You run a website that lets people upload videos. Some of the site's users upload clips that include songs. And some of the songs belong to copyright owners who don't like the idea of having people hear their tunes for free.
Blawgletter knows just how you feel. We also know the question you itch to
Setting: Sunday morning at the Original House of Pancakes, Northwest Highway unit. Newsprint litters a table. Bitey gulps coffee and tries for eye contact with Snappy, who has just done the crossword.
Bitey: Hey, Snaps — did you read the "The Glass Ceiling" thing in The New York Times? On the page
Raise your hand if this has ever happened to you:
The other side thinks your client so plainly — and evilly — copied software source code that their lawyers can't imagine losing. They have such clear proof, they believe, they almost sneer at you. And the smugness infects all that they do in the case.
Can you use images that have fallen into the public domain without infringing the copyrights in them?
Yes and no, the Eighth Circuit held today.
The case dealt with pictures that movie studios used to promote Gone with the Wind, The Wizard of Oz, and Tom & Jerry shorts. Art & Vintage Entertainment
[I]t is not clear just what point I am missing.
Montz v. Pilgrim Films & Television, Inc., No. 08-56954, slip op. at 5933 (9th Cir. May 4, 2011) (O'Scannlain, J., dissenting from 7-4 en banc ruling that federal copyright law does not preempt state law claims for breach by film or television producer/director of
Awhile back, Blawgletter inquired if Google would, in asking for a federal court okay to a copyright pact in a massive class action, reveal itself at long last as not the Don't Be Evil people but instead as the Big Bad Wolf. See "Who's Afraid of Google Books? Tra La La La La".
Happy holidays!
If you find World of Warcraft's first parts tedious — and Blawgletter, in spite of never having played the massively multi-player online game, guarantees that you will — you can cheat your way to WoW skills, fame, and wealth by hiring a bot to do the work for you. Slackers everywhere rejoice!
But
On Nov. 8 and 9, the Supreme Court will take up two cases that hold promise and peril for businesses. Blawgletter sees more cause for businesses to hope than fear.
The first of the pair, Costco Wholesale Corp. v. Omega, S.A., No. 08-1423 (U.S.), deals with the reach of copyright law's "first sale" doctrine.
[See bottom of post for update on the Fifth Circuit's new opinion in the case.]
The software you use at work came from God knows where. Perhaps the Internet. But your copy features something the author didn't intend. Unlike the version the author sells, this one has somehow disabled the security doodad that controls access to
The Ninth Circuit yesterday upheld a judgment that a software writer wrote software as an "employee" of JustMed, Inc., a start-up company that set out to make a "digital audio larynx", rather than as an "independent contractor". The distinction made a difference because federal copyright law deems the works of an employee the property of