the very first xerographic image. Copyrights are easier to control when the means to copy material is relatively difficult. The Xerox machine was a huge event in the history of copy making. But...
It's not just bad guys
10/16/2008 by Pamela Parker @ copyrighttalk.com
A couple of guys made a big splash on YouTube with somne video lessons on how to play guitar that became VERY popular. Problem was, they had not obtained a license to publicly perform the popular songs they were teaching. Now before you worry...
Fair Use on the Campaign Trail
10/14/2008 by Pamela Parker @ copyrighttalk.com
A fascinating report on Wired.com highlights copyright fair use principals again. Apparently, the McCain presidential campaign has been attempting to use YouTube as part of its campaign strategy, but they have repeatedly seen their videos pulled by...
Brewing Up a Tea Party
10/08/2008 by Pamela Parker @ copyrighttalk.com
Remember the Boston Tea Party? Over "No Taxation Without Representation?" It was basically a big riot the American colonists had because the English were imposing laws on them without giving them a seat at the table when the laws were developed...
Bad Facts
10/06/2008 by Pamela Parker @ copyrighttalk.com
There's a saying among lawyers that bad facts make bad law. The point of the saying is that courts and juries really do try to be fair and just most of the time, and sometimes the facts of a case are just so bad that the court will try to make sure...
9.1
10/02/2008 by Pamela Parker @ copyrighttalk.com
The Copyright Royalty Board, the entity that sets the statutory rates for use of songs in audio recordings, has been considering a proposed increase in the rate for digital downloads. Thursday they ruled to keep the rate at the present 9.1 cents...
What Ownership of a song means
10/02/2008 by Pamela Parker @ copyrighttalk.com
Generally, the owner of a copyright has the right to decide how, when, and by whom the copyrghted work is distributed. In the case of song copyrights, though, there are some uses that are automatically granted without the express okay of the owner....
Singer-Songwriter Copyrights
09/22/2008 by Pamela Parker @ copyrighttalk.com
If you write and record your own songs, then you are affected by two separate copyrights. The first is the copyright for the song itself (that's lyrics and music). The second is the copyright for the recording of the song. If the song is recorded...
WM---Excellent value play below $10
09/02/2008 by Rick @ mystockwinners.com
--First ask youself, do I want to buy a stock when it is oversold? If so, read on...At Friday's closing price of 4.05, Washington Mutual (WM) is attractive as a speculative value play, based on a price to tangible book ratio of .32 and a Price to...
How serious is copyright infringement?
09/01/2008 by Pamela Parker @ copyrighttalk.com
The copyright statutes tell us that a lot of money can be awarded in copyrigt infringement cases, but we rarely see it happen except in big-operation piracy operations that also fall under the criminal codes. Last week, though, ordinary Joe (or...
The immaturity of corporate america
08/24/2008 by Pamela Parker @ copyrighttalk.com
Have you ever felt like this?[caption id="attachment_162" align="alignnone" width="300" caption="Stay Away!"][/caption]When I was a kid we used to get these little cards sometimes that had a picture on it, but when you tilted it just a little bit,...