Free for a Fee

Technology & Marketing Law Blog
Eric Goldman
Jan. 7, 2020

It’s increasingly hard to find good news in Internet law, so I organized this year’s Internet Law roundup by categories of doom. Trigger warning: you should grab some tissues before proceeding.

Doomed (in a Bad Way)

Doomed: User-Generated Content.

Doomed: Print-on-Demand Services.

Doomed: Online Marketplaces.

Doomed: Internet Access Providers.

Doomed: Cybersecurity.

Doomed: Sex Workers and Sex Trafficking Victims.

Doomed: the CCPA. 

Doomed (in a not-terrible sense)

Doomed: “Must-Carry” Obligations for Publishers Who Aren’t State Actors. 

Doomed: the Roommates.com Section 230 Exception.

Doomed: Cases Against Social Media Services for Terrorist Content.

Doomed: the Liebowitz Copyright Litigation Machine.

Doomed: Politicians Banning Constituents on Social Media. T

Other

Online Political Content and Ads.

hiQ v. LinkedIn.

more

The content in this post was found at https://blog.ericgoldman.org/archives/2020/01/top-internet-law-developments-of-2019.htm Clicking the title link will take you to the source of the post. and was not authored by the moderators of freeforafee.com

Dawn Mertineit & Dallin Wilson
LexBlog
September 27, 2019

In an a recently published opinion, the Ninth Circuit answered the question whether “LinkedIn, the professional networking website, [may] prevent a competitor, hiQ, from collecting and using information that LinkedIn users have shared on their public profiles, available for viewing by anyone with a web browser?” In affirming the trial court’s injunction enjoining LinkedIn from blocking hiQ’s access to its users’ public profiles, the Ninth Circuit held, among other things, that hiQ’s scraping did not amount to accessing LinkedIn’s users’ data “without authorization,” in violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (“CFAA”), because the data hiQ was accessing was publicly available and therefore did not fall within the scope of the CFAA.

more

The content in this post was found at https://www.lexblog.com/2019/09/27/9th-circuit-takes-narrow-view-of-the-computer-fraud-and-abuse-act-in-linkedin-data-scraping-case/ 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…

tech dirt

Timothy Geigner

Tue, May 8th 2018

A brief review of Nike’s history on matters of intellectual property will result in the impression that the company is a stalwart of IP protection. The company has been fond in the past of relying on intellectual property laws to take strong enforcement actions, even when the targets of those actions are laughably dwarfed by the company’s sheer size. Like many massive athletic apparel companies, it jealously protects its trademarks and patents. And, yet, it has been found in the past to be perfectly willing to infringe on the trademark rights of others.

But those past instances are nothing compared to the full brazen display alleged by Quest in its copyright lawsuit against Nike.

The company, known for developing a variety of database software, filed a lawsuit in an Oregon federal court this week, accusing Nike of copyright infringement. Both parties have had a software license agreement in place since 2001, but during an audit last year, Qwest noticed that not all products were properly licensed.

“That audit revealed that Nike had deployed Quest Software Products far in excess of the scope allowed by the parties’ SLA,” Quest writes in their complaint, filed at a federal court in Oregon.

In addition, Quest says the audit revealed that Nike was using pirated keys and cracked versions of Quest software to route around paying for the full licensing costs it would otherwise be obligated to pay. Those types of actions aren’t the sort of accidental infringement we’ve come to expect at large companies like Nike. Instead, they constitute a willful attempt to not pay for the software in use.

more

The content in this post was found at https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20180427/09181639729/nike-great-protectors-ip-found-to-be-infringing-copyright-refusing-to-pay-after-software-audit.shtml Clicking the title link will take you to the source of the post. and was not authored by the moderators of freeforafee.com

 

IP Watchdog
Jie Lian
July 9, 2018

[ed notes: This ruling/case could be ENORMOUSLY important in the open source v proprietary software space]

