Intellectual Property Law

Animal Welfare Advocates Settle Online Video Battle With Cowboy Group

Posted on February 12, 2009
Animal Welfare Advocates Settle Online Video Battle With Cowboy Group Meritless Copyright Claims Won't Interfere With YouTube Rodeo Critiques For Immediate Release: Thursday, February 12, 2009 San Francisco - Animal welfare advocates and the world's largest rodeo-sanctioning organization have settled their copyright battle over YouTube videos, protecting the advocates' right to publicize their critiques of animal treatment at rodeos and creating a new model for handling takedown notices...

RAM, Litigation, and Battlestar Galactica

Posted on February 12, 2009
Fans of the Sci Fi channel's "reimagined" version of Battlestar Galactica (BSG) all know that the only reason the human warship Galactica survived the initial attack by the Cylons was that it was an old ship using old technology. The Cylon attack crippled the modern systems of the rest of the colonial fleet, leaving them helpless...

minilinks for 2009-02-12

Posted on February 12, 2009
An Influx of Big Content Lawyers at DoJ: Cause for Concern?Julian Sanchez takes a look at the IP backgrounds of Obama appointees to the Department of Justice. Judge to UMG: No, You Cannot Sue Veoh's InvestorsThe judge in Universal Music Group's case against Veoh ruled that UMG could not include Veoh's investors as part of the copyright infringement lawsuit...

CTIA: All Your Cell Phones are Belong To Us!

Posted on February 12, 2009
Beware, iPhone unlockers who defected from AT&T to T-Mobile, because America's wireless phone giants think you're a copyright infringer, a DMCA circumventor, a contract breacher, and a trademark violator. You committed all these offenses simply because you want to use your phone (yes, the one you own) on another network or with other software applications...

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EFF Re-Launches Legal Guide for Bloggers

Posted on February 12, 2009
It has been almost four years since EFF first published our Legal Guide for Bloggers to help bloggers understand their rights and, when necessary, defend their freedom of expression. In that time, blogging has become more widespread, and more and more people need a better understanding of the laws surrounding blogging...

Judge Seeks Further Briefing on Constitutionality of Telecom Immunity

Posted on February 11, 2009
Today Chief Judge Vaughn Walker of the Northern District of California federal court asked for further briefing on a key constitutional question in the litigations brought against AT&T and the other telecommunications carriers for their involvement in the NSA's warrantless wiretapping...

Does the Authors Guild Want to Sue You for Reading Aloud to Your Kids?

Posted on February 11, 2009
The Wall Street Journal yesterday reported that the Authors Guild is up in arms over a feature of the new Amazon Kindle 2 that reads e-books aloud using a text-to-speech algorithm. According to Authors Guild executive director Paul Aiken, "They don't have the right to read a book out loud...

EFF Calls on Federal Regulators to Protect Consumers from DRM

Posted on February 09, 2009
San Francisco - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) called on the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) today to mitigate the damage that digital rights management (DRM) technologies cause consumers. In public comments submitted to the FTC today, EFF explained how DRM, backed by the anti-circumvention provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), impedes innovation and thwarts consumers' rights to make full use of their digital music, movies, software, and videogames...

Court Orders County to Release Geographic Mapping Data

Posted on February 06, 2009
A California appeals court issued a good decision [PDF] this afternoon in County of Santa Clara v. Superior Court of Santa Clara Country, a case raising unusual open government, homeland security, and copyright questions. In this case, the California First Amendment Coalition (CFAC) sued Santa Clara County under the California Public Records Act for a copy of the county's geographic information system basemap, which shows parcel boundaries, addresses, and other property data...

