Category Archives: Entertainment Law Blog

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and 21 other consumer and privacy groups today sided with Charter Communications, Inc., in its struggle to protect customer privacy. The groups urged a federal court in St. Louis, Missouri, to prevent the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) from forcing Internet Service Provider Charter Communications to identify customers the RIAA has accused of offering infringing music o­n a peer-to-peer system. In December 2003, a federal appeals court in Washington, Continue reading Extending Verizon to RIAA v. Charter Communications→

Rock veterans Peter Gabriel and Brian Eno are launching a provocative new musicians’ alliance that would cut against the industry grain by letting artists sell their music o­nline instead of o­nly through record labels. With the Internet transforming how people buy and listen to songs, musicians need to act now to claim digital music’s future, Gabriel and Eno argued as they handed out a slim red manifesto at a huge dealmaking music conference known as Continue reading Musicians’ Alliance Proposes Direct Sales of Music Online→

The Recording Industry Association of America launched its largest wave of file-swapping lawsuits, filing new copyright infringement suits against 532 currently unnamed individuals. The suits are the industry group’s first since an appeals court in December blocked its original strategy of identifying alleged file swappers before filing lawsuits by sending subpoenas to their Internet service providers. Click here to read the CNET article.

A group of technology experts issued a statement to the U.S. Congress o­n 1.13.04 expressing the opinion that P2P software provider Sharman Networks has the ability to prevent copyrighted material from being sent around the KaZaA network. This is in direct conflict with the trial court’s findings in the Grokster case I discussed at EASL’s Dangerous Entertainment Seminar, and was in fact the main reason the trial court denied plaintiffs’ motion for a premlinary injunction Continue reading Report to Congress – Kazaa can block access to copyrighted works.→

The U.S. Supreme Court denied Aimster’s appeal of the adverse decision at 334 F.3d 643, 6-30-03. See Supreme Court Order, 03-658, cert. denied, 1-12-04.

By Elliot M. Zimmerman Some view the internet as an abandoned warehouse filled with free pictures, music, video and text files fixed o­n a hard disk somewhere out there in cyberspace. Granted, some files are not protected by copyright law because the material contained in them has entered the public domain. In some instances, the use of certain files may constitute a fair use under 17 U.S.C. 107 et seq. On the other hand, the Continue reading P2P File Sharing and Copyright Infringement→

  The enrolled (final) text of S. 877 as it was passed by the Senate o­n November 25, 2003, and agreed to by the House of Representatives o­n December 8, 2003, was signed by the President o­n December 16, 2003, and takes effect o­n January 1, 2004.  

An appeals court in Oslo, Norway, upheld Jon Lech Johansen’s earlier acquittal o­n all counts of alleged copyright violations. The lower court had ruled that Johansen, now 20, did nothing illegal when he helped crack DVD copy protection codes in 1999 and then publicized how he did it.

Read the article here. See 17 U.S.C. 512(c)(2) et seq. to learn how an ISP may insulate itself from suits for copyright infringement under U.S. law.

The recording industry can’t force Internet providers to identify music downloaders, a federal appeals court said Friday in a major decision shielding online privacy while undercutting the industry’s anti-piracy campaign. Read the decision of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia here.