Entertainment Law & Litigation
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.
DJ Danger Mouse’s “Grey Tuesday,” which is an album that contains massive sampled musical portions of The Beatles “White Album” together with Jay-Z’s “Black Album,” is under attack by EMI, who claims control of the copyright to the “White Album.” In a call for civil disobedience, several website owners have banded together to offer the album for free download on February 24, 2004. The protestors complain that the rights to sample are not clearly defined Continue reading February 24, 2004 aka Grey Tuesday
On February 19, 2004, a San Francisco federal court granted MGM”s motion for a preliminary injunction banning 321 Studios from distributing software which is capable of copying protected DVDs. Judge Susan Illston recognized that consumers use 321 Studios’ software to make backup copies of DVDs and to copy works in the public domain. Notwithstanding, she ruled “… the … uses of the software … are not relevant to determining whether 321 itself is violating the Continue reading Court Bans Distribution of DVD Copy Technology
Is parody a viable defense to claimed copyright infringement of a purely musical composition by the author of the initial work? Copyright infringement can be proved circumstantially by showing similarity and access. A musical composition (without lyrics) created solely to be melodically similar to the initial copyrighted work will almost always infringe that work by definition (unless it is solely a parody of the music alone). An example of a permissible parody of a musical Continue reading Parody of a Musical Composition
According to Cal. Lab. Code §2855, “a contract to render personal service…may not be enforced against the employee beyond seven years from the commencement of service under it.” Lab. Code §2855(a). This statute fuels artists’ contentions that record contracts are unenforceable after seven years.