Privacy Advisers Tell Government to Improve REAL ID, Border Search Policies

Posted on February 06, 2009
A committee of privacy advisers has recommended that the government add vital privacy protections to two high profile and controversial homeland security efforts. The Data Privacy and Integrity Advisory Committee made a host of recommendations to the new Department of Homeland Security (DHS) secretary and acting privacy officer in a February 2 draft letter February 5 final letter, which has been posted on the DHS web site...

minilinks for 2009-02-05

Posted on February 05, 2009
Google Executives Face Jail Time for Italian VideoItalian prosecutors are holding Google executives accountable for the posting of an objectionable video. AP Alleges Copyright Infringement Over Obama ImageThe Associated Press says artist Shepard Fairey's remix of an AP photo is copyright infringement -- but Stanford's Fair Use project thinks otherwise...

RFID PASScards Easily Cloned

Posted on February 05, 2009
On a recent afternoon, security researcher Chris Paget was able to capture the passport card information of several unsuspecting individuals while driving through San Francisco, using a device he built in his spare time for a total of $250. A video released by Paget shows just how easy it is to clone RFID (Radio Frequency ID) tags with this relatively simple technology...

global minilinks for 2009-02-04

Posted on February 04, 2009
Google's Privacy Exec Charged in Italy over YouTube VideoGoogle's Peter Fleischer was served with the summons when attending a Turin conference. Google Paying out for Trademark KeywordsGoogle pays 350,000 euro for selling ads on searches that include the trademarks of competitors...

Act on ACTA: Tell the New Congress to Open the Secret IP Pact

Posted on February 04, 2009
Despite the new administration's policy of openness, the Anti-Counterfeiting Copyright Agreement (ACTA) still remains shrouded in secrecy. But language leaked from the negotiations reveal that it will cover far more than just commercial piracy and fake consumer goods and medicines...

California Action Alert - Say No to Biometrics in California Driver's Licenses

Posted on February 03, 2009
Last month the California DMV -- without notifying the public -- sent a letter to the state Joint Legislative Budget Committee requesting that biometric information be recorded for California driver's licenses and ID cards. Unless the committee actively rejects the DMV's request by February 11, the DMV will be free to begin implementing the biometric technology...

YouTube's January Fair Use Massacre

Posted on February 03, 2009
This is what it's come to. Teenagers singing "Winter Wonderland" being censored off YouTube. Fair use has always been at risk on YouTube, thanks to abusive DMCA takedown notices sent by copyright owners (sometimes carelessly, sometimes not). But in the past several weeks, two things have made things much worse for those who want to sing a song, post an a capella tribute, or set machinima to music...

Parody Website Back Online After Settlement of Bogus IP Claims

Posted on February 02, 2009
New York - An activist was able to relaunch her online campaign today after claims were settled out of court for the shutting down of her website challenging redevelopment efforts in New York City's historic Union Square. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) represented website creator Savitri Durkee, an activist concerned with preserving the character of Union Square and Union Square Park...

Google Book Search Settlement: Two Articles to Read

Posted on February 02, 2009
We posted our initial thoughts about the proposed Google Book Search settlement when it was announced in October 2008. Since that time, the official notice to members of the class has been approved by the court (available online here). This is still probably the best introduction to the 130+ page settlement for those who own a copyright in a book and are wondering what this settlement will mean for his or her copyrights...

More Bad Law in WoW Glider Case

Posted on February 02, 2009
Tim Lee over at Ars Technica has an update on latest chapter in the MDY v. Blizzard case, which pits the maker of World of Warcraft against the maker of Glider, software that lets your computer play WoW on auto-pilot for you. We reported on an earlier stage of the lawsuit in June 2008, but MDY recently suffered another defeat that threatens user rights more generally: Ars talked to two legal experts at Public Knowledge, a public interest organization that filed an amicus brief in the MDY case last year...

Thousands Sign Petition to Copyright Office Demanding Cell Phone Freedom

Posted on February 02, 2009
San Francisco - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) submitted a petition to the U.S. Copyright Office today signed by more than 8200 people demanding that the office lift the legal cloud hanging over cell phone customers who modify their phones. The petition was part of EFF's reply comment in the 2009 Copyright Office rulemaking, convened every three years to consider exemptions to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act's (DMCA) ban on circumvention of digital rights management (DRM) restrictions...

