Happy (?) Anniversary, Grokster v. MGM
By Eric Goldman Yesterday was the 1 year anniversary of the Grokster Supreme Court ruling. This opinion was one of the most hotly anticipated Supreme Court opinions relating to copyrights (and perhaps any subject matter) of the last decade or…
Fair Use Network Launches
By Eric Goldman An intriguing new resource, the Fair Use Network, has launched. This website is a project of the Free Expression Policy Project at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law. This is the same group…
Music File in P2P Share Directory May Be a Distribution–Interscope v. Duty
By Eric Goldman Interscope Records v. Duty, No. 05-CV-3744-PHX-FJM (D. Ariz. Apr. 14, 2006) Introduction The number of P2P direct infringement opinions is growing, and the news isn’t good for file sharers. The flagship case is BMG v. Gonzalez, where…
Denver IP Summit Presentation
By Eric Goldman I attended the Denver Summit on Intellectual Property and Digital Media. The audience was principally cable industry participants, but there were plenty of content creators (and legal academics) in attendance. I spoke about the various ways that…
Search Engines Awarded Legal Fees in Unmeritorious Copyright Case–Newborn v. Yahoo
By Eric Goldman Newborn v. Yahoo, 2006 WL 1409769 (D.D.C. May 23, 2006) I blogged about this case in November 2005. At that time, the plaintiff sued Yahoo and Google under copyright and trademark law because the search engines had…
NYT on Fair Use and Documentaries
By Eric Goldman The NY Times runs an article on documentaries and fair use. It describes the thicket of copyright clearances necessary to reuse film clips in documentaries, which can be fatal to a documentary project. It gives one example…
Piracy Loss Estimates as a Managed Number
By Eric Goldman I’ve long had doubts about the estimates of copyright owners’ losses due to piracy. Typically these studies use suspect methodologies, are based on privately-reported data that cannot be independently verified, and overcount losses by ignoring the demand…
Warez Trading Presentation at Fordham
By Eric Goldman I gave a talk last week at the Fourteenth Annual Conference on International Intellectual Property Law & Policy at Fordham Law School. I was on a panel about criminal copyright infringement. Here’s a rough transcription of my…
Parental Liability for Kids’ Copyright Infringement
By Eric Goldman Somehow I missed this excellent memo by EFF on parental liability for kids’ infringement, particularly in the context of RIAA music file-sharing lawsuits. The memo discusses the boundaries of parents’ liability for contributory and vicarious infringement. The…
ART Act Indictment for Distribution of Pre-Release Music
By Eric Goldman Robert Thomas of Milwaukee and Jared Bowser of Jacksonville have been indicted under the ART Act for pre-releasing four songs by Ryan Adams in August 2005, a month before the commercial release of Adams’ album. Allegedly, the…