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Submission + - Google Books case dismissed on Fair Use Grounds

Submitted by NewYorkCountryLawyer
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.

Comment Re:Assumptions (Score 1) 776

Personally, I agree with you on eliminating tax breaks for big-oil. However, I hate the concept of charge-em-now and subsidize it back later.

First, that assumes those constituents can float the charge now. Many poor people's budgets cannot afford to loan the government money until tax returns are processed.

Second, It sets them up for being called "dependent" on the government subsidies, leeches, whatever. It's not honest to "fake" charge people for services you intend to later subsidize anyways. That is just an accounting trick and it makes people targets of political fights. It is far more honest to build-in your cost targets to the up front price rather than attempt to leave "retail" alone and later "subsidize". Far less loophole wrangling that way too.

In all, I probably agree with your idea for the most part, but subsidies is not the way to go IMHO.

- Toast

Submission + - Aereo required to testify about non-public patent info

Submitted by NewYorkCountryLawyer
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.

Comment Re:Backstory? (Score 4, Informative) 51

by NewYorkCountryLawyer (#44928589) Attached to: Vimeo Held Covered By DMCA Safe Harbor

It does seem insane. I mean how can the court not see that this case is clearly about killing vimeo and by extension video sharing sites. How can they expect all employees to be 100% diligent. It's never going to happen. If the only option to adhere to Safe Harbor is to have google class content filter Youtube is going to be the only game in town in the US.

The legal fees alone are the killer. Veoh won every round, but had to go out of business due to the legal fees.

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