Is Camcordering Ever Legitimate?
I exchanged emails with Ed Foster regarding the anti-camcordering portion of the ART Act. Ed expressed concerns about the proportionality of criminalizing camcordering, and he has a point. Merely recording a movie is not, by itself, harmful. At worst, camcordering…
Bush Signs Family Entertainment and Copyright Act of 2005
Not surprisingly, Pres. Bush signed the Family Entertainment and Copyright Act of 2005 into law today. My critiques on film skipping and new criminal sanctions. UPDATE: Fred von Lohmann offers his characteristically clear-headed perspective on the Family Entertainment and Copyright…
Walmart Foundation Uses Copyright to Curtail Griper
The Walmart Foundation has gone after the gripe site “walmart-foundation.org” using 512(c)(3) notices to take down images that the griper took from walmartfoundation.org. A few observations about this: * copyright is an extremely effective tool against gripers. Using a 512(c)(3)…
Family Movie Act of 2005—Legalizing Technology to Skip Film Parts
This morning I blogged on the criminal law part of the Family Entertainment and Copyright Act. Now, I’ll discuss the Family Movie Act of 2005, which allows technology to make parts of a film imperceptible (let’s call it film skipping)….
Artists’ Rights and Theft Prevention Act–New Criminal Copyright Infringement Standards
As part of the Family Entertainment and Copyright Act, Congress enacted the “Artists’ Rights and Theft Prevention Act of 2005” or the “ART Act.” The ART Act adds two new major criminal standards: (1) using a camcorder to record a…
NPR on Whois and Privacy
Larry Abramson of NPR ran a story entitled “New Laws on Domain Names Aim to Stem Online Fraud” (specifically referring to the Fraudulent Online Identity Sanctions Act, passed as part of the Intellectual Property Protection in Courts Administration Act). My…
Grokster Oral Arguments
If you haven’t seen it elsewhere, the transcript from the oral arguments in Grokster.
Copyright Office Posts Comments Regarding Orphan Works
The Copyright Office has posted the comments it received regarding orphan works—a total of 716 comments! It will take a while for the copyright office to work through these. A number of the submissions are brief, in some cases just…
Webloyalty.com, Inc. v. Consumer Innovations LLC
Webloyalty.com, Inc. v. Consumer Innovations LLC, 73 U.S.P.Q. 2d 1898 (D. Del. Jan. 13, 2005). The parties compete in the online club membership business, selling packages of services that combine price discounts, insurance-esque protections and other low-value services that consumers…
AFP v. Google News Update
AP story recapping AFP v. Google, quoting Zittrain and von Lohmann (among others). Contrary to some popular press reports, it appears that AFP is pressing on with the lawsuit despite Google’s redoubled efforts to kick them out of Google News….