On July 23, the District Court for the District of Columbia denied publisher Valancourt’s claims that the requirement to provide deposit copies of U.S. published works to the Library of Congress constitutes an unlawful taking under the Fifth Amendment and/or an infringement of speech under the First Amendment. Although many legal experts are likely to agree with the outcome, some ...
Fight for the Future recently launched a new campaign website called End Creative Monopolies, and among its many vague declarations, the petition asks signatories to “demand the dissolution of the current US copyright system and a fundamental reimagining of artists’ rights and protections for the 21st century that shifts power away from creative monopolies and puts the interests of artists ...
We may finally be at the end of a five-year litigation between Dr. Seuss Enterprises (DSE) and ComicMix. The latter produced a book called Oh, the Places You’ll Boldly Go!, a mash-up of Dr. Seuss and Star Trek that, though funny, was neither parodic nor fair use under any of the four factors according to the Ninth Circuit Court of ...
On May 24, Cox Communications filed its opening brief at the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, asking that the panel either vacate the jury verdict holding the ISP liable for secondary copyright infringement or to at least order a new trial. Sony Music, joined by 57 other labels, sued Cox for vicarious and contributory infringement of 10,017 sound recordings and ...
Recently, the New York and Maryland state legislatures passed nearly identical eBook licensing bills (and Rhode Island had a sister bill in the works) responding to complaints of inequity by various library associations. Couched in the rhetoric of seeking “reasonable terms” on behalf of readers, and claiming to be neither anti-publisher nor anti-author, what the libraries have in fact advocated ...
