Had a great time hosting This Week in Law Episode 150, which we recorded on February 24. (Thanks to Denise Howell for handing over the hosting reins while she was off for the week.) It was a really fun conversation with three very smart panelists — Mike Godwin, Greg Sergienko and Jonathan Frieden. We talked [...]
Posts Tagged ‘Copyright’
Six interesting technology law issues raised in the Facebook IPO
February 1st, 2012
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Patent trolls, open source, do not track, SOPA, PIPA and much, much more: Facebook’s IPO filing has a real zoo of issues. The securities laws require that companies going public identify risk factors that could adversely affect the company’s stock. Facebook’s S-1 filing, which it sent to the SEC today, identified almost 40 such factors. [...]
Fair use, the DMCA, and presidential politics
January 30th, 2012
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The 2012 presidential election cycle is already giving internet law enthusiasts things to talk about. Last week it was Ron Paul’s grumblings about an unauthorized campaign ad on YouTube. Now NBC is moaning about a Mitt Romney ad comprised almost entirely of Tom Brokaw on the Nightly News in 1997. NBC has asked the ad [...]
Are nonpirate Megaupload users entitled to compensation from the government?
January 28th, 2012
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If I left my coat in a taxi that was later impounded because, unknown to me, the driver was transporting heroin in the trunk, would I be left out in the cold? People who used Megaupload to lawfully store and transfer files are rightfully upset that their stuff is unavailable after last week’s raid. Some [...]
If you critique SOPA, read the text. If you read the text, read it right.
January 20th, 2012
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Earlier this week Eriq Gardner speculated in a tweet that less than one tenth of one percent of folks have actually read the SOPA legislation. I bet he’s right. It’s good to read the statute. But what might be worse than not reading it is reading it wrongly and thereafter propagating misunderstanding. One of the [...]
No deposition of account holder allowed until he is named as defendant in BitTorrent copyright case
January 17th, 2012
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Hard Drive Productions, Inc. v. Doe, 2012 WL 90412 (E.D. Cal. July 11, 2012) In a mass copyright infringement suit, plaintiff served a subpoena on an internet service provider and got the identifying information for the account holder suspected of trading a copy of a movie via BitTorrent. The account holder was uncooperative with plaintiff’s [...]
Ninth Circuit: Apple did not engage in copyright misuse by restricting OS X to Apple hardware
September 29th, 2011
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Apple Inc. v. Psystar Corp., — F.3d —, 2011 WL 4470623 (9th Cir. September 28, 2011) [PDF] Back in 2008, Apple sued Psystar for copyright infringement arising from Psystar’s manufacture and distribution of computers preloaded with copies of Mac OS X. Psystar lost at the trial court level, with the judge rejecting its argument that [...]
Court deals blow to anonymous Bittorrent defendants’ efforts to challenge subpoenas
June 14th, 2011
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West Coast Productions v. Does 1 – 5,829, — F.Supp.2d —, 2011 WL 2292239 (D.D.C. June 10, 2011) The judge in one of the well-known mass copyright cases filed by Dunlap, Grubb & Weaver a/k/a U.S. Copyright Group (West Coast Productions v. Does 1 – 5,829) has issued an order denying motions to quash filed [...]
More subpoenas on the way to identify John Doe BitTorrent users in copyright cases
April 20th, 2011
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First Time Videos v. Does 1-37, 2011 WL 1431619 (N.D. California, April 14, 2011) Hard Drive Productions v. Does 1-118, 2011 WL 1431612 (N.D. California, April 14, 2011) There have been a couple of new cases filed in federal court in California alleging that unknown BitTorrent users committed copyright infringement and engaged in civil conspiracy [...]
