Legal Beagle
Quick Bits and Bytes
Last Days for Last.fm?
The German music service, Finetunes, has issued a cease-and-desist order to online music platform Last.fm, for infringement of German copyright law. The suit claims that Last.fm is using Finetunes’ music catalogue for its music streaming service without having been granted permission by either Finetunes or Germany’s collecting societies.
Finetunes has ordered Last.fm to end the use of songs from its catalog and is demanding compensation for the previous illegal use of its copyrighted material. While Last.fm has held negotiations with many potential licensors, talks between Last.fm and Finetunes have failed several times and are not currently in progress. Finetunes says it therefore felt obliged to take action behalf of some of its licensors, who include German independent labels such as Grand Hotel van Cleef, Hot Action Records and Buback Tonträger.
Finetunes CEO Oke Göttlich commented on the recent action, “Finetunes supports the growth of the digital music market with innovative business models such as Last.fm. Such new models can enrich the market but it’s also crucial that rights holders are properly included, which is already a well-established practice with similar online music platforms. It is not acceptable that the artists’ music is just taken away from them, and used extensively without any adequate compensation.”
Music Week, September 9, 2008 (Ben Cardew)
Last.fm hit with cease and desist order
Court Rules: Even FreeWare is Protected by Copyright
In what is considered a crucial win for the free software movement, a federal appeals court has ruled that even software developers who give away the programming code for their works can sue for copyright infringement if someone misappropriates that material.
The August 13, 2008 decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington, D.C., helps clarify a gray area of the law concerning how much programmers can control their intellectual property once it’s been released for free into the “open source” software community.
People are free to use that material in their own products, but they must credit the original authors of the programming code and release their modifications as well, a cycle that’s critical for free software to continue improving. Because the code in free software is given away for free, questions emerged when violations were discovered of copying the code into their own for-profit products without giving anything back, in the form of attribution and disclosure of the alterations they made.
According to the court, “Traditionally, copyright owners sold their copyrighted material in exchange for money. The lack of money changing hands in open source licensing should not be presumed to mean that there is no economic consideration, however.”
NewsVine.com, August 14, 2008 (Jordan Robertson)
Court says copyrights apply even for free software
Court Orders YouTube to Give Up Video Logs
A federal judge overseeing a $1 billion copyright-infringement lawsuit against YouTube has ordered the popular online video-sharing service to disclose who watches which video clips and when.
On July 2, 2008, U.S. District Judge Louis L. Stanton authorized full access to the YouTube logs after Viacom Inc. and other copyright holders argued that they needed the data to show whether their copyright-protected videos are more heavily watched than amateur clips. The data would not be publicly released but disclosed only to the plaintiffs, and it would include less specific identifiers than a user’s real name or e-mail address.
Lawyers for Google Inc., which owns YouTube, said producing 12 terabytes of data (equivalent to the text of roughly 12 million books) would be expensive, time-consuming and a threat to users’ privacy. The database includes information on when each video gets played, which can be used to determine how often a clip is viewed. Attached to each entry is each viewer’s unique login ID and the Internet Protocol, or IP, address for that viewer’s computer. However, Judge Stanton ruled that the plaintiffs had a legitimate need for the information and that the privacy concerns are speculative.
Viacom is seeking at least $1 billion in damages from Google, claiming that YouTube has built a business by using the Internet to “willfully infringe” copyrights on Viacom shows, which include Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” and Nickelodeon’s “SpongeBob SquarePants” cartoon.
The lawsuit was combined with a similar case filed by a British soccer league and other parties. Together, the plaintiffs are attempting to prove that YouTube has known of copyright infringement and can do more to stop it, a finding that could dissolve the immunity protections that service providers have when they merely host content submitted by their users.
This is not the first time Google has fought the disclosure of user information in its databases. In January 2006, the U.S. Justice Department successfully subpoenaed Google and other search engines for lists of search requests made by their users in connection with an online pornography case.
NY Daily News, July 4, 2008 (Anick Jesdanun)
Court orders YouTube to give Viacom video logs
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Will This Work? - Fans Cut In On Tune Sales
A new website is trying to make it profitable for music lovers to keep buying their favorite music by paying them when other people purchase MP3s they’ve bought. The new California-based site, Popcuts, publicly launched its site in early August 2008, charging users 99 cents per song. Thereafter, whenever someone else buys the same song, those who have already bought it get paid in credit that can be redeemed for more Popcuts music. Here’s how it works: The earlier you buy a song, the larger your cut of future sales.
The company’s three co-founders say the idea came from a desire to better align the interests of artists who want to sell their music and fans who want to get it for free. “We thought that by providing this extra incentive to buy a song legally, namely, owning a stake in that song, would make it more attractive to buy,” co-founder Hannes Hesse said.
The site’s selection is still pretty slim - it includes around 700 songs from about 200 artists - but Popcuts is adding musicians through a deal it recently made with music distributor DashGo Inc. and is looking to connect with more distributors and with record labels.
Anyone making music can sell their tunes through the site, while maintaining full rights to their work. The agreement between artists and Popcuts is not exclusive, so music makers can sell songs through services like Apple’s online iTunes Store as well.
Popcuts takes 10% to 20% of song sales. Artists can determine what cut they get, and the rest goes to fans. Since fans who buy songs early get a larger cut of subsequent sales, the site hopes a lot of people will search for new tunes and buy those that sound promising.
The future of Popcuts is uncertain. Besides its small music catalog, it is navigating a market populated by several large, established players like Apple and Amazon that already have the allegiance of many digital music buyers. However, the Popcuts model of sharing with users may prove to be very effective. Besides making money, users might feel as if their purchases are helping to invest in the bands they follow.
Newser.com, October 16, 2008 (Rachel Metz)
New music site Popcuts pays music lovers for being trendsetters
Quick Bits and Bytes
Rocket Man Lands in Hot Water
Arye Sachs, a former Israeli Army Sergeant, was attempting to get attention when he drove a 25-foot-long replica missile with the slogan “Viva Viagra” painted on its side into the center of Manhattan. However the stunt only caused the man to be sued for trademark infringement
In September 2008, Sachs drove the missile from his home on Long Island on the back of his pickup truck, and parked it in front of the 42nd St. headquarters of Pfizer, the maker of Viagra. Pfizer’s lawyers were not impressed and slapped him with a trademark infringement lawsuit and demanded he remove the drug’s name from his rocket.
Sachs has built other mock rockets that have landed him in trouble, including the dual “Obama-Oh Mama” and “Viva McCain” projectile—for which he was detained by the Secret Service recently in Washington, D.C.
October 10, 2008 (Tom Radler)
Man Sued Over Viagra Missile Stunt
eBay Has to Pay For Knock-Offs
A French commercial court ordered online auction site, eBay, to pay more than $59 million to a high-end fashion company because counterfeit goods were sold there.
The fashion company, LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton SA, is home to such brands including Louis Vuitton, Givenchy, Fendi, Emilio Pucci and Marc Jacobs, and had complained that it was hurt by the sale of knockoff bags and clothes on eBay. Pierre Godet, an adviser to LVMH Chairman and CEO Bernard Arnault, said the Paris court’s decision was “an answer to a particularly serious question, on whether the Internet is a free-for-all for the most hateful, parasitic practices.”
eBay countered that LVMH is trying to crack down on Internet auctions merely because it is uncomfortable with the business model, which tends to cut out the middleman.
Current.com, June 30, 2008
Ebay to pay $59M to fashion house for selling fakes