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Submission Summary: 0 pending, 260 declined, 276 accepted (536 total, 51.49% accepted)

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Submission + - Actual damages for single download = single licens (blogspot.com) 1

Submitted by
NewYorkCountryLawyer
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes: "In Real View v 20-20 Technologies, it was held that the actual copyright infringement damages for a single unauthorized download of a computer program was the lost license fee that would have been charged. The judge, in the District Court of Massachusetts, granted remittitur, reducing the jury's verdict from $1,370,590.00 to $4200 unless the plaintiff seeks a new trial. Something tells me the plaintiff will seek a new trial."

Submission + - Righthaven domain name up for sale (mediapost.com)

Submitted by
NewYorkCountryLawyer
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes: "Copyright enforcer Righthaven has lost its domain name after failing to reimburse defense attorneys who successfully represented a blogger. Righthaven's URL is currently being auctioned off by Lara Pearson, an attorney appointed by U.S. District Court Judge Philip Pro to sell Righthaven's assets at auction. Pro ordered the domain name, as well as Righthaven's portfolio of copyrights, auctioned after the company failed to reimburse defense attorneys $63,000 for representing Web user Wayne Hoehn. The auction began this week and is slated to go through Jan. 6. (If anyone wants to buy the domain name for me, it would be a nice Chanukah present :) Just kidding, I'll take the money instead.)"

Submission + - RipoffReport.com immune from suit for post (blogspot.com) 1

Submitted by
NewYorkCountryLawyer
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes: "ripoffreport.com contained an admittedly defamatory posting, by one of its users, about a person who operated a Florida corporation providing addiction treatment services. Although the site was asked by the poster herself to remove the post, it refused. A Florida appeals court has ruled that the site is absolutely immune from suit, and cannot even be directed to remove the offending post, since under the Communications Decency Act (27 USC 230) "no cause of action may be brought" against a provider of an "interactive computer service" based upon information provided by a 3rd party."

Submission + - FDA backtracks on antibiotic-resistant bacteria (nrdc.org)

Submitted by
NewYorkCountryLawyer
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes: "The FDA recognized, 35 years ago, that feeding animals low-doses of certain antibiotics used in human medicine — namely, penicillin and tetracyclines — could promote antibiotic-resistant bacteria capable of infecting people who eat meat, and proposed to withdraw approval for the use of those antibiotics in animal feed. Instead of acting upon the proposal, the FDA has now withdrawn it. Although admitting that it continues to have “concerns” about the safety of the use of antibiotics in animal feed, the FDA says that it will just continue to rely on "voluntary self-policing" by the industry, the same "method" which hasn’t worked out too well during the past 35 years, as antibiotic use in livestock and antibiotic resistance have continued to rise throughout the entire period."
Canada

Submission + - What happens when you turn Boreal forest into tar (grist.org)

Submitted by
NewYorkCountryLawyer
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes: "Here are some new overhead photos which depict the expansion of the tar sands extraction mine in Alberta, Canada, from 2001 to 2011, and some closer-to-the-ground photos which give a more qualitative insight into the actual impact of converting a carbon sink, like the Boreal forest, into a carbon-spewing pit of tar sands. Nice."

Submission + - What was the beginning of #OccupyWallStreet ? (blogspot.com) 3

Submitted by
NewYorkCountryLawyer
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes: "What do you think was the beginning of Occupy Wall Street? For me, it was December 10, 2010, the day of the 8 1/2-hour filibuster delivered by Senator Bernie Sanders. On that day he laid out, in exquisite detail the fraudulent nature of 'Reagonomics" aka "Trickledown theory" aka "Supply side economics" aka "Voodoo economics" (the last term having been coined by George H. W. Bush in the 1980 Republican primary campaign). Although the mainstream media, President Obama, and former President Clinton did all they could to divert public attention from the filibuster, Senator Sanders's speech was the number one trending topic on Twitter throughout the world the entire day (I should know, I was glued to the computer screen watching it throughout the day, breaking away occasionally to see if it was still the number one topic worldwide on Twitter... and it was). Senator Sanders showed how income inequality had increased geometrically under Reaganomics, and how the same policies had led, decades earlier, to the 1929 stock market crash, and the Great Depression which followed it."