The Federal Circuit recently decided the case of Oracle America v. Google Inc. To “attract Java developers to build apps for Android,” Google copied the declaring code, but wrote its own implementing code for the 37 Java API packages. Id at 1187.  Previously, the Federal Circuit held that “[the] declaring code and the structure, sequence, and organization (‘SSO’) of the Java API packages are entitled to copyright protection.” .  On the other hand, the Federal Circuit also recognized that a reasonable jury could find that “the functional aspects of the packages” are “relevant to Google’s fair use defense.” In this key decision that has the potential to rock the software industry, the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit rejected the jury verdict and found that “Google’s use of the 37 Java API packages was not fair as a matter of law.

more

The content in this post was found at https://www.ipwatchdog.com/2018/07/09/oracle-america-v-google-free-java-fair-or-unfair/id=98763/Clicking the title link will take you to the source of the post. and was not authored by the moderators of freeforafee.com.

IP Watchdog

Roman Brtka
April 2, 2018

eSports is an exciting new area — not only in the sporting industry but in legal terms. There are various key players such as eGamers, game publishers, and organizers of eSports events, who are facing the challenge of sufficiently protecting their rights. Organizers need to ensure that they obtain all necessary usage rights from the game publishers and the participating eGamers, and these parties need to be aware of their possible ancillary copyrights and should take appropriate precautionary measures to protect them.

more

Techdirt

February 28, 2018

Over the past few weeks, we’ve mentioned in a couple of posts that the Copyright Office is currently taking public commentary for changes to the DMCA’s anti-circumvention exemptions provisions. While we’ve thus far limited our posts to the Museum of Art and Digital Entertainment’s bid to have those exemptions extended to preserving online video games and the ESA’s nonsensical rebuttal, that isn’t the only request for expanded exemptions being logged. A group of filmmaker associations put in a request last year for anti-circumvention exemptions to be extended to filmmakers so that they can break the DRM on Blu-ray films in order to make use of clips in new works. At issue is the fact that these filmmakers are able to make use of clips in these new works thanks to fair use but cannot readily get at them due to the DRM on the films themselves.

This is confusing and creates uncertainty, according to the International Documentary Association, Kartemquin Films, Independent Filmmaker Project, University of Film and Video Association, and several other organizations. Late last year they penned a submission to the Copyright Office, which is currently considering updates to the exemptions, where they argued that all filmmakers should be allowed by break DRM and rip Blu-rays. The documentary exemptions have been in place for years now and haven’t harmed rightsholders in any way, they said.

“There is no reason this would change if the ‘documentary’ limitation were removed. All filmmakers regularly need access to footage on DVDs and without an exemption to DVDs, many non-infringing uses simply cannot be made,” the groups noted.

So, there are several groups that lobby for documentarians going to bat for the larger filmmaking world, having seen just how beneficial the exemptions they enjoy have been to the documentary craft. Frankly, it’s nice to see associations such as these not simply staying in their own lane and instead advocating for their larger craft as a whole. Unlike, say, the MPAA which leapt to respond with claims of how awful all of this would be.

A group of “joint creators and copyright owners” which includes Hollywood’s MPAA, the RIAA, and ESA informs the Copyright Office that such an exemption is too broad and a threat to the interests of the major movie studios.

The MPAA and the other groups point out that the exemption could be used by filmmakers to avoid paying licensing fees, which can be quite expensive.

Which, of course, is precisely the point of these exemptions. An end-around of fair use by locking up content behind DRM in order to extract licensing fees from those that legally would otherwise not have to pay them is a special kind of perversion of the DMCA. Not to mention copyright law as a whole, actually. Recall that the entire purpose of copyright law in America is to promote the creation of more works for public consumption. What the MPAA is arguing is that these exemptions, which would do much to promote new work, should be cast aside in favor of a system in which those new works live at the pleasure of the licensing schemes of the major movie studios.

more

The content in this post was found at  https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20180228/09561839330/mpaa-opposes-several-filmmaker-associations-request-expanded-circumvention-exemptions.shtml
Clicking the title link will take you to the source of the post. and was not authored by the moderators of freeforafee.com.

Clicking the title link will take you to the source of the post.