Sixth Annual Legal Frontiers in Digital Media Conference
On May 16 & 17, 2013, MLRC, in conjunction with Stanford Law School’s Center for Internet & Society, held its sixth annual conference focusing on the legal issues surrounding digital publishing. This year’s conference, which was co-chaired by Tim Alger, Perkins Coie and Mark Kahn, Evernote, was held at a beautiful new facility at Stanford…
The Legal Ethics of Social Networking
By Nicole Hyland[*] Social networking has become so ubiquitous it is easy to forget that it is a relatively recent development. Friendster, considered the “Grandaddy” of social networks, was launched in 2002.[1] 2003 saw the birth of MySpace and LinkedIn.[2] Twitter was launched in 2006, the same year that Facebook became available to the general…
YouTube Wins Summary Judgment Again in Battle with Viacom
Video Sharing Platform Protected By DMCA Safe Harbor Provision Last month, the Southern District of New York found for YouTube in the latest round of the Viacom v. YouTube copyright litigation. The court held that YouTube was entitled to the DMCA’s safe harbor protection for service providers unless it actually knew of, or was willfully…
Ninth Circuit Affirms that Righthaven Lacks Standing to Pursue Copyright Claims
Declines to Rule on Fair Use Defense Noting that “merely calling someone a copyright owner does not make it so,” the Ninth Circuit this month held that Righthaven, a copyright holding copy, lacked standing to pursue copyright infringement claims. Righthaven LLC v. Hoehn, No. 11-16751, 11-16776, 2013 U.S. App. LEXIS 9413 (9th Cir. May 9,…
Copyright, Fair Use & Orphan Works
Legal Conundrums in the Use and Misappropriation of Photographs and Visual Images By Mickey H. Osterreicher Copyright is, at its most basic, a property right, that must be assertively protected in order to “promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their…
Ninth Circuit Holds Use of Ed Sullivan Clip in Jersey Boys Musical a Fair Use
Attorney’s Fees Award Justified By Itai Maytal A three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in Central California recently ruled that the producers of Jersey Boys were entitled to use a seven-second clip from The Ed Sullivan Show as a matter of fair use. Sofa Entertainment, Inc. v. Dodger…
Ninth Circuit Upholds Liability of BitTorrent Website for User Copyright Infringement
By Luke Platzer and Rochelle Lundy The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals recently affirmed that the operators of a group of popular BitTorrent indexing websites were secondarily liable for their users’ infringement of copyrights held by major movie studios. Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. v. Fung, No. 10-55946, 2013 WL 1174151 (9th Cir. Mar. 21, 2013)…
Second Circuit Affirms Denial of Preliminary Injunction in Internet Streaming Case
By Jim Rosenfeld and Eric Feder As consumers increasingly obtain entertainment content on the Internet, media companies and technology start-ups are vying over how new content delivery platforms should interact with more established business models for the distribution of that content. This tension has been spilling over into the courts, which must apply established copyright…
Circumventing or Circumnavigating the Law
Supreme Court Allows First Sale Doctrine Defense in Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley & Sons, Inc. By Toby Butterfield and Edward H. Rosenthal In its recent opinion in Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 11-697 (March 19, 2013), the Supreme Court dealt a blow to book publishers, an industry that hardly has been reaping record…
Temporary Copies Defense Can Apply to Meltwater Web-Based Users
UK Case Referred to the European Court of Justice By Niri Shan and Adam Rendle Before the Associated Press sued Meltwater for copyright infringement in the US, the UK’s Newspaper Licensing Agency (NLA) was in a dispute with Meltwater and its public relations users about the need for and terms of the NLA’s licences. The…
The New Defamation Act 2013 – What Difference Will It Really Make?
By David Hooper, Brid Jordan, Kim Waite and Oliver Murphy The Defamation Act 2013 received Royal Assent on 25 April 2013. The big question for all practitioners and publishers is how much difference will it really make? The key changes, virtually all of which favor defendants, are: The introduction of the test of serious harm…
MediaLawLetter Associate Edition 2013 Issue 2
LIBEL & PRIVACY England: The New Defamation Act 2013What Difference Will It Really Make? INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY UK: Supreme Court Says Meltwater Users Not Copyright InfringersCase Referred to the European Court of JusticePRCA v Newspaper Licencing Agency U.S.: Circumventing or Circumnavigating the Law? The Supreme Court Allows First Sale Doctrine DefenseKirtsaeng v. John Wiley & Sons,…