Have you checked out Vine recently? Legendary pop artist Prince has, with his record label filing a copyright notice with Twitter regarding videos on Vine. It seems like the general public might be giving Vine a serious look. Read more »
After a fan posted a video of a horrific crash at a NASCAR event, the organizer removed it claiming copyright infringement, but Google over-ruled the company — an example of a decision that happens all too rarely. Read more at paidContent »
Twitter has changed the way it responds to DMCA copyright notices. Rather than removing tweets, it is “withdrawing” them instead. This helps show when and why tweets go missing, and also brings new transparency to the DMCA process. Read more »
Talk about an overreaction. When education publisher Pearson spotted some infringing material on one weblog, its takedown by a host company felled a million more. Pearson apologises, but pokes the host for over-zealousness. Read more at paidContent »
Google is making changes to its search algorithms that will penalize websites hit with copyright-removal claims, but the company is saying very little about what criteria it will use to determine who gets hit and who doesn’t — can we trust it to make the right decision? Read more »
Internet censorship is once again in the news after a federal judge posited a proposed Washington law aiming to prevent child prostitution is likely unconstitutional under the Communications Decency Act. A bigger question is why free speech still reigns online except when copyright is involved. Read more »
Twitter released its first-ever transparency report on Monday, which provides statistics on the number of times governments and individuals requested data on Twitter users or made takedown requests under the Digital Millenium Copyright Act during the first half of 2012. Read more »
Google today released a new picture of the millions of links it scrubs from its search results in response to requests from Microsoft, movie studios and other content owners. Read more »
Verizon Communications has had a history of standing up against publishers seeking to subpoena information about its subscribers and their downloading habits, so it’s not a big surprise to see Big Red telling John Wiley’s lawyers to stuff it. Read more »
It’s finally happened. In a case with big implications for the booming market in photo-sharing, a publisher is suing popular blogging site Tumblr for copyright infringement. Read more at paidContent »
The court poked enough holes in YouTube’s defense that it now has every incentive to try to settle with Viacom as quickly as possible and get on about its business. But on the one issue of law that might have made a difference to Viacom’s business ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Copyright clouds are gathering around Pinterest. And that could make the dreamy image site an unlikely successor to other innovators — from… Read more at paidContent »
Why does Twitter get involved in so many interesting lawsuits? In its short life, the company has kicked up legal hornet nests involving eve… Read more at paidContent »
Plagiarized editions for sale in Amazon’s Kindle store show how the company is still adapting to the world of original content creation. At… Read more at paidContent »
What if the answer to all the political theatre surrounding SOPA was an amendment forcing copyright holders to put their money where there mouths are? Some of SOPA’s terribly harsh penalties for infringement can stay, but making false allegations would cost accusers dearly. Read more »
A California appeals court yesterday rejected Universal Music’s claim that video-sharing service Veoh didn’t do enough to protect content ow… Read more at paidContent »
Veoh.com may be just a shell of its former self these days, but the video site and its former investors nonetheless scored another court victory against Universal Music this week. An appeals court reaffirmed the decision that Veoh is protected by the DMCA. Read more »
Will Grooveshark be the next LimeWire? The streaming music service is going to be sued by Warner Music and Sony Music, according to a report from the New York Times. This could mark a shift in litigation from P2P services to streaming music providers. Read more »
The entertainment world is buzzing about a viral video that shows A-list artists like Kanye West and Alicia Keyes singing the praises of fil… Read more at paidContent »
Europe’s top officials have regularly moved to strike down punitive anti-piracy laws and protect ISPs from litigation — but recent news from France and Spain show that the debate is far from over at the national level. Read more »
The proposed Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA, garners a lot of hatred from commentators and the Internet industry as whole, but it’s only the next logical step after the problematic Digital Millenium Copyright Act, the safe harbor of which is more like a plea bargain. Read more »
Pandora has established itself as the leading personalized radio service online. A new breed of services is now challenging Pandora by mashing up videos from around the web to personalized video streams, all without spending an arm and a leg on licensing. Read more »
