Recently in Copyright Category

Twitter announced this week that it has clarified its Terms of Service regarding what users can expect from the microblogging service.  Of importance to legal tech enthusiasts, is the delineation of ownership of the tweets--or 140-character posts--that users posts.  It's confirmed, they belong to the author.

Could this enable users to copyright their tweets?

It is a possibility; however, at just 140 characters, it will remain to be seen whether there is enough content to establish a protectable copyright claim.  However, considering that poetry such as haikus could fit in a tweet and that users are becoming more accustomed and creative with expressing themselves within the constraints of a microblog, the relationship between copyright and Twitter is at best grey. 

Joel Tenenbaum, Boston University graduate student, was handed down a guilty verdict by a federal judge late and pegged with a $675,000 penalty last week in his trial for violation of copyright infringement for illegal downloading and sharing of music online in a case brought by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) in 2007.  

The trial had its share of quirks and surprises.  Even before the opening remarks, presiding U.S. District Judge Nancy Gertner, held that Tenenbaum's proposed defense of fair use would not fly.  In her ruling, that took a major line of defense away from Tenebaum's team, she stated that Tenenbaum "propos[ed] a fair-use defense so broad that it would swallow the copyright protections that Congres created."

Some momentous events occurred yesterday in the world of digital music that may help to keep your favorite internet and satellite stations pumping out the tunes. 

First, the DC Circuit decided a case between SoundExchange, the organization that collects and distributes royalties to copyright owners, and Sirius XM Radio, who intervened in the case, over the royalty rate that satellite radio must pay to play music for the years 2007-2012.

Owners of copyrights in sound recordings have an exclusive right to "perform the copyrighted word publicly by means of a digital audio transmission," 17 USC § (106)(6).  Thus, in order to broadcast satellite radio, the broadcasters must pay a royalty to the copyright owner.  If they can't agree on a royalty, then the Copyright Royalty Judges step in and set one for them.

Wired's Threat Level blog is reporting that the Recording Industry Association of America has filed a motion to compel Charles Nesson to cease recording and posting depositions and other discovery materials to his blog or to the website for the Berkman Center for Internet & Society.  The motion also requests monetary sanctions for Nesson.

The motion comes after Nesson recorded multiple depositions and at least one phone conversation between the judge in the case and RIAA lawyers.  The RIAA lawyers argue that Nesson posted the recordings to the internet, even after the judge instructed him not to.  The judge has already admonished Nesson that taping conversations in Massachusetts is illegal without the consent of all the parties to the conversation. 

Let this be a lesson to future defendants in copyright infringement actions: if you plan on using a DMCA safe harbor defense, don't destroy or conceal evidence related to your argument.  Judges don't like that sort of thing.

That point was emphatically made yesterday by Judge Harold Baer of the Southern District of New York.  The judge was ruling in the case of Arista Records v. Usenet.com.  Arista accused Usenet of basically every form of copyright infringement there is: direct, contributory, vicarious, you name it. 

The United States Supreme Court has rejected an appeal by Hollywood and network television channels in the Cablevision remote storage DVR case, which ends the litigation and clears the air regarding Cablevision's service.  For now, at least.

The product that Cablevision offers to its customers allows them to perform normal DVR functions, like recording shows and pausing live TV, without pruchasing or renting an actual hardware device.

Instead, the content is recorded on Cablevision's servers while the user controls the actions of the DVR across the network.  The user makes all the decisions about what and when to record, but the actual recording occurs on Cablevision's hard drive instead of a hard drive inside a device in the subscriber's home.

French lawmakers have once again taken up a bill that would strip internet users of their internet connections if they are caught illegally downloading music or movies three times.

The previous incarnation of the bill was defeated in the lower house of parliament in early April, after a stealth move by a group of Socialist lawmakers opposed to the law. 

Support for the law was so high among legislators that most didn't bother to show up for the actual vote, which allowed the Socialists to rush in and vote the bill down at the last minute.

Don't close the book on the Google Books settlement just yet.

A judge has delayed the opt-out date for the settlement of the copyright infringement class action until September 4 so that class members can give the agreement a more thorough review.

Separately, two people connected with the matter have leaked that the Department of Justice has begun examining the agreement for antitrust violations.