Blizzard and Arizona Cartridge
By Mark McKenna There are several thoughtful posts on other blogs criticizing 8th and 9th Circuits’ recent decisions in Davidson & Associates (d/b/a Blizzard) v. Jung and Arizona Cartridge Remanufacturers Ass’n Inc. v. Lexmark International respectively. See here and here…
Student Sues Term Paper Website (and its Host)
Macellari v. Carroll, no. 4:05-CV-04161-JPG (S.D. Ill. complaint filed Aug. 31, 2005). Blue Macellari, a student at Duke and Johns Hopkins, has sued a term paper vendor (Rusty Carroll/R2C2, Inc.) operating three websites (doingmyhomework.com, freeforessays.com and freefortermpapers.com) for copyright infringement,…
Fair use and documentaries
By Mark McKenna Thanks to Eric for inviting me to post here. It’s my first real blogging experience, so I’m hoping it goes smoothly. Most of the press related to copyright law these days has to do with filesharing. There…
LA County Busts Warez Trader
Internet News reports that Jed Frederick Kobles, a Los Angeles warez trader, pleaded guilty to a single count of grand theft after being busted by Los Angeles County High Tech Crimes Unit. I am having a hard time understanding this…
Blog Content Aggregation, RSS Feeds and Copyright Law
At Search Engine Strategies, we discussed the problem of aggregators and spammers taking blog content and using it to build aggregation pages (with AdSense links, naturally) that compete with the source blog for traffic. In some cases, these aggregation pages…
Wired on IP Infringement and Organized Crime
Wired runs a story about the connection between organized crime and IP infringement. The story questions how much these connections are real vs. industry hype/scare tactics to make the case for stronger enforcement tools. The article notes that a few…
Single Mom Preparing to Fight RIAA
Patricia Santangelo, a single mom of five kids from Wappingers Falls, NY, is fighting the RIAA over a file-sharing lawsuit. She rejected a $7,500 settlement offer and has filed a motion to dismiss the complaint. Her defense appears to be…
Interview at Astalavista.com
I was interviewed by Astalavista.com on copyright and adware/spyware issues for their newsletter. Check out some of my loosely-structured latest thoughts on those topics.
Copyright Office Struggles With Copyright Clearances
AP runs a story about “copyright oddities”–interesting historical materials on deposit with the Library of Congress. The oddities include items like a photo of a blood-stained program from Ford’s Theater the night Lincoln was shot and a video of Henry…
Can Congress Provide Copyright Protection to Software?
Aharonian v. Gonzales, No. 04-05190-MHP (N.D. Ca.). This case got some press when it was first filed. The plaintiff’s basic contention is that it is unconstitutional for Congress to provide copyright protection for software. This is a pretty wacky claim,…