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Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) is a long-time opponent of the secretly negotiated Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA). Today he introduced an amendment to a Senate “jobs bill” that would force ACTA to come before Congress for approval. A second amendment would make the US Trade Representative, which negotiates US trade deals, drop the veil of secrecy around its copyright and patent negotiations.

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The content in this post was found at http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/03/sen-wyden-demands-vote-on-american-copyright-patent-treaties/ and was not authored by the moderators of freeforafee.com. Clicking the title link will take you to the source of the post.

Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom spent the first few weeks after his arrest in prison, with the US government arguing that he posed a flight risk. But he was finally released from prison last month, and his wife recently gave birth to twin daughters.

Dotcom is now speaking out about his case as he continues to fight extradition to the United States. On Monday, TorrentFreak posted one of the most in-depth interviews Dotcom has done since his arrest. Dotcom told TorrentFreak he can “refute pretty much each and every claim in the indictment.”

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The content in this post was found at http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/03/dotcom-says-hollywood-studios-once-courted-megaupload/ and was not authored by the moderators of freeforafee.com. Clicking the title link will take you to the source of the post.

The dispute between The SCO Group and Novell, Inc. over the ownership of copyrights in the code to certain versions of the UNIX operating system, which started eight years ago, appears to have been handed its retirement papers by the Tenth Circuit. Yesterday, on the case’s second visit to the circuit, the court upheld the jury verdict in Novell’s favor on the issue of copyright ownership. The SCO Group v. Novell, Inc., No. 10-4122 (10th Cir. Aug. 30, 2011).

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The content in this post was found at http://newmedialaw.proskauer.com/2011/08/31/novell-prevails-in-long-running-dispute-over-ownership-of-unix-copyrights-and-open-source-software-moves-on/?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 Supreme Court agreed Monday to decide the global reach of US copyright law, in a case testing whether an overseas purchaser of a copyrighted work may resell it in the United States without the copyright holder’s permission.

The justices will hear the case, which considers the “first-sale” doctrine, in its next term and is expected to set a nationwide standard. Federal circuit courts of appeal are split on the issue.

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The content in this post was found at http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/04/us-supreme-court-to-revisit-first-sale-copyright-doctrine/ 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/2012/05/music-labels-force-pioneering-mp3tunes-into-bankruptcy/ and was not authored by the moderators of freeforafee.com. Clicking the title link will take you to the source of the post.

If your collegiate experience was anything like mine, it probably involved frequent trips to the library in order to check out photocopied book chapters on Hegel and Wittgenstein from the “reserves desk” (and involved frequent curses directed to those other readers who, like me, were attempting to cram a chapter an hour before class and had checked out all available copies.) Today, of course, you can just get “e-reserves” through a browser, but the very ease of copying and distribution found in the new systems has publishers worried…

Some publishers think so. Although hesitant to go after educational users over small excerpts, publishers like Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press, and Sage Publications came to believe that many professors were stepping over even the broad lines around “fair use” and depriving the publishers of licensing revenue in the process. In 2008, they launched a major test case, suing Georgia State University in federal court.

In a massive 350-page ruling (PDF) . . . the judge concluded, “There is no reason to believe that allowing unpaid, nonprofit academic use of small excerpts in controlled circumstances would diminish creation of academic works.”

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The content in this post was found at http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/05/fair-use-mostly-triumphant-judge-exonerates-campus-e-reserves/ and was not authored by the moderators of freeforafee.com. Clicking the title link will take you to the source of the post.

Tenenbaum’s lawyer, well-known Harvard Law professor Charles Nesson, wants the Supremes to understand that the industry’s “litigation assault” on people like Tenenbaum is “procedurally unfair and profoundly unethical.” Such damage awards, Nesson continues, seek to:

punish [Tenenbaum] beyond any rational measure of the damage he conceivably caused, not for the purpose of recovering compensation for actual damage caused by him, nor for the primary purpose of deterring him from further copyright infringement, but for the ulterior purpose of creating an urban legend so frightening to children using the Internet, and so frightening for parents and teachers of students using the Internet, that they will somehow reverse the tide of the digital future.

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The content in this post was found at http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/05/admitted-file-swapper-begs-supreme-court-for-help/ and was not authored by the moderators of freeforafee.com. Clicking the title link will take you to the source of the post.

Just when you thought that everyone was content to let debates about the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) simmer down, a group of American legal scholars has now submitted an open letter to the United States Senate, challenging the lack of a Congressional approval process for ACTA.

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The content in this post was found at http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/05/acta-deathwatch-profs-call-process-unconstitutional-europe-revolts/ and was not authored by the moderators of freeforafee.com. Clicking the title link will take you to the source of the post.

On Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff in Manhattan threw out copyright infringement claims brought by lawyers who say LexisNexis and Westlaw are stealing the works of lawyers.

The content in this post was found at http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2012/05/17/rakoff-dismisses-copyright-claims-against-westlaw-lexis/?mod=WSJBlog&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+wsj%2Flaw%2Ffeed+%28WSJ.com%3A+Law+Blog%29 and was not authored by the moderators of freeforafee.com. Clicking the title link will take you to the source of the post.

Trade officials from countries scattered around the Pacific Rim mingled in business attire. Ron Kirk, current US Trade Representative and former mayor of Dallas, welcomed everyone to the the latest round of negotiations for the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). The crowd applauded, and Kirk stepped down, ready to continue with the festivities, when a man strode confidently to the podium and introduced himself as “Git Haversall,” president of the “Texas Corporate Power Partnership.”

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The content in this post was found at http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/05/trans-pacific-partnership-could-be-acta-plus-legal-experts-fear/ and was not authored by the moderators of freeforafee.com. Clicking the title link will take you to the source of the post.