Let’s clear one thing up right off the bat. Consumers are not entitled to high-quality TV programming. It’s a business. If that business doesn’t make sense, the shows won’t be produced. I know that seems obvious, but as with so many arguments made by technology companies seeking to hijack the distribution of works for themselves, this latest one seems to ...
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 ...
Last week, Hillary Clinton released her Initiative on Technology and Innovation, brief, which reads a bit like a missive from the Internet Association and does very little to clarify her own views—possibly because she doesn’t have any—on the role of copyright in the digital age. My general criticism of the whole brief is that it seems to view “technology” as ...
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 ...
I recognize that it’s vogue to malign the interests of copyright holders, particularly when various pundits recount anecdotes of sympathetic-sounding new creators who find themselves as defendants in a litigation. Recently, Andy at TorrentFreak published a lamentation on the excess and “hypocrisy” of copyright enforcement in the case of Serendip v Lewis Bond. Mr. Bond, a UK citizen who distributes ...
