Amicus briefs were filed recently in the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals in the case of BMG Rights Management v Cox Communications. In November of 2014, BMG sued Cox (an ISP) for contributory copyright infringement, and a US District Court found for the plaintiff in December of 2015, awarding $25 million in damages. The suit was based on evidence that ...
Earlier this month, Rolling Stone published an article by Steve Knopper called Inside YouTube’s War With the Music Industry. I would characterize the article as more of a glimpse than an inside view; but setting that aside, the article contained a quote about the DMCA that caught my attention. Knopper focuses on the fact that several major stars like Taylor ...
Last week, the Electronic Frontier Foundation filed suit against the federal government, naming the DOJ and the Copyright Office as defendants. The EFF filed on behalf of plaintiffs Dr. Mitchell Green, a computer scientist and researcher at Johns Hopkins; Andrew Huang, an engineer and inventor; and Huang’s company Alphamax LLC. The crux of the suit argues that Section 1201 of ...
The Second Circuit Court of Appeals handed down opinions on June 16th with two important implications—one that looks like legislating from the bench by ignoring Section 301(c) of the Copyright Act and another that appears to create a split with the Ninth Circuit over interpretation of what’s called “red flag” knowledge referring to § 512(c) of the DMCA. The case ...
Image from Pond5 I read several complaints on Twitter and in various blog posts from OSP representatives and copyright critics that last month’s USCO-hosted discussions in San Francisco about Section 512 were not very productive and that the rights holders are not being reasonable. I cannot comment on tone or details as I was not there. But I do think ...