Submission + - Technical issues in new mass downloading cases? (beckermanlegal.com) 3

Submitted by
NewYorkCountryLawyer
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes: "As most of you know, the last wave of mass copyright infringement lawsuits was brought by the RIAA against individuals, supposedly for downloading, but actually for 'making available' for upload, mp3 files shared through FastTrack (Kazaa, Bearshare, etc) and Gnutella (Limewire) protocols. The new wave of mass lawsuits, which borrowed, and even expanded upon, the RIAA's technique of using fake copyright cases against "John Does" in order to find out their names and addresses, is actually about : (a) single downloads of (b) low budget film files over the (c) BitTorrent protocol. Here is the supporting affidavit seeking "discovery" (PDF) in a case typical of the new BitTorrent-single movie-download cases, New Sensations v Does 1-1474. I would appreciate the input of the tech community on whether there are technical issues that come to mind in the plaintiff's presentation. I won't be able to engage in my usual dialogue, because my firm is being retained by some of the victims of this new wave of suits, and I can't give away any information on my own trains of thought."
Politics

Submission + - America's Turn From Science, A Danger for Democrac (truth-out.org)

Submitted by
NewYorkCountryLawyer
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes: "Good article about how playing politics with science puts our country at risk, a review of Shawn Otto's book "Fool Me Twice: Fighting the Assault on Science in America". Today's policemakers, Otto shows, are increasingly unwilling to pursue many of the remedies science presents; they take one of two routes: Deny the science, or pretend the problems don't exist."
Science

Submission + - Melting glaciers cutting Peru water supply (treehugger.com)

Submitted by
NewYorkCountryLawyer
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes: "In a story that will repeat itself in all mountainous areas dependent on glaciers for their water supply, the glaciers in Peru's Cordillera Blanca mountain range are melting so quickly that the water they supply to the arid region is being threatened 20-30 years earlier than expected. Researchers now believe. of the time needed for the region to adapt to the coming water shortages, previously thought to be decades — "those years don't exist.""

Submission + - New "John Doe" copyright cases must be in proper v (blogspot.com) 1

Submitted by
NewYorkCountryLawyer
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes: "The RIAA began the practice in 2004 of (a) bringing massive "copyright infringement" cases against large numbers of John Does, (b) making a motion for discovery into the John Does' name and address, and then (c) dismissing the case after getting the identifying information. Although the RIAA could have easily obtained information from publicly accessible web sites as to the state, and region of the state, in which each John Doe resided, it deliberately ignored that, and brought suit where the ISP was located — often thousands of miles away from where the defendants were located. Now, in the new wave of copyright troll
lawsuits being brought by small movie producers — against individuals each of whom is accused of downloading a single movie through BitTorrent — the courts have shown less patience with that practice. In New Sensations v Does 1-1474, the Judge in California conducted her own examination of a random assortment of the IP addresses, saw that most of the defendants were not located in California, and ordered the plaintiffs to dismiss as to all John Does for whom it could not show that there was proper jurisdiction and venue. In her 6-page order (PDF) Chief Magistrate Judge Maria-Elena James of the Northern District of California held that "Where Plaintiff has made no effort to determine jurisdiction, the administration of justice is not served by requiring out-of-state recipients of subpoenas to bring challenges to the subpoenas in far-flung jurisdictions.""

Submission + - 9th Circuit affirms judgment dismissing UMG's case (beckermanlegal.com)

Submitted by
NewYorkCountryLawyer
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes: "UMG's case against video site Veoh has been dismissed by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, on the ground that the site was a "service provider" protected by the safe harbor provisions of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act. The Court's 49-page decision (PDF) affirmed the District Court's 2009 dismissal of the case on summary judgment. For reasons that are a mystery to me, Veoh did not bother to cross-appeal from the District Court's denial of its attorneys fees. Although Veoh has been victorious at every stage of this case, it went out of business in 2010 due to the enormous legal fees it had been forced by UMG to incur."
Piracy

Submission + - Warner Bros sued for pirating Louis Vuitton tradem (blogspot.com) 2

Submitted by
NewYorkCountryLawyer
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes: "You have to love a case where Warner Brothers, copyright maximalist extraordinaire, gets sued for "piracy", in this case for using a knock-off Luis Vuitton bag in a recent movie. This lawsuit has been described as "awkward" for Warner; I have to agree with that characterization. Louis Vuitton's 22-page complaint (PDF) alleges that Warner Bros. had knowledge that the bag was a knock-off, and went ahead, and used it, anyway. Apparently Warner Bros. takes IP rights seriously only when its Warner's IP rights that are involved."

Submission + - Tenenbaum remanded for further proceedings (blogspot.com) 3

Submitted by
NewYorkCountryLawyer
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes: "The 1st Circuit Court of Appeals has declined to reach the Due Process issue in SONY BMG Music Entertainment v. Tenenbaum. In a 65-page decision (PDF), which rejected all of Tenebaum's counsel's other arguments, and which otherwise praised Judge Gertner's handling of the trial, the First Circuit felt that under the doctrines of judicial restraint and constitutional avoidance, it was premature to decide the constitutional issue without first disposing of the defendant's motion on common law, remittitur grounds. The Court gave several examples of scenarios which might have occurred, had the lower court decided the remittitur question, which would have made embarking down the constitutional path."

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