copyfight
AP to Finally Invent Indexing of Text on Internet
Ryan Tate · 07/23/09 03:16PMThe Jailhouse Assault Dreamed Up by Angry Tech, Media Companies
Ryan Tate · 07/09/09 03:49PMSo the copyright wars have come to this: Incensed over rampant online file sharing, some of the largest software and media companies show how copyright violations can get you brutalized in jail. Subtle.
Embedding a YouTube Video May Cost You a Bundle in ASCAP Bills
Ryan Tate · 07/08/09 02:46PMFacebook Disappears Legal Problem
Ryan Tate · 05/26/09 02:57PMIf You Steal His Books, Stephen King Will Mock You
Owen Thomas · 05/12/09 01:53PMWacky Discovery Founder Sues Amazon.com over Kindle
Owen Thomas · 03/18/09 12:26PMIs the New Foursquare Too Much Like the Old Dodgeball for Google?
Owen Thomas · 03/16/09 01:01PMLily Allen calls New York Times 'Cheap Skanks'
Owen Thomas · 02/27/09 01:46PMTMZ Fights for Its Right to Give Away Octo-Mom Pics
Owen Thomas · 02/13/09 02:07PMShepard Fairey's Monday Is Worse Than Yours
Owen Thomas · 02/09/09 04:47PMAustralia Bombs at File-sharing Box Office
Owen Thomas · 12/27/08 02:00PMWhy Disney's funding Chinese pirates
Owen Thomas · 11/21/08 01:00AMIf Chinese viewers want to watch Disney's Hannah Montana — no accounting for global tastes — they can do so on 56.com, an online-video site akin to YouTube. The show is pirated. But does Disney really mind? Its startup-investment arm, Steamboat Ventures, put money into 56.com two years ago.Eric Garland, CEO of an online piracy research firm, told the Wall Street Journal Disney's investment in 56.com is "ironic" and "shocking." John Ball, Steamboat's managing director, says the company invested in part to help 56.com curb pirated videos. But 56.com is just one of six Chinese companies in Steamboat's portfolio, all of which aim to distribute movies and videogames online. And that's the dirty secret of Disney and other media companies. They don't ultimately care about shows like Hannah Montana. What matters is their channels of distribution, through which such evanescent fare courses — and 56.com promises to be another one. Viacom isn't suing YouTube for $1 billion because it's upset about piracy. It's upset about piracy happening on a channel it doesn't own.
Guy who screwed up BitTorrent leaves BitTorrent
Owen Thomas · 11/06/08 02:20PMBitTorrent cofounder and president Ashwin Navin is leaving the company. He has plans for a startup incubator in San Francisco's Mission District. Good! That means he'll be screwing up far less consequential companies from here on out. Navin deserves credit for persuading Bram Cohen, the creator of the BitTorrent file-sharing protocol, for building a company around it. But that's about it.Navin wasted years and millions of dollars trying to turn BitTorrent Inc. into a competitor to Apple's iTunes store. He struck splashy deals with Hollywood studios by paying them large upfront guarantees, which depleted BitTorrent's bank account but got Navin into the right parties. Meanwhile, BitTorrent's other line of business, which used file-sharing technologies to deliver content more efficiently for corporate customers, suffered from lack of focus, and more established competitors like Akamai moved in. Sometimes losing a founder is bad for a company. In this case, it's nothing but good.
Viacom turns MySpace bootlegs into an advertunity
Paul Boutin · 11/03/08 01:40PMA year ago, Viacom sued YouTube for one billion dollars, claiming YouTube was not blocking uploads of copyrighted Viacom material from Comedy Central, Nickelodeon, MTV, VH1 and others. Today, MySpace will join YouTube in running ads targeted to Viacom-owned clips, instead of deleting them. Auditude, a Palo Alto startup, provides the software that identifies Viacom-owned content. Remember when musicians believed all advertising was evil? Now, I'm looking forward to seeing a Big & Rich ad targeted against another Big & Rich ad, overlaid by another Big & Rich ad for a Big & Rich ad I haven't seen yet. Collect them all!
Muxtape creator explains how to be an overnight failure
Alaska Miller · 10/24/08 03:20PMJustin Ouellette's music trading site Muxtape, shut down after failed talks with the RIAA, the music labels' copyright cops, may not have earned him a fortune. But it has secured him a modicum of infamy. He got invited to speak earlier this week at the WebbyConnect Summit in Laguna Niguel, explaining to others on how to replicate his overnight success with making a website deeply popular with Brooklyn's most outspoken Internet users. As Ouellette elaborates in this interview, the key is to just make up something that people want. Guess what? Just because people want free music doesn't mean you can give it to them. Ouellette never figured that part out.
YouTube tells McCain where to put DMCA
Paul Boutin · 10/15/08 02:00PMYouTube has told the McCain campaign they will not reconsider the site's standard ten-day ban on clips that draw DMCA complaints from copyright holders. D.C. insider Declan McCullagh has a copy of YouTube's reply to Monday's letter from a McCain lawyer. Recently, both Fox and CBS got YouTube to yank McCain campaign videos that remixed TV news clips. Question for Daily Kos: Why is Fox News clubbing a Republican presidential candidate? For everyone else, here's the 100-word version:
Fox News makes McCain a fair-use believer
Paul Boutin · 10/14/08 04:20PM"Overreaching copyright claims have resulted in the removal of noninfringing campaign videos from YouTube." That's the gist of a complaint from the McCain-Palin campaign's general counsel to YouTube management. The letter says YouTube's 10-day review policy hurts America, because "10 days can be a lifetime in a political campaign." It's never been proven that anyone at McCain/Palin headquarters used the DMCA to take down Sarah's swimsuit video. But no doubt being DMCA'd by Fox News for using a news clip in a campaign video has given John McCain a more personal view of how copyright laws can backfire.
Apple and other online music retailers get their way
Jackson West · 10/02/08 05:20PMThe Copyright Royalty Board, an obscure agency which has been thrust into the spotlight thanks to its role in arbitrating rates for digital music distribution, has frozen the price online music stores have to pay to artists and labels at a little over nine cents. The music industry had been lobbying for an increase to around fifteen cents, would likely have erased the notoriously slim margins Apple enjoys at the iTunes Music Store. Not that Apple would have cared, since it's all about the iPod business anyway and the company was ostensibly willing to shut down digital download sales if it didn't get its way.
Wilson Sonsini diversifies into Marissa Mayer's favorite pastry
Owen Thomas · 10/02/08 12:40PMWhen a history of the decline and fall of Wilson Sonsini, Silicon Valley's preeminent law firm, is written, this will surely deserve a paragraph: The lawyers there are now defending cupcakes. Sprinkles Cupcakes, the Los Angeles bakery made notable by HBO's Entourage, is seeking to defend its trademarked dot patterns against imitators; the concentric circles denote flavors. (Shown here: a red velvet cupcake.) It is, I suppose, a question of intellectual property. And a client is a client. But taking on this case just illustrates how far Wilson Sonsini has fallen since the '90s, when IPO fees fattened its partners' wallets, and before it got wrapped up in stock-options scandals. The silver icing: This may lead to work representing Google executive Marissa Mayer, should an interloper ever trespass on the ideas contained in her spreadsheet of cupcake recipes.