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This article continues a series looking at the copyright implications of a series of lawsuits where holders of copyrights on pornographic works sue anonymous defendants for allegedly participating in an infringing BitTorrent "swarm." This entry...
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This article continues looking at the adult film BitTorrent cases by focusing on seldom-discussed litigation procedural doctrines which have proven (as a practical matter) extremely significant in these lawsuits. The doctrines in question,...
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This article continues analysis of a magistrate's opinion in a BitTorrent case where an adult film company sued a number of anonymous defendants alleging violations of trademark rights. The article quotes several amusing excerpts from the...
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The rise of torrents and wireless internet has made it much easier for individuals to download unauthorized copies of copyrighted works while making it much more difficult to identify those who have done so. This article reviews one response by...
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This article continues an analysis (see Part One) of the Second Circuit's recent opinion in Viacom v YouTube. This part of the analysis focuses on the appellate court's reasoning on the (many) various issues on which they had to decide; it...
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This article continues something of an unplanned series reviewing recent pending cases and jurisprudence on the Digital Millenium Copyright Act's safe harbor from copyright infringement for content providers. The impetus for this article is the...
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This article is the second part of a series analyzing what users (realistically) have to fear in the recent Pinterest copyright kerfluffle. The article points to the example of Napster as the nightmare scenario for Pinterest users, but goes on...
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The popular social media application Pinterest has caused quite a bit of furor among its users (and copyright and internet lawyers) about its Terms of Use. This article points out the errors in the article(s) which fed this meme and reviews...
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This article continues a series focusing on the Department of Justice's indictment for criminal copyright against Megaupload, with a focus on the role the DMCA safe harbor plays in criminal copyright cases (likely none), and, if none, how close...
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This article continues a series analyzing the thorny copyright law questions raised by the federal government's criminal indictment against the file-sharing website Megaupload. This entry in the series focuses on the differences between the...
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Most often, when it comes to copyright, startups are worried about civil damages stemming from copyright infringement lawsuits. However, it is possible to violate a copyright and be criminally liable. In light of the government's...
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This article continues analyzing the thorny copyright infringement lawsuit against used digital music reseller ReDigi by Capitol Records. The article focuses on the "phonorecord" problem and reviews ReDigi's novel response to it. The...
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ReDigi is an online reseller of used audio files. It has come under fire by entities in the music industry, which accuse ReDigi of copyright infringement. This article updates a series of article on the case in light of new, detailed...
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This article continues a series analyzing the Ninth Circuit's opinion in the Veoh case, which resolved key questions concerning the DMCA's safe-harbor for websites which host user-generated copyright-infringing content. This part of the series...
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This article continues looking at the recent Universal/Veoh litigation over Veoh's use of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act's safe harbor for websites which make available infringing content, which was challenged by Universal. This...
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The Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) contains a safe harbor against copyright infringement for certain types of businesses. This article examines an argument in a recent lawsuit by Universal against Veoh which sought to drastically...
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This article, part of a series exploring the contours of the fair use defense in copyright law, answers a question posed by a previous article: was Green Day's use of a work known as Scream Icon entitled to the fair use defense? As this...
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This article continues a series of articles exploring the (sometimes baffling) contours of fair use law. This entry in the series reviews a copyright infringement case filed against Green Day (and various other parties) alleging...
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This article answers a question posed by a prior article: is Elf off the Shelf's similarity to the children's book Elf on the Shelf parody, trademark law's answer to copyright law's fair use doctrine? The article highlights the relevant...
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This article is something of an adjunct to a series of articles exploring the contours of the fair use defense in copyright infringement cases. This article looks at parody in trademark cases. As the article explains, fair use is a...
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Voicing your opinions on the internet is easy--anyone with a computer and a halfway-reliable internet connection can write to their heart's content. Voicing your opinions anonymously is almost as easy; you don't have to use your real...
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Part one of this series explained why a court determined that no contract existed in a recent Tennessee dispute over a website, and also highlighted how an actual contract could have better served the needs for both parties. This part of the...
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Lawyers encourage businesspeople to memorialize their agreements with contracts to make sure that courts can enforce the agreement if a party fails to fulfill their obligations. A good contract makes clear what is expected of both...
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This article contains the answer to the article which asked whether the facts of the Elf On/Elf Off copyright infringement dispute constituted fair use by the makers of Elf Off the Shelf. This article analyzes the judge's opinion,...
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This article continues a series reviewing the confusing and ambiguous contours of fair use in copyright law. The specific case set forth here involves an adult-oriented parody of a children's Christmas story, The Elf on the...
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The Right to Speak Anonymously..and its Limits
The business of law isn’t usually discussed outside of law firms, and usually not even there. But one business-law trend has everyone’s attention. Over the law few years, there has been a...
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This article is a followup to a prior article which sets forth the details about a copyright lawsuit filed by the producers of a music video against the makers of the popular TV show Southpark. The question posed by the prior article...
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This article continues exploring the contours of copyright law's fair use doctrine by looking at a case involving current popular media. A recent case involved the copyright holder of a music video filing a lawsuit claiming that a parody of...
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This article is the second (and concluding) part of a series analyzing a recent case which clarified privacy law (and therefore internet privacy law) in Tennessee. This part of the series analyzes the judge's opinion in the case and attempts to...
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Privacy law is relatively new (as far as many laws go); internet privacy law, then, is much newer, and draws to some degree (depending on your state) from traditional privacy law. This article reviews the evolution of privacy law in Tennessee,...
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Fair use is a murky exception to the traditionally exclusive rights granted by a copyright. This article details some of the sources of confusion about what constitutes (and does not constitute) fair use, and uses a couple of...
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Fair use exists as an exception to the basic law of copyrights. It allows certain people other than the copyright holder to use the copyrighted work without the copyright holder's permission. However, the court decisions interpreting what...
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In a recent decision in a high-profile case, Amazon fought off Apple's initial attempt to block Amazon from using “APP STORE” for its online shopping site for Android applications. Beyond the spectacle of two technology giants going...
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On June 24, 2011, at the Eight Annual eCommerce Best Practices Conference at Stanford Law School, U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel gave a thought-provoking keynote address about how internet-technologists have a tendency to talk past their customers,...