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Timothy Geigner
Tech Dirt
Nov 2nd 2018

Earlier this year, we wrote a bunch of posts on the Copyright Office’s request for comment on changes needed to the DMCA’s anti-circumvention exemption list. There were lots of interesting submissions, but one that caught my attention was a whole bunch of film association groups, most of them for documentarians, advocating that the anti-circumvention they enjoyed to be able to use clips from other films and content be expanded to include filmmakers generally. This would address the copyright industries’ cynical attempt to route around Fair Use usage by filmmakers by simply locking up their content behind all kinds of DRM that, unless you’re a documentarian, you can’t circumvent. The MPAA, as you would expect, said that allowing for this would kick off “widespread hacking” of all the DVDs on the planet, while all it was really concerned about was the licensing agreements it was able to secure by filmmakers who didn’t want to violate the DMCA to get the Fair Use clips they wanted.

Well, the Copyright Office made its decision and the exemption will now be offered to filmmakers en masse.

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The content in this post was found at https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20181101/10104240962/copyright-office-extends-anti-circumvention-dmca-exemptions-to-all-filmmakers-not-just-documentarians.shtml Clicking the title link will take you to the source of the post. and was not authored by the moderators of freeforafee.com

Timothy Geigner
Tech Dirt
Nov. 20, 2018

Much has been written at this point about the problems with various “notice and takedown” policies, including in the DMCA. Much of the problems arise from the DMCA’s requirement that service providers “expeditiously” remove infringing material upon notice, which naturally leads to platforms erring on the side of removal versus taking a hard — and manual — look at the material in question to see if it’s really infringing. This results in all kinds of takedowns of speech that is not infringing, typically as a result of human error, a dispute over the actual ownership of rights, a lack of recognizing fair use, or, perhaps most often, an automated system for sending DMCAs simply screwing up.

But another weakness in the notice and takedown policy is in how much power it places in the hands of trolls and bad actors to simply fuck with people. This can be seen in action in the case of one SoundCloud troll getting all kinds of music taken down by pretending to be a rights holder.

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The content in this post was found at https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20181116/09175541064/soundcloud-troll-getting-dmca-takedowns-shows-weakness-notice-takedown-systems.shtml Clicking the title link will take you to the source of the post. and was not authored by the moderators of freeforafee.com

Allison L. Stillman, A. John P. Mancini, Richard M. Assmus & Xiyin Tang
LexBlog
October 18, 2018

On 11 October 2018, the Music Modernization Act (“MMA”) was signed into law. It effects a sweeping overhaul of the compulsory mechanical license mechanism set forth in 17 U.S.C. §115—among other significant changes. While many in the industry have been closely following the bill as it worked its way through the legislature, the following provides an overview of key terms regarding the mechanical licensing procedures under the new law that every digital music service provider should know. Importantly, though many aspects of the new system require further regulation and many months (or even years) before they are effective, certain licensee obligations will begin as early as next month.

The Blanket License

“Covered Activities”

Copyright Infringement Litigation

For further information on the MMA, please read the full legal update.

This article was originally published on AllAboutIP – Mayer Brown’s  blog on relevant developments in the fields of intellectual property and unfair competition law. For intellectual property-themed videos, Mayer Brown has launched a dedicated YouTube channel. 

Timothy Geigner
Tech Dirt
Oct 16th 2018

A case in point of this would be Canadian artist Adam Basanta, who has come up with a bonkers and very cool method for both producing machine-generated art and then validating that art for human consumption by comparing it to real-world artwork made by us lowly apes. Let’s start with his setup.

Broadly, Basanta’s machine has two stages: creation and validation.

Creation happens with a hardware setup that Basanta likens to a Rube Goldberg machine: two computer scanners tipped on their sides and pointed face to face, endlessly scanning each other, and the results – influenced by shifts in the room’s lighting, randomized settings and an automatically moving mouse – are interpreted by a computer and turned into colourful abstract pictures.

The second stage is validation. Another computer running a custom-built program automatically checks each image against an online database of real art made by human hands. If the machine-made image is similar to one that has been human-made, the computer dubs it a success and keeps it; if there is no match, the image is deleted forever.

If that doesn’t get your heart beating a little faster, you simply don’t care about art. This setup is, at the very least, incredibly interesting, and Basanta’s method for validating whether the art produced by the machines is good enough for human consumption or not kicks the interest level into overdrive. His setup generates something like a thousand images a day, with a tiny fraction of that being deemed worthy of retention. The whole thing was good enough to warrant an art exhibit in Canada and Basanta has featured many of the images on his website as well.

And that’s where the trouble started. Artist Amel Chamandy has alleged that Basanta violated her copyright on a piece she created called “A World Without Trees”, as well as the trademark rights she has on her own name. Both claims stem from one of the pieces Basanta’s machine setup used to validate its own artwork against and the naming convention it used to denote the new pieces it created.

