Tag: copyright

Web throws copyright rules into confusion

Posted on December 16, 2014 by - News

Wikimedia CommonsPeople are having trouble figuring out how their online content can be protected in this internet age.

Casey Fiesler, a PhD candidate at Georgia Tech, surveyed a dataset of 100,000 public forum posts from websites dedicated to video, writing, art and music.

She and her colleagues discovered that copyright is widely discussed on public threads.  She said that “at any given point, an estimated 13 percent of the posts in Youtube help forums are about copyright”.

And most of those threads were dedicated to questions about copyright as none of the sites she looked at gave copyright advice.

“Over and over again, the prevalence of problems related to copyright was expressed by creators in the conversations. Most of the posts in our dataset could be labelled as expressing some sort of problem,” she said.

The researchers found the five most challenging areas were avoiding trouble, dealing with consequences, fear of infringement, dealing with infringement and not enough information for people for them to make informed decisions on copyright.

The researchers concluded that sites should have clear information about copyright, and having website owners answer copyright related questions.

Cops seize 292 domain names

Posted on December 2, 2014 by - News

euroflagzEuropol, in conjunction with US authorities and 25 police forces worldwide said 292 domain names used to sell counterfeit products have been seized.

Trademark holders had tipped the authorities off that counterfeit goods were being sold online and the domain names concerned are now in the hands of governments which formed part of the operation.

If people now go to the sites that formerly sold counterfeit goods, they will see a banner telling them the site has been seized.

Counterfeit products being sold included luxury goods, electronics, movies, music, pharmaceutical kit and other stuff.

The seizure is part of the authorities’ “in Our Sites” initiative aimed to protect people from buying crooked gear.  The operation has now seized 1,829 domain names since November 2012.

Rob Wainwright, director of Europol, said: “The infringements of intellectual property rights is a growing problem in our economies and for millions of producers and consumers.  Europol is committed to crack down on the criminal networks responsible.”

Copyright troll used robo-harassment

Posted on November 25, 2014 by - News

trollCopyright troll Rightscorp is being dragged from under its bridge to face the music in court for harassing victims with illegal harassing robo-calls.

Morgan Pietz, one of the lawyers who wrapped “copyright troll” Prenda Law in judicial red tape is targeting Rightscorp saying the outfit made illegal, harassing robo-calls to his clients, who were accused of illegal downloading. The lawsuit says that Rightscorp broke the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA), a 1991 law which limits how automated calling devices can be used.

Under the suit, Pietz claims that Rghtscorp was a “debt collector” but made harassing phone calls and didn’t abide by federal or California debt collection laws. Rightscorp company managers, including CEO Christopher Sabec and COO Robert Steele, and Rightscorp’s clients are all named as defendants in the lawsuit.

Violations of federal debt collection laws can result in damages of $1,000 and include provisions for paying lawyers’ fees in successful cases.  TCPA violations can cost $500 per incident, and that can be tripled if the violations were wilful.

Pietz says he doesn’t know how many violations have occurred. But he says just one of his named plaintiffs was subject to enough illegal phone calls to add up to tens of thousands of dollars in damages.

One victim, Jeanie Reif,  had her mobile phone called every day for a couple of months, Pietz said. And there could be thousands of members of this class.

If a judge agrees with Pietz that the phone calls were harassing and illegal, Rightscorp could be on the hook for many millions of dollars and that could send it under. The company has lost $6.5 million since its inception in 2011.

If it goes under the enforcement company’s marquee music clients, who include BMG Rights Management and Warner Brothers could end up having to pay up.

Monkey selfie is public domain

Posted on August 22, 2014 by - News

Picture thanks to Wiki Commons

Picture thanks to Wiki Commons

It looks like Wikipedia was right, and the “ape selfie” photo really is public domain.

The US Copyright Office has ruled  against David Slater the photographer, who has claimed ownership snap saying that images taken by animals, including the 2011 primate self-shot, could not be registered for copyright by a human.

“The Office will not register works produced by nature, animals, or plants,” the US copyright authority said.

While we can see that a camera could be struck by lightning and take a pic, we are not sure how a tree could take a picture, but it is clear that the USOP is covering all its bases here.  We notice that if a lump of a satellite falls on your camera and takes a picture that would technically be covered, because it is not nature.

However the copyright office will not register anything which is claimed to have been created by divine or supernatural beings, although the Office may register a work where the states that the work was inspired by a divine spirit.

So if I claim that my novel Sex Slaves of Babylon was inspired by the God Marduk it could be copyrighted, but if I claimed Marduk actually wrote it, then it could not be.

The copyright office specifically cites the monkey snap which has been the source of a legal battle between the Wikimedia Foundation and Slate when a macaque nicked his camera and pressed the shutter button a number of times.