Users that search for VLC on the Android Market get to see a whole bunch of apps that kind of look like the popular open-source video player, despite the fact that VLC for Android hasn’t been released yet. The foundation behind VLC wants to change that. Read more »
Suing Kino.to seemed too complicated because the site is hosted in Russia, so rights holders went after an ISP instead: Austria-based USP has to block access to the popular streaming video site to prevent its customers from accessing any unlicensed streams of Hollywood blockbusters. Read more »
Today on the Net: DirecTV is getting more expensive, Inception is getting a lot of interest on torrent sites and porn downloaders aren’t getting sued. Read more »
Here we go again: Viacom has filed an appeal in its long-running lawsuit against Google and YouTube, arguing that founders of the video sharing site were aware of the massive infringement happening and that they shouldn’t be protected under the DMCA’s Safe Harbor provisions. Read more »
Two computer scientists have released source code for a tool that is capable of decrypting HDCP-protected video in real time, delivering another blow to a content protection system that is in use in most modern home entertainment devices. With it, HDCP could become an open secret. Read more »
Today the U.S. Copyright Office clarified how it plans to enforce the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, making new exemptions for things like jailbreaking iPhones. But “jailbreaking is legal” is not what the ruling said. It simply said jailbreaking is not a violation of copyright law. Read more »
Documentary filmmakers and producers of non-commercial videos can now legally rip DVDs to their hard drives to use movies as source for their own works. The new rules come only days after a court found that copyright laws shouldn’t use DRM restrictions to prevent legal use. Read more »
Twilight Eclipse: The 8-Bit Interactive Game, a popular series of interactive YouTube videos that blended Twilight themes with 1980s 8-Bit graphics, has been taken down by YouTube based on a DMCA request by Summit Entertainment, the company that holds the movie rights of the Twilight Franchise. Read more »
Last week’s ruling in Viacom vs. Google greatly reduces an online service provider’s incentive to filter copyrighted content from its site. Under the logic of this ruling, the less direct knowledge a service provider has of the content on its web site, the lower its liability. ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
YouTube has scored a victory in the copyright infringement lawsuit waged against it by Viacom, but the biggest winner of the day may be the DMCA — the 1998 law that was at the core of Google’s defense and that has been called outdated by some. Read more »
Canadian legislators plan to introduce restrictive new copyright legislation, possibly as soon as next month, according to copyright expert Michael Geist. It would come three years after another proposed copyright bill was withdrawn in the face of criticism that it was too restrictive. Read more »
It doesn’t seem easy, but April 2010 might mark the first time someone succeeds in killing a meme. According to the Open Video Alliance, a recent surge of copyright claims has taken offline a majority of the Hitler parodies on YouTube using footage from the 2004 […] Read more »
Music bloggers are upset because they say Google deleted their blogs without warning as a result of DMCA claims about songs they posted. But some of the bloggers say they were given the tracks they posted by record labels themselves as a promotional effort. Read more »
Judge Marilyn Hall Patel from the California Northern District Court dismissed RealNetworks’ antitrust lawsuit against Hollywood, providing another blow to the company’s plans to provide consumers with software that would make it possible to copy DVDs to a computer’s hard drive. RealNetworks had sued a number […] Read more »
Leaked CBS Email Calls Out Hulu’s “Reckless Streams”; executive memo ponders how hard it would be to prove ratings declines are a result of Hulu. (TechCrunch) A Primer on Safe Harbors; with recent court cases like Universal v. Veoh in the news, here’s a refresher on […] Read more »
As most savvy technology readers know, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act prohibits “circumventing” digital rights management (DRM) and “other technical protection measures” used to protect copyrighted works. While this ban was meant to deter copyright infringement, many corporations have misused the law to chill competition, free […] Read more »
Two non-profit advocacy groups are proposing changes to the way Congress and web hosts handle copyright claims. The suggestions come less than a week after the the McCain presidential campaign found itself on the wrong side of a takedown notice. The Electronic Frontier Foundation today made […] Read more »
The McCain campaign yesterday asked YouTube to reconsider its takedown policies out of frustration that its official videos have repeatedly been taken down by the site due to copyright claims by media companies. It asked for the side to “commit to a full legal review” upon receipt of takedown notices pertaining to videos posted by political candidates and campaigns. Read more »
