Google Public Policy Blog: Making Copyright Work Better Online
The Google Public Policy blog recently announced that the company would be taking new measures to ensure copyright protection online:
- We’ll act on reliable copyright takedown requests within 24 hours.
- We will prevent terms that are closely associated with piracy from appearing in Autocomplete
- We will improve our AdSense anti-piracy review.
- We will experiment to make authorised preview content more readily accessible in search result
- Google Public Policy Blog: Making Copyright Work Better Online
Goodbye LimeWire?
A New York judge ordered LimeWire to stop distributing its file-sharing software, agreeing with the plaintiffs that LimeWire’s service is used “overwhelmingly for infringement.”
Judge Wood of U.S. District Court in Manhattan said that LimeWire “intentionally encouraged direct infringement” by users of its site, and also “marketed itself to Napster users, who were known copyright infringers.
The LimeWire site shut down its service Wednesday, displaying only a legal notice announcing that that company “is under a court-ordered injunction to stop distributing and supporting its file-sharing software.” Nonetheless, the company insisted that it has not been permanently put out of business.
Stanford Law School’s Fair Use Project Asks Supreme Court To Rule On Constitutionality Of Restoring Copyrights In Foreign Works
Photo by Horia Varlan
Lawyers from Stanford Law School’s Fair Use Project (FUP) and Wheeler Trigg O’Donnell LLP filed a petition for a writ of certiorari, asking the United States Supreme Court to review the constitutionality of a federal statute that removes thousands of foreign works from the Public Domain and places them under copyright protection. The FUP filed the petition on behalf of orchestra conductors, educators, performers, film archivists and motion picture distributors who relied for years on the free availability of works in the Public Domain, which they performed, adapted, restored and distributed. A 1994 amendment to the Copyright Act, the Uruguay Round Agreements Act (URAA), removed these works and many others from the Public Domain and placed them under copyright protection in conjunction with the implementation of intellectual property treaties. That amendment affected the copyright status of thousands of works by foreign authors that had been in the Public Domain in the United States for decades, including symphonies by Sergei Prokofiev, Igor Stravinsky, and Dmitri Shostakovich; books by C.S. Lewis, Virginia Woolf, and H.G. Wells; films by Federico Fellini, Alfred Hitchcock, and Jean Renoir; and artwork by M.C. Escher and Pablo Picasso, including Picasso’s masterpiece Guernica.
Martin Scorsese Involved in Legal Dispute Over Rare Jimi Hendrix Track
Reuters reports that Martin Scorsese, Jimi Hendrix’s estate and a saxophonist named Lonnie Youngblood are involved in a legal dispute over the rights to a song called “Georgia Blues.”
Hendrix was a member of Youngblood’s band in the mid-1960s before hitting it big on his own. The pair reunited in 1969 to record “Georgia Blues,” which was used in Scorsese’s 2003 PBS special The Blues.
The track was also released on the album Martin Scorsese Presents the Blues: Jimi Hendrix. Youngblood sued Hendrix’s estate, Scorsese and MCA Records earlier this year, claiming the song was released without his permission.
- Martin Scorsese Involved in Legal Dispute Over Rare Jimi Hendrix Track
EU Commission Clears Frances Carte Musique To Encourage Legal Downloads Of Music
The European Commission has approved, under EU state aid rules, a French scheme that subsidises legal downloads of music by French residents aged 12 to 25 years. The measure is aimed at combating illegal downloads and, thus, at creating the condition for an increased offer of music and lower prices for consumers. The Commission found the measure to be in line with EU rules allowing the fostering of general interest goals. In particular, the measure is well designed to achieve its objective, is limited in time and scope and contains safeguards to limit potential distortions of competition.
- EU Commission Clears Frances Carte Musique To Encourage Legal Downloads Of Music