dmca

That's the dog-sized Bluetooth headset you can buy to go with today's real news item, the new BlackBerry Storm: announced but not released. Until it comes out, though, it's basking in the warm glow of the "meeting and maybe exceeding expectations" judgments coming from the media. In sum, it sounds cool. And Google decides it's high time they made some money on that whole YouTube thing.

BlackBerry Storm 9500 hands-on http://www.engadget.com/2008/10/08/blackberry-storm-9500-hands-on/ http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-10059498-1.html

YouTube adds … Read more

Updated at 12:11 p.m. PDT with comment from a Viacom spokesman.

Video-sharing site Veoh defeated a copyright infringement lawsuit Wednesday in federal court, potentially giving Google's YouTube a tool in its defense against a $1 billion lawsuit filed by Viacom, according to a report posted on PaidContent.org.

Veoh was hit with a copyright infringement lawsuit in 2006 by the Io Group, an adult entertainment company, but it defended its actions, citing provisions within the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. That provision calls for a party to remove copyrighted material from its Web site, when notified by the … Read more

If you've been thinking about starting a Twitter account under the pretense of being someone else you might want to think twice if it has anything to do with someone else's intellectual property.

In the past few weeks users, who have been trying their best to emulate characters from AMC's television series Mad Men have apparently had their accounts wiped clear and de-authorized by the microblogging start-up at the request of AMC's lawyers.

That's not the only instance, though.

More troubling is the story of Rich Johnston, a columnist for ComicBookResources.com. Johnston had gotten … Read more

A federal judge on Wednesday gave more weight to the concept of "fair use" when he threw a lifeline to a Pennsylvania mother's lawsuit against Universal Music.

The judge refused to dismiss Stephanie Lenz's suit claiming that Universal abused the Digital Millennium Copyright Act when it issued a takedown notice to YouTube over a 30-second video of Lenz's baby dancing to a Prince song.

In the first ruling (PDF) of its kind, Judge Jeremy Fogel held that copyright owners must consider fair use before sending DMCA takedown notices.

"Fair use is a lawful use … Read more

Veronica's back with us today as we record from the New Media Expo in Las Vegas. We talk about the woes of the modern Web, and specifically Netflix's problems on the back-end. Also there's some news about Windows 7, or at least news about when more news will be coming. And thankfully the IOC backed down on the DMCA takedown notice. That and some more hilarious e-mails.

Netflix may lose $1.8M to $3.6M in revenue per day over outage http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=9676

10 … Read more

First it was fashion giant LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton SA complaining about counterfeit fashion goods on eBay. Then it was Tiffany taking eBay to court.

Now it's the software industry telling eBay that it needs to do more to detect and delete listings for counterfeit goods--or else.

The Software and Information Industry Association, a Washington, D.C., trade association that counts companies such as Intuit, Sun Microsystems, and Red Hat as board members, said on Thursday that it's contemplating a lawsuit against eBay. Another option, the group said, would be lobbying Congress to rewrite the Digital Millennium … Read more

Last December, YouTube removed more than a dozen videos on the site that showed common practices at rodeos, such as tame horses being tasered to make them buck and calves being injured in roping contests and dragged off to die.

The videos, and the account of the nonprofit anti-cruelty group that posted them--Showing Animals Respect and Kindness (SHARK)--were removed from YouTube for about two weeks after the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association claimed they violated copyright under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

YouTube put them back up after SHARK convinced the site that the DMCA takedown notices were improper. … Read more

Viacom's $1 billion copyright infringement lawsuit against YouTube "threatens the way hundreds of millions of people legitimately exchange information" over the Web, YouTube parent Google said in a legal response to the suit.

The response, reported by the Associated Press, was filed late Friday in U.S. District Court in Manhattan. Google says the threat comes from Viacom's attempt to make "carriers and hosting providers" liable for what people post. Google, by the way, has said this suit will only be resolved in court.

Viacom originally filed its lawsuit last year and filed an … Read more

Like a lot of people, Timothy Vernor makes his living selling stuff on eBay he and his girlfriend acquire by scouring local garage sales. But his repeated attempts to resell packages of AutoCAD have led to a tussle with Autodesk and a square-off over the meaning of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

When Vernor first put a copy of AutoCAD up for resale on eBay, Autodesk said a sale would violate its copyright under the terms of the DMCA. eBay suspended the auction and Vernor responded with a DMCA counter-notice. When Autodesk failed to respond, eBay reinstated the auction.

A … Read more