Free for a Fee

Mike Masnick
Tech Dirt
July 17, 2019

Every few years this kind of thing pops up. Some ignorant organization or policymaker thinks “oh, hey, the easy way to ‘solve’ piracy is just to create a giant blacklist.” This sounds like a simple solution… if you have no idea how any of this works. Remember, advertising giant GroupM tried just such an approach a decade ago, working with Universal Music to put together a list of “pirate sites” for which it would block all advertising. Of course, who ended up on that list? A bunch of hip hop news sites and blogs. And even the personal site of one of Universal Music’s own stars was suddenly deemed an “infringing site.”

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https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20190712/00090542575/wipo-now-gets-into-extrajudicial-zero-due-process-censorship-act-over-sites-it-declares-infringing.shtml

Zhen Feng, Suyu Yuan & Helen Xia
LexBlog
October 16, 2018

On 9 August and 28 September 2018, the new Cyberspace Courts in Beijing and Guangzhou were officially opened. These new specialised courts, along with their equivalent one that was formed in Hangzhou in August 2017, are meant to tackle the quickly swelling stream of internet-related court procedures in China. The establishment of these specialised courts is an encouraging step for the Chinese internet sector as well as for IP owners: it promises a more flexible procedure, less bureaucracy in obtaining evidence and higher quality judgments, handed down by specialist judges.

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The content in this post was found at https://www.lexblog.com/2018/10/16/three-cyberspace-courts-now-online-and-open-for-business/ Clicking the title link will take you to the source of the post. and was not authored by the moderators of freeforafee.com

JetLaw

Guest post by Mark Edward Blankenship Jr.

Sept. 19, 2018

In creating the album “Hip-Hop Is Dead”, Nasir Jones, better known by his stage name Nas, postulated that hip-hop artists can help rebuild America by having more control in their music in response to a dying culture and a decline in innovation and political outreach. Yet, in subsequent interviews leading up to the album’s release, the title’s meaning began to shift and change as he responded differently at various junctures, eventually concluding in 2016 that “hip-hop is in a “better” place than it was a decade prior. Yet during that same year, the United States would end up facing a circuit split regarding the legality of digital sampling, which is still currently up for debate.

Back in 2005, the Sixth Circuit in Bridgeport Music, Inc. v. Dimension Films applied a per se infringement standard for sound recordings and digital sampling which many scholars criticized as being the death of hip-hop.  . . .

The de minimis defense is neither a novel nor recondite concept of copyright law, especially outside of the United States. In Kraftwerk v. Pelham (also known as Metall auf Metall), Germany’s Federal Constitutional Court [hereinafter BverfG] applied a similar standard for sound recordings two days before VMG Salsoul. . . .

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The content in this post was found at http://www.jetlaw.org/2018/09/19/guest-post-hip-hop-is-dead-understanding-the-issues-regarding-digital-sampling-in-the-u-s-and-germany-and-the-potential-demise-of-an-“american”-genre/ Clicking the title link will take you to the source of the post. and was not authored by the moderators of freeforafee.com

Lex Blog

AUGUST 15, 2018

In our continued post-TC Heartland coverage, Judge Gilstrap in the Eastern District of Texas recently held that venue was proper because Google exercises exclusive control over physical servers implicated by the litigation, as well as the physical space within which the server is located and maintained. The court emphasized that the place where the server is located occupies a physical space, which is more than merely a virtual space or electronic communications from one person…

Lex Blog

DAVINIA BRENNAN

AUGUST 16, 2018

[ed notes: EU rules and actions; international]

The CJEU has ruled that an unauthorised reposting of a photograph on a website, which is already publicly accessible without restriction on another website, can infringe the copyright rights of a photographer (Renckhoff, C-161/17). It is of little importance if, as in the present case, the copyright holder does not limit the ways in which the photograph may be used by internet users.

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The content in this post was found at https://www.lexblog.com/2018/08/16/cjeu-rules-reposting-photograph-internet-freely-accessible-another-website-requires-reauthorisation-author/ 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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Lex Blog

AUGUST 9, 2018

[ed’s note: EU copyright ruling]

Copying an image from a website and using it for one’s own purposes, e.g. the illustration of a memo which eventually happens to be uploaded to another website – this happens a hundred times every day. However, such conduct is a copyright infringement. This is the clear answer the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) has just given in a truly remarkable judgement (judgement of 7 August 2018, C-161/17 – Córdoba)….

The content in this post was found at https://www.lexblog.com/2018/08/09/cjeu-re-posting-content-is-a-communication-to-the-public/ Clicking the title link will take you to the source of the post. and was not authored by the moderators of freeforafee.com

Chicago IP Litigation

R. David Donoghue

May 25, 2018TopstepTrader, LLC v. OneUp Trader, LLC, No. 17 C 4412, Slip Op. (N.D. Ill. Apr. 18, 2018) (Leinenweber, J.).

