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…
Pasquale on Copyright Externalities
By Eric Goldman Frank Pasquale has posted an article called The Law and Economics of Information Overload Externalities to SSRN. I’m not sure the title really captures the article, so don’t make the decision to read/not read it based on…
More on Perfect 10 v. Google
By John Ottaviani Eric will undoubtedly have more to say, but here are my immediate thoughts on this case. Leave it to the porn industry to make copyright law on the Internet. Perfect 10 alleges that Google (and, in a…
Perfect 10 Wins Injunction Against Google
By Eric Goldman Perfect 10 v. Google, Inc., CV 04-9484 AMH (C.D. Cal. Feb. 17, 2006) A major new ruling in the running battle over search engines and copyrights–this time concluding that Google’s creation and display of thumbnail images may…
Top Cyberspace IP Cases of 2005
By John Ottaviani (with help from Eric) Cyberspace continues to present fascinating and novel intellectual property issues. What follows is our attempt at identifying some of the more significant “Cyberspace Intellectual Property” decisions of 2005. Once again, it was quite…
Operation Site Down Fallout–19 RISCISO Participants Indicted for Warez Trading
By Eric Goldman I previously blogged on Operation Site Down, one of the largest warez busts ever. In “Operation Jolly Roger,” a component of the larger Operation Site Down, a cooperating witness gave the FBI access to the RISCISO warez…
Orphan Works Report Released
By Eric Goldman The Copyright Office released its report on orphan works. It concludes: “* The orphan works problem is real. * The orphan works problem is elusive to quantify and describe comprehensively. * Some orphan works situations may be…