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The content in this post was found at https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20181005/09595440788/art-ai-infringement-copyright-conundrum.shtml Clicking the title link will take you to the source of the post. and was not authored by the moderators of freeforafee.com

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Steve Brachmann
IP Watchdog
October 15, 2018

U.S. District Judge Jon McCalla of the Western District of Tennessee recently issued an order denying motions made by interactive streaming music provider Spotify to dismiss a case including copyright infringement claims brought by independent music publisher and copyright administration company Bluewater Music Corporation. Judge McCalla’s order determined Bluewater has standing for all 2,142 music compositions it has asserted based on ownership or an exclusive license of the works. Given Bluewater is seeking the maximum statutory damages of $150,000 per infringed work, Judge McCalla’s order allows Bluewater to continue pursuing a maximum damages award of $321.3 million.

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The content in this post was found at https://www.ipwatchdog.com/2018/10/15/spotifys-motions-dismiss-copyright-infringement-claims-bluewater-music/id=102059/ Clicking the title link will take you to the source of the post. and was not authored by the moderators of freeforafee.com

Timothy Geigner
Tech Dirt
Oct 11th 2018

We’ve had plenty of stories revolving around content owners and publishers issuing DMCAs over trailers and advertisements. These stories are always head-scratching in one way or another, typically centering around the question of why anyone would ever want to take down free advertising, even imperfect free advertising. We’ve also seen plenty of examples of content owners accidentally sending DMCA notices over their own content, all of which help to highlight both the flaws in the DMCA process and just how difficult it is for even content owners themselves to know just what is infringing and what isn’t.

But when these two worlds collide, it becomes something special. We’re not yet 100% certain, but it sure looks like Epic Games DMCA’d its own trailer for the upcoming Fortnite Season 6.

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The content in this post was found at https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20181010/09400640812/epic-games-likely-dmcad-own-fortnite-trailer-showing-problems-with-youtubes-dmca-process-yet-again.shtml Clicking the title link will take you to the source of the post. and was not authored by the moderators of freeforafee.com

JetLaw
Carter Gantt
September 30, 2018
. . . .

There are two types of streaming services. In noninteractive services, the listener is passive and unable to choose their music. Interactive services allow the listener to select her own music. For the non-interactive streaming companies, Congress allows them to have a copyright to this music so long as they pay a standard royalty rate to the copyright holders. Every five years, the Copyright Royalty Board (CRB), which oversees the copyright board’s licenses, sets that standard rate.

When deciding on what the rate will be for the next term the board first waits for parties to negotiate a rate. If they are unable to do so, the CRB holds an adversarial proceeding to decide on the rates, and endeavors to “establish rates and terms that most clearly represent the rates and terms that would have been negotiated in the marketplace between a willing buyer and seller.”

In a recent decision, SoundExchange, Inc. v. Copyright Royalty Board and Librarian of Congress, the U.S. Courts of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit upheld the recent royalty rate that was established by the CRB for noninteractive services.

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The content in this post was found at http://www.jetlaw.org/2018/09/30/buying-and-selling-music-in-the-digital-era/ Clicking the title link will take you to the source of the post. and was not authored by the moderators of freeforafee.com

Mike Masnick
Tech Dirt
Oct 10th 2018 2018

Over the years we’ve expressed some concerns about the NonCommercial license option from Creative Commons. Even as we’re incredibly supportive of CC, the NonCommercial license often seemed to raise more questions than answers — to the point that some have argued that it actually harmed CC’s brand and resulted in significant confusion for how CC licenses work. There have even been suggestions that CC should drop the NC license option altogether.

To its immense credit, people at Creative Commons have appeared to take these concerns quite seriously over the past few years, doing quite a bit of work to try to clarify what NonCommercial means for the purpose of the license. Our specific concern is that NonCommercial could mean all different things to different people. If you’re using a NonCommercial CC-licensed image on a personal blog and you have ads on that blog (even if you don’t make much money from it) is that non commercial? If you use it in a tweet and your Twitter bio promotes your business is that non commercial?

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The content in this post was found at https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20181003/17594740775/creative-commons-continues-to-try-to-help-courts-understand-what-noncommercial-license-means.shtml Clicking the title link will take you to the source of the post. and was not authored by the moderators of freeforafee.com

Mike Masnick
Tech Dirt
Oct 1st 2018

. . . . Meanwhile, down in Texas, there’s the UMG v. Grande Communications case, which many had seen as a parallel case to the BMG v. Cox case. This was another case that involved an ISP being bombarded with shakedown (not takedown) notices from Rightscorp, in which Righscorp and its clients felt that ISP was not willing to pass on those notices (thus denying Rightscorp and its clients the ability to collect money in exchange for a promise not to sue). . . .

Vicarious and contributory infringement are often lumped together, but they are different. For there to be vicarious infringement, you have to show that the party being sued both had the right and ability to supervise the activity, and that it would directly financially benefit from the infringement. The court rejected that in the case of Grande, noting that just because Grande makes money from its subscribers, that’s not enough to show that it was profiting from the infringement.

Universal Music tried to amend the complaint to show that it had “more evidence” that Grande and its management company, Patriot, were still vicariously liable — but the magistrate judge says it’s just trying to re-litigate what it lost last time.

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The content in this post was found at https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20180923/12051040696/court-shoots-down-record-labels-attempt-to-expand-definition-vicarious-infringement.shtml Clicking the title link will take you to the source of the post. and was not authored by the moderators of freeforafee.com