MP3 Bloggers, Where Are Your Promo CDs?

Posted on January 29, 2009
According to briefs filed last month by the RIAA and Universal Music Group, it's illegal to sell, give away, or even throw out "promo CDs." Of course, this is exactly the argument that UMG made, and lost, in court last year. Despite that loss, and despite the open secret that many music reviewers have been dumping promo CDs in used record stores for years, UMG has opted to appeal...

minilinks for 2009-01-28

Posted on January 29, 2009
ACLU Requests Bush-era MemosIn a test of President Obama's commitment to transparency, the ACLU requested sensitive Bush administration memos on torture and wiretapping that have long been sought by privacy and human rights advocates. Patriot Act Used to Punish FliersConflicts with airline staff have led to fliers facing federal terrorism charges...

EFF Leads Call of Support for Live Webcast of RIAA Hearing

Posted on January 29, 2009
Boston - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) urged a federal appeals court today to allow the live webcasting of a hearing in one of the thousands of lawsuits that have been brought against users of peer-to-peer file-sharing systems. The District Court granted defendant Joel Tenenbaum's request to allow an upcoming hearing to be webcast on the website of the Berkman Center at Harvard...

Government Blocks Release of Documents on Secret IP Enforcement Treaty

Posted on January 29, 2009
Washington, D.C. - The Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) is withholding hundreds of documents about a secret intellectual property enforcement treaty currently under negotiation between the U.S. and more than a dozen other countries...

College Student Vindicated After Political Email Sparks Disciplinary Action

Posted on January 28, 2009
East Lansing, MI - A Michigan State University (MSU) student government leader has been cleared of any charges of wrongdoing after the school falsely labeled her a spammer for sending out a political email to faculty members. MSU has also agreed to revise its Network Acceptable Use Policy to ensure that it is fair and constitutional...

Laboratories and Roadmaps for Network Testing

Posted on January 28, 2009
Today, the New America Foundation, PlanetLab and Google announced the launch of the Measurement Lab project, an initiative to provide server resources for researchers interested in network neutrality and performance testing. This is good news for the community of academics and activists who are trying to map, measure and record the state of network management by ISPs as well as many other aspects of Internet performance...

Irish ISP Agrees to Three Strikes Against Its Customers

Posted on January 28, 2009
While there were rumors today that Comcast and AT&T might be entering into an agreement with the RIAA in the United States, it was in Ireland where the recording industry made its latest "three strikes" subscriber termination deal with the telecom industry -- using the courts and the threat of mass Internet filtering obligations as the inducement...

EFF to White House Counsel: What Will You Do to Protect the Privacy of WhiteHouse.gov Users?

Posted on January 27, 2009
As we noted last week, the new WhiteHouse.gov site uses embedded YouTube movies, raising concerns of privacy and open government advocates. Embedded video clips can place or add to a cookie on the user?s computer ? thus enabling tracking of users as they use the web...

GateHouse and the New York Times Settle

Posted on January 26, 2009
With trial looming, GateHouse Media and the New York Times over the weekend settled their dispute over "hyper-local" news aggregation sites on the NYT-owned Boston.com website. The parties' joint press release pointed interested parties to the binding letter agreement [PDF] the parties signed over the weekend...

DRM in Microsoft UK's Mobile Music Service

Posted on January 26, 2009
Late last week, Microsoft launched a mobile phone music downloading service in the UK, but the public has quickly focused its attention on Microsoft UK's mystifying choice to include digital rights management (DRM) on its music files. PC Pro reports that the restrictions prevent buyers from playing the music anywhere but on the mobile phone used to make the purchase, while tracks from the iTunes Music Store and Amazon's MP3 store are cheaper and DRM-free...

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