Category Archives: Entertainment Law Blog

Procedural and Evidentiary Considerations in Music File Sharing Direct Copyright Infringement Suits. Consider: 1) Procedural Defenses Include (Verizon and its Progeny): a) How did plaintiff learn of your client? Did your client receive a letter from his/her/its ISP stating that plaintiff was requesting his/her/its IP address? There is case law suggesting that your client may have been denied procedural due process if certain steps were not taken by the ISP and plaintiff respecting your client’s Continue reading Defenses to P2P Direct Copyright Infringement→

Wired reports that U.S. representatives are worried that the Digital Millenium Copyright Act has criminalized otherwise innocent activities, such as making a personal copy of a purchased CD, or trying to get a DVD to play on a Linux computer. The representatives are backing a bill that would overturn major portions of the DMCA, allowing people to copy CDs and DVDs more freely.

U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, Case No. 03-15313, rules that DirecTV cannot sue individuals for “mere possession” of technology that is capable of intercepting DirecTV”s satellite signal. See DIRECTV, INC., a California corporation, Plaintiff-Appellant, versus MIKE TREWORGY, Defendant-Appellee; on Appeal from the United States District Court for the Middle District of Florida; before ANDERSON, HULL and PRYOR, Circuit Judges; Order (June 15, 2004 by PRYOR, Circuit Judge. See Order here (pdf format).

On Tuesday, May 25, 2004, Florida Governor Jeb Bush signed bill (SB 2574) giving the attorney general authority to bring civil action against the sender of an email with a deceptive subject line (e.g. the email subject says account overdue, but is actually a sexually explicit ad), or anyone helping the sender, and impose $500 fines for each occurrence.

On Friday, March 13, 2004, the FBI requested the FCC to force ISPs, broadband and dsl providers to rewrite their networks to allow wiretapping by the government. The FBI’s proposal would force cable providers that sell broadband to come under the jurisdiction of 1994’s Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA), Read the article here. Caveat: Big Brother is watching!

CNN reports that AOL, Microsoft, Yahoo and Earthlink have joined forces and filed 6 federal lawsuits against hundreds of alleged spammers citing the Can-Spam Act. The suits were filed in CA, GA, WA, and VA. The allegations included, but were not limited to, deceptive solicitations and disguising the originating source of the spam. Read the article here.

Last month, a federal trial court in Philadelphia ruled that the Recording Industry Association of America couldn’t sue over 200 alleged “John Doe” defendant file sharers collectively in one suit. Instead, they must sue each defendant individually.

Thomson and Fraunhofer, the companies that license and own the patents to MP3 digital music technology, are creating a new digital rights management add-on for the popular format, which should be available by the end of 2004. Read the article here.

A California appeals court today overturned as unconstitutional a 1999 trade secret injunction against Andrew Bunner that prohibited him from distributing the DeCSS DVD decryption computer code, because the court found there was no evidence that the Content Scrambling System (CSS) encryption technology used in DVD movie disks was still a trade secret by the time that Bunner posted DeCSS code on his website. The Court held that the injunction therefore violated Bunner’s constitutional free-speech Continue reading DVD DeCSS Code Can Be Published→

In an effort to resolve the music file sharing dilemma, the EFF is urging the music industry to embrace voluntary collective licensing, similar to the radio station model utilized today. Voluntary collective licensing would not only allow the music industry to get paid, but would also satisfy the desires of fans.