copyright: October 2007 Archives
While research something completely work related (no, really!) on Wikipedia, I stumbled across a recent lawsuit against the producers of Family Guy. In the Family Guy episode 'When You Wish Upon a Weinstein', Peter sings a musical number to the music of 'When You Wish Upon a Star', praying for a Jewish person to save him from his (self-inflicted) financial woes. Surprisingly, there isn't a video of this on Youtube, but they do have a video of a life performance of the song, but only the last verse.
The copyright owners of 'When You Wish Upon a Star' have sued various Fox companies, the company that produces Family Guy, and the creator of Family Guy, Seth MacFarlane. CNN have a story here, and the complaint is available here as a PDF. The lawsuit seeks statutory damages of at least $150k, as well as a permanent injunction and the destruction of all copies of the Weinstein song.
The copyright owners of 'When You Wish Upon a Star' have sued various Fox companies, the company that produces Family Guy, and the creator of Family Guy, Seth MacFarlane. CNN have a story here, and the complaint is available here as a PDF. The lawsuit seeks statutory damages of at least $150k, as well as a permanent injunction and the destruction of all copies of the Weinstein song.
EFA has published the submission that we made to the Commonwealth Attorney-General's Department's RFC on a draft of the Copyright Infringement Notice Scheme Guidelines. Kim Weatherall made an excellent submission, which covers the big picture issues very well - so EFA kept ours mainly on the EFA-type issues.
Wired.com has this story, on testimony in the first US jury trial over alleged copyright infringement by file sharing.
Sony BMG's anti-'piracy' chief, Jennifer Pariser, was asked on the stand whether it was okay if a consumer makes just one copy of a track they've legally purchased. She said no -- that's 'a nice way of saying, "steals just one copy."'
It's official. Fair use is 'stealing'. Which is consistent with the content industry's general approach -- i.e. doing anything at all with, at, or within 100 meters of copyright material, which the copyright holders think they ought to be paid for, is 'stealing'.
There ought to be a law...
Sony BMG's anti-'piracy' chief, Jennifer Pariser, was asked on the stand whether it was okay if a consumer makes just one copy of a track they've legally purchased. She said no -- that's 'a nice way of saying, "steals just one copy."'
It's official. Fair use is 'stealing'. Which is consistent with the content industry's general approach -- i.e. doing anything at all with, at, or within 100 meters of copyright material, which the copyright holders think they ought to be paid for, is 'stealing'.
There ought to be a law...
By way of Jessica Coates and the Creative Commons blog, I have discovered a beautifully produced and remarkably insightful cartoon by the folks at RedHat, to celebrate the beginning of the end of DRM. While I wouldn't make that claim myself (DRM has failed as a tool of copyright policy, but can produce mucho dinero by creating platform lock-ins), that doesn't detract from the beauty of the cartoon.
My poor little server has not the bandwidth to mirror the cartoon, but it can be downloaded here in .ogg format. The cartoon and its component pieces have been licensed under a Creative Commons licence and are available here.
My poor little server has not the bandwidth to mirror the cartoon, but it can be downloaded here in .ogg format. The cartoon and its component pieces have been licensed under a Creative Commons licence and are available here.