Judge Leinenweber granted in part defendant OneUp Trader’s Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(b)(6) motion to dismiss and defendant Alsabah’s Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(b)(2) & (6) motion to dismiss for lack of personal jurisdiction and failure to state a claim in this copyright dispute involving electronic trading systems.

Personal Jurisdiction

Alsabah had to enter an agreement to use TopstepTrader’s software in which he allegedly consented to jurisdiction in Illinois. The Court held that the contract was on a spectrum between a clickwrap and a browsewrap agreement, in a type of agreement referred to as sign-in-wrap. Alsabah did not take an affirmative action to explicitly agree to the site terms, but there was affirmative action in that Asabah had to sign up for an account. During the sign up process, Alsabah would have been informed that by creating an account, he accepted the terms of service, along with a hyperlink to those terms. In fact, Alsabah clicked a “sign up” button next to a hyperlink for the terms. Without doing so, he could not have activated an account and gotten access to TopstepTrader’s website. But the “sign up” button did not clearly state that by clicking on it Alsabah was accepting the terms. So, while it was a close call, the terms and their forum selection clause were not enforceable against Alsabah.

Regarding specific jurisdiction, TopstepTrader’s location in Illinois and harm in Illinois was not sufficient to create personal jurisdiction. But Alsabah specifically sought out TopstepTrader’s website, created an account and then received multiple communications which identified TopstepTrader as an Illinois-based company. While walking into a brick and mortar store in Illinois would have been better evidence of specific jurisdiction, signing up with an Illinois business under the particular circumstances that Alsabah did was sufficient to create specific jurisdiction.

Failure to State a Claim

While OneUp Trader is correct that short, common phrases may not be copyright-protectable, OneUp Trader failed to address Topstep Trader’s argument that it is the combination of elements such as text, graphic size screen layouts, colors, charts, unique terms, etc. that is protectable. And even if the alleged copying identified in the complaint was only a small portion of the total content, that could be sufficient. Topstep Trader did not need to detail each copied element. It was enough to provide examples of the copying at the complaint stage. And a review of the exhibits showed sufficient alleged copying.

The Court dismissed Topstep Trader’s breach of contract claim, but gave Topstep Trader leave to replead with sufficient facts to show that a contract was formed that would support Topstep Trader’s breach claim.

Finally, Alsabah argued that the claims against him should be dismissed because the complaint only specifically mentioned him in limited instances. Topstep Trader, however, defined a term that combined OneUp Trader and Alsabah and referred to it collectively throughout the complaint.

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The content in this post was found at https://www.chicagoiplitigation.com/2018/05/sign-in-wrap-did-not-create-personal-jurisdiction/ Clicking the title link will take you to the source of the post. and was not authored by the moderators of freeforafee.com

TechDirt
Glyn Moody
Tue, Jul 3rd 2018

Yesterday, Mike took apart an extraordinarily weak attempt by the UK’s music collection society, PRS for Music, to counter what it claimed were “myths” about the deeply-harmful Article 13 of the proposed EU Copyright Directive….

Once again, there is no attempt to demonstrate that Article 13 is not about censorship, merely an assertion that it isn’t, together with the usual claim that it’s all being orchestrated by big US Internet companies. The fact that over two-thirds of a million people have signed an online petition calling for the “censorship machine” of Article 13 to be stopped rather punctures that tired argument.

More interesting is the second sentence, which essentially confirms that for the recording industry, the Copyright Directive — and, indeed, the Internet itself — is purely about getting as much money as possible.

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The content in this post was found at https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20180703/05375040163/copyright-industries-reveal-their-ultimate-goal-internet-where-everything-online-requires-license-them.shtml Clicking the title link will take you to the source of the post. and was not authored by the moderators of freeforafee.com.

Social Aware
John Delaney & Monica Cai on July 23, 2018

If a web server located outside the United States hosts video content that can be viewed by Internet users located in the United States, does a public performance result under U.S. copyright law?

This has been a topic of hot debate for a surprisingly long time, with little or no direct guidance from the courts—until now. A recent decision from the D.C. Circuit, Spanski Enterprises v. Telewizja Polska, addresses this issue head-on, with the court finding that the uploading of video content in which a party held exclusive U.S. public performance rights and the subsequent directing of the content to U.S. viewers upon their request to be an infringing “performance” under the U.S. Copyright Act.

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The content in this post was found at https://www.sociallyawareblog.com/2018/07/23/copyrights-long-arm-foreign-website-found-to-infringe-u-s-copyright-law-by-providing-u-s-viewers-access-to-site-content/ Clicking the title link will take you to the source of the post. and was not authored by the moderators of freeforafee.com.