California’s Resale Royalty Statute Violates the Dormant Commerce Clause—In Part (Guest Blog Post)
By guest blogger Tyler Ochoa On Tuesday, May 5, an eleven-judge en banc panel of the Ninth Circuit held that California’s Resale Royalty Statute, Civil Code § 986, could not Constitutionally be applied to sales of works of art that…
Q4 2014 & Q1 2015 Quick Links Part 8 (Copyright, Media)
Copyright * Comments on Blurrred Lines jury verdict. NY Times. Raustiala & Sprigman. The defense attorney. Tim Wu. Eriq Gardner. Wendy Gordon. Judith Finell musicologist’s expert report. NY Times: “Owing to the specifics of copyright law, the jury was instructed to base…
More Section 230 Cases Than I Can Handle!
My cup runneth over with Section 230 cases! This long blog post catches up on a few from the past couple months. Warning: there are some stinkers in this batch. Google, Inc. v. Hood, 2015 WL 1546160 (S.D. Miss. March…
What Bothers Brussels: Geoblocking on the Front Burner of the EU Commission (Guest Blog Post)
By guest blogger Marketa Trimble In 2012, when my article on the legal implications of the evasion of geolocation was published, the topic concerned an obscure problem that was of interest to few internet users – not many people were…
QVC Can’t Stop Web Scraping–QVC v. Resultly (Forbes Cross-Post)
“Web scraping,” also called crawling or spidering, is the automated gathering of data from someone else’s website. Scraping is an essential part of how the Internet functions. For example, Google uses web scraping to build its search database worth hundreds…
Court Rejects Bizarre Attempt To Scrub Consumer Review–Goren v. Ripoff Report
I previously blogged about this matter (see also Venkat’s update). A Massachusetts attorney, Goren, was unhappy about a user review of his law firm posted to Ripoff Report, which is well-known for not removing user posts. The plaintiffs sued the…
Morel Denied Attorneys’ Fees In Long-Running Suit Over Photos Lifted From Twitpic
Daniel Morel uploaded iconic Haiti earthquake photos to Twitpic and shared them via Twitter. Getty Images and AFP republished the photos without permission, and Morel scored a big $1.2M verdict when the jury ruled in his favor. However, the court…
The Righthaven Debacle, 5 Years Later
You probably recall Righthaven, the now-defunct copyright enforcement entity (some might call it a copyright troll) that purchased newspapers’ copyrights so it could sue small-time bloggers who republished articles; after suing, it would demand financial settlements the bloggers couldn’t afford….
It Takes a Default Judgment to Win a 17 USC 512(f) Case–Automattic v. Steiner
In enacting the DMCA’s notice-and-takedown system, Congress knew copyright owners and others might send takedown notices overzealously. To discourage abuses of the notice-and-takedown system, Congress enacted 17 USC 512(f) to create a new cause of action for sending bogus takedown…
Use of Iconic 9-11 Photo in TV Show’s Facebook Stream Not Fair Use
Plaintiff owns an iconic 9-11 photo. A producer of Defendants Fox News and Jeanine Pirro’s television show posted an image consisting of the 9-11 image juxtaposed with the iconic World War II photograph of Marines raising the flag at Iwo…