Free for a Fee

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The content in this post was found at http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/02/decadent-capitalists-thwart-north-korea-with-dmca-takedown/ and was not authored by the moderators of freeforafee.com. Clicking the title link will take you to the source of the post.

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The content in this post was found at http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/02/judge-denies-mpaa-attempt-to-seize-profits-from-copyright-infringement/ and was not authored by the moderators of freeforafee.com. Clicking the title link will take you to the source of the post.

Desiree Golden, a recent college graduate, wanted to aim at the big money that can be made in app development. She decided to replicate the popular “Tetris” videogame that has been around since the late 1980s. After researching intellectual property law, she says, she set out to copy only those elements of the Tetris game that she believed were not protected by copyright – game rules and functionality.

If this general strategy sounds familiar, perhaps you have read our recent post on the Oracle v. Google dispute over Google’s use of Oracle’s Java technology in the Android operating system. In that case, the court ruled that Google had done it right, and that the rules and functionality of the Java technology that Google copied were not subject to copyright.

But in Tetris Holding, LLC v. Xio Interactive, Inc., 2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 74463 (D.N.J. May 30, 2012), Judge Freda Wolfson ruled that Xio, Ms. Golden’s development company, got it wrong. By wholesale copying not only the rules and functionality of the original Tetris game but also its copyrightable expression, Xio’s“Mino” app crossed the line into copyright infringement.

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The content in this post was found at http://newmedialaw.proskauer.com/2012/06/19/videogame-app-developer-breaks-the-rules-on-copyright-infringement/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+NewMediaAndTechnologyLaw+%28New+Media+and+Technology+Law%29 and was not authored by the moderators of freeforafee.com. Clicking the title link will take you to the source of the post.

The trial in the dispute between Oracle and Google over the use of Java technology in the Android operating system is over, and the greatly anticipated ruling on copyright in the Java Application Programming Interface (API) has issued. The court ruled that the elements of the Java API, including the structure, sequence and organization, are not protected by copyright. It is important to note that the court did not rule that no elements of an API may be protected by copyright. Although broad in its implications, the opinion is fact-specific to the Java API.

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The content in this post was found at http://newmedialaw.proskauer.com/2012/06/06/oracle-v-google-judge-writes-the-book-on-software-programming-copyright-for-now-anyway/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+NewMediaAndTechnologyLaw+%28New+Media+and+Technology+Law%29 and was not authored by the moderators of freeforafee.com. Clicking the title link will take you to the source of the post.

In a jury room in San Francisco, jurors in Oracle, Inc. v. Google, Inc. have been toiling over complicated issues related to the copyrightability of the Java computer programming language, and they may well return a verdict before the ink is dry on this post. We’ll write more about that case, which the judge has dubbed “the World Series of technology litigation,” when the verdict is in. Meanwhile, the jury and the judge in Oracle v. Google have been lapped by the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg, which ruled on May 2 that, under the law of the European Union, the functionality of a computer program and computer programming language are not protected by copyright. Suffice to say for now that there are significant similarities between these two disputes. So much so, in fact, that on May 3, the judge in Oracle v. Google asked the parties to submit briefs addressing the EU Court of Justice ruling.

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The content in this post was found at http://newmedialaw.proskauer.com/2012/05/07/european-court-of-justice-rules-on-copyright-status-of-computer-programming-languages-and-functionality/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+NewMediaAndTechnologyLaw+%28New+Media+and+Technology+Law%29 and was not authored by the moderators of freeforafee.com. Clicking the title link will take you to the source of the post.

The United States government has agreed to defer its controversial prosecution of UK college student Richard O’Dwyer on copyright infringement charges, allowing the UK government to drop the extradition proceedings against him.

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The content in this post was found at http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/11/uk-tv-shack-admin-wont-face-trial-in-us-on-copyright-charges/ and was not authored by the moderators of freeforafee.com. Clicking the title link will take you to the source of the post.

Pandora CEO Joe Kennedy told Congress today, in no uncertain terms, that his business is in danger from high copyright royalty rates. But his plea fell on unsympathetic ears.

At a hearing before the House Judiciary Committee, key representatives were not only unmoved by Pandora, they were more interested in raising the royalties paid by terrestrial radio to musicians (radio currently doesn’t pay royalties at all.)

Pandora, by contrast, pays about half its revenue in copyright royalties. Today, Kennedy compared those fees to satellite radio, which pays about 7.5 percent of its revenue, and cable radio, which pays 15 percent.

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The content in this post was found at http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/11/pandoras-internet-radio-bill-hits-a-wall-of-opposition-in-congress/ and was not authored by the moderators of freeforafee.com. Clicking the title link will take you to the source of the post.

The Center for Copyright Information, which help ISPs punish Internet copyright infringers by administering a “six strikes” warning system, was scheduled to start up the operation before the end of this year.

But today CCI announced that the rollout will be delayed at least a few months, until “early 2013.” The reason given: damage from Hurricane Sandy, “which affected our testing schedules.”

CCI Executive Director Jill Lesser wrote in a blog post:

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The content in this post was found at http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/11/six-strikes-copyright-enforcement-postponed-until-2013/ and was not authored by the moderators of freeforafee.com. Clicking the title link will take you to the source of the post.

Yvette Joy Liebesman and Benjamin Wilson, The Mark of a Resold Good, 20 George Mason L. Rev. 157 (2012)

Our article, recently published in the George Mason Law Review, concerns mark owners’ attempts at stifling the online resale of their goods. Over the past ten years, casual resellers have migrated from garage sales, swap meets and consignment stores to online sites such as eBay and Craigslist. What were once minor side hobbies have, in many instances, become lucrative businesses. Today, there are hundreds of books available about selling goods online, every month 30 million new ads are posted on Craigslist, and every day six million new listings are published on eBay. These goods—when genuine? should be protected by the first sale doctrine, a well-known defense to infringement claims that applies across patent, copyright, and trademark law. Simply stated, once a manufacturer sells a product, it may not interfere with future sales of that particular good.

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The content in this post was found at http://blog.ericgoldman.org/archives/2012/12/useful_article.htm and was not authored by the moderators of freeforafee.com. Clicking the title link will take you to the source of the post.

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The content in this post was found at http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/12/fox-asks-appeals-court-to-stop-dishs-ad-skipping-dvr-right-now/ and was not authored by the moderators of freeforafee.com. Clicking the title link will take you to the source of the post.