UPDATE: News.com reports in greater depth on this situation, and as it turns out, the system isn’t a unilateral, automated removal of soundtracks at all. Apparently,YouTube identifies videos with unlicensed music using an automated filter, and then notifies the uploader/user of the situation, giving the CHOICE to mute the audio, or remove the entire video. … Continue Reading
Last week, I received an email from a bandleader client who’d discovered that another band had adopted the same exact name as his. Needless to say, he was upset and concerned that this other user would undermine the market for his band’s goods and services. Fortunately, my client holds a registered trademark for this particular… Continue Reading
Copyright geeks (like me) will enjoy the good discussion of copyright protection for works created before 1978 but not published until after the new copyright act took effect. Hat tip to Tara Warrington for spotting Leslie Klinger’s piece, and a nice analysis, using Bram Stoker’s alternate ending for Dracula, as an illustration. Here’s the link to… Continue Reading
Every creative person, whether an actor, writer, filmmaker, musician or painter runs the risk of his or her work eventually being copied without permission. While sometimes, this copying is done with a clear profit motive, an increasingly common vector by which unauthorized copies appear is through well-intentioned friends and fans posting an artist’s song, photograph,… Continue Reading
Recommended Listening: This Week In Law with Denise Howell, and her panel of entertainment, intellectual property and technology lawyers. Episode 17 is recently out, and has some great discussion of legal issues surrounding internet, technology, open source and GPL licensing, music, video, film, youtube and lionel train sets. Note: I’m not a part of this… Continue Reading
my good friend Tony Berman has posted a very good article on Copyright Authorship on his Multimedia Entertainment Law Online News blog. Continue Reading
In recent months, the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) has sued at least twenty six restaurants around the country for copyright infringement. The claims stem from the restaurants’ playing of music without obtaining a license from the performing rights organization. Before long, theatres and other performance venues may also be targets. Continue Reading
In recent months, the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) has sued at least two dozen restaurants around the country for copyright infringement. The claims stem from the restaurants’ playing of music without obtaining a license from the performing rights organization. ASCAP and its competitor BMI (Broadcast Music International) are the two largest… Continue Reading
Professor Eric Goldman’s Technology & Marketing Law Blog has an interesting article about the simmering dispute over copyrights in photographs of public-domain works of art. It seems a public interest group recently downloaded scores of photographs from the Smithsonian Institution and posted them on the photo-sharing site flickr. The problem is… the Smithsonian’s ‘copyright’ page… Continue Reading
Did you know that in ten states it’s against the law to impersonate a music band? New Jersey recently became the tenth state to pass a “Truth in Music” bill. Led by a lobbying effort from vintage singing groups like the Drifters and Sha Na Na, musicians have pushed for legislation making it illegal to… Continue Reading
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