52958528
submission
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes:
In a case of major importance, the long simmering battle between the Authors Guild and Google has reached its climax, with the court granting Google's motion for summary judgment, dismissing the case, on fair use grounds. In his 30-page decision (PDF), Judge Denny Chin — who has been a District Court Judge throughout most of the life of the case but is now a Circuit Court Judge — reasoned that, although Google's own motive for its "Library Project" (which scans books from libraries without the copyright owners' permission and makes the material publicly available for search), is commercial profit, the project itself serves significant educational purposes, and actually enhances, rather than detracts from, the value of the works, since it helps promote sales of the works. Judge Chin also felt that it was impossible to use Google's scanned material, either for making full copies, or for reading the books, so that it did not compete with the books themselves.
51681079
submission
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes:
In ABC v Aereo, a copyright infringement action against Aereo, the Magistrate Judge has overruled Aereo's attorney/client privilege objection to being forced to divulge non-public details about its patented technology. In his 15 page decision (PDF) he ordered the continued deposition of the company's CTO and CEO about their patent applications. My gut reaction is that this sets a very dangerous precedent, giving the big copyright plaintiffs yet another 'in terrorem' device to use against technology startups — the power to use the lawsuit as a chance to delve into a defendant's non-public tech secrets.
51109665
submission
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes:
"In a recent 56-page decision (PDF) in Capitol Records v. Vimeo, LLC, a federal court in Manhattan found Vimeo to be covered by the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, rejecting Capitol Records' arguments that it was not entitled to the statute's "safe harbor". However, Vimeo is not yet out of the woods in this particular case, as the Court found factual issues — requiring a trial — as to 10 of the videos on the question of whether they were uploaded at the direction of Vimeo users, and as to 55 of the videos whether Vimeo had actual knowledge, or red flag knowledge, as the existence of an infringement."
49738949
submission
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes:
I can't actually believe what I'm reading but I'm reading a post by PJ — the brilliant lady behind Groklaw — which says that she's folding her tents and shutting Groklaw down, due to the government's surveillance of email, and lack of privacy online.
49690281
submission
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes:
Can it be true? The US government claims it really wants to hear from us on the subject of how copyright law needs to be modified to accommodate the developing technology of the digital age? I don't know, but the US Patent & Trademark Office (which btw has nothing to do with administering copyright) says "we really want to hear from you" and the Department of Commerce Internet Policy Task Force wrote a 122-page paper (PDF) on the subject, so they must really mean it, right? But I couldn't find the address to which to send my comments, so maybe that was an oversight on their part.
45582899
submission
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes:
Once again YouTube has defeated Viacom and other members of the content cartel; once again the Court has held that the Digital Millennium Copyright Act actually does mean what it says. YouTube had won the case earlier, at the district court level, but the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, although ruling in YouTube's favor on all of the general principles at stake, felt that there were several factual issues involving some of the videos and remanded to the lower court for a cleanup of those loose ends. Now, the lower court — Judge Louis L. Stanton to be exact — has resolved all of the remaining issues in YouTube's favor, in a 24-page opinion. Among other things Judge Stanton concluded that YouTube had not had knowledge or awareness of any specific infringement, been 'willfully blind' to any specific infringement, induced its users to commit copyright infringement, interacted with its users to a point where it might be said to have participated in their infringements, or manually selected or delivered videos to its syndication partners. Nevertheless, 5 will get you 10 that the content maximalists will appeal once again.
