Keep on Suin’–Crumb v. Amazon
By Eric Goldman Crumb v. Amazon.com, Inc., No. CV5-2113 (W.D. Wash. complaint filed Dec. 21, 2005). LA Times story on the case. Crumb created the groovy and famous Keep on Truckin’ cartoon in the late 1960s. I’m not going to…
Man Bites Dog–Music Publisher Apologizes for Overreaching C&D
By Mark Schultz In a truly newsworthy item, Billboard reports that music publisher Warner/Chappell “privately and publicly” apologized to Walter Ritter. Ritter is the creator of PearLyrics, an software app for iPod users that downloads song lyrics from lyrics sites…
City of Heroes Lawsuits Settled
By Eric Goldman A complex but interesting legal fight between Marvel and NCSoft, about City of Heroes players generating characters that look like Marvel-owned characters, has come to an end. The press release announcing the settlement. Settlement terms were not…
We Hate You, Buy Our Stuff
By Mark Schultz Treating your customers well is always a good idea. Treating your customers well is a very good idea if they don’t really need your product. Finally, treating them well is absolutely essential if they don’t need your…
Downloading Music Isn’t Fair Use–BMG v. Gonzalez
By Eric Goldman BMG Music v. Gonzalez, No. 05-1314 (7th Cir. Dec. 9, 2005) This case deals with a central topic in P2P file-sharing lawsuits–was the downloading excused by fair use? This issue has come up in oblique ways in…
Keeping C&D Letters Confidential
By Eric Goldman An all-too-familiar story. A famous celebrity takes her clothes off in a private outdoor space (in this case, Jennifer Aniston goes topless in her backyard). The paparazzi captures the event for posterity and profit. Celebrity finds out…
Microsoft Will Be an Adware Vendor
By Eric Goldman Microsoft is considering migrating some of its software titles to an ad-supported model instead of a consumer licensing fee model. This isn’t exactly a new idea–this development has been anticipated for at least a decade. However, if…
DMCA Online Safe Harbor Empirical Study by Urban and Quilter
By Eric Goldman Jennifer Urban of USC and Laura Quilter have released a working report entitled “Efficient Process or “Chilling Effects”? Takedown Notices Under Section 512 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.” To my knowledge, this is the first empirical…
Gonzales Seeks Harsher Criminal Copyright Infringement Standards
By Eric Goldman CNET reports that Atty. Gen. Gonzales has proposed new amendments to criminal copyright infringement, including: * criminalizing the “attempt” to infringe * requiring criminal defendants to pay “other victims of the offense” in addition to the copyright…
Amazon Pages and Google Library’s Fair Use Defense
By Eric Goldman I’m intrigued by Amazon’s and Random House’s introduction of a pay-per-book-page feature (Amazon is calling its feature “Amazon Pages”). From a legal standpoint, I wonder: will this announcement have any effect on Google’s fair use arguments for…