In the continuing saga of state actors getting away with copyright infringement, let’s look at the story of author/publisher Michael Bynum and his book about the legendary “12th Man” of the Texas A&M University (TAMU) football team. The tale, which has been passed down through generations of Aggies and other football fans, describes the “Dixie Classic” of 1922, when the ...
And it’s a shame that justice will not be the basis on which it is corrected. If it ever is. Recently, the U.S. Copyright Office published its report on copyright infringement by states and state actors in response to the present circumstance whereby states are immunized against litigation for unlicensed use of protected works. As the Supreme Court held in ...
Fundamental copyright doctrines and procedures are presently on trial in the case of SAS Institute v. World Programming Limited, now on appeal at the Federal Circuit. Suffice to say, U.S. software developer SAS alleges copyright infringement by UK developer WPL, and these entities have been litigating on both sides of the pond for many years. But it almost doesn’t matter, ...
In this episode, I speak with Tom Galvin, CEO of Digital Citizens Alliance, about piracy of creative works and DCA’s latest report, issued this month in collaboration with the research group White Bullet. The report, entitled Breaking Bad(s): How Advertiser-Supported Piracy Helps Fuel a Booming Multi-Billion Dollar Illegal Market, reveals that piracy is a highly profitable criminal enterprise and is ...
Many copyright observers, me included, believe the Supreme Court’s majority opinion in Google v. Oracle was deeply flawed because rather than answer the copyrightability question presented (i.e. whether APIs are properly a subject of protection), the Court instead deconstructed that analysis and spread it across the four factors of the fair use test. As a result of that decision, copyright ...
