Entertainment Law & Litigation
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.
Downloading copyrighted music from peer-to-peer networks is legal in Canada, although uploading files is not, Canadian copyright regulators said in a ruling released Friday. Read the article here http://news.com.com/2100-1025_3-5121479.html
Online music piracy isn’t likely to vanish soon, but the rise of paid online services and the growing popularity of portable digital music players portends greater demand for digital music next year and better fortunes for the embattled recording industry, music executives said. Taking a mostly positive outlook on an industry racked by a three-year slide in CD sales, executives for recording companies and Internet music retailers told hundreds at the Music 2.0 conference in Continue reading Online Music To Boom in 2004
On 11/25/03, the Senate passed the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003, which will preempt state law when signed by the President, who is expected to do so shortly. This is the first federal legislation directly regulating SPAM. Very basically, the bill requires senders of unsolicited commercial email to provide recipients with a functioning process to opt out (i.e. the “remove” link must work), a real address, and a real contact. The bill prohibits civil suits by Continue reading CAN-SPAM Act of 2003