copyright

For the second time in the past three years, YouTube has beaten Viacom in a long-running copyright infringement case that accused the video-sharing site of turning a blind eye to illegally uploaded videos.

U.S. District Judge Louis Stanton granted the Google-owned video site's request for summary judgment on Thursday, agreeing that the Digital Millennium Copyright Act's "safe harbor" provisions protected YouTube from liability.

Viacom, parent company of Paramount Pictures and MTV, filed a $1 billion lawsuit in 2007, accusing YouTube of encouraging copyright infringement and profiting when users upload unauthorized TV and movie clips. Google … Read more

Live-television streaming service Aereo is revving up its fight against major U.S. broadcasters.

The company took out a full-page ad in the front section of The New York Times on Tuesday, making a case as to why its business isn't breaking copyright law.

"People have enjoyed the right to access over-the-air broadcast television using an antenna for over 70 years," the ad says. "About 54 million Americans use some sort of antenna to watch TV. This is not piracy. This has been part of the American way since the beginning of broadcasting."

Aereo is … Read more

Twitter has taken down eight Vine videos associated with the artist Prince, after his record label sent a letter warning of copyright infringement.

The notice, posted on Chilling Effects last week and noticed by The Next Web today, described the Vines in question as "unauthorized recordings" and "unauthorized synchronizations." The label, NPG Records, requested that Twitter immediately remove the Vines and any future Vines featuring Prince. The Vine is a mobile service that allows people to create and share short, looping videos.

The links to the Vines in the request no longer work. A Twitter spokesman … Read more

A court ruling has put the kibosh on reselling digital media.

In a lawsuit between Universal Music Group's Capitol Records and MP3 reseller ReDigi, U.S. District Judge Richard Sullivan has sided with the record label and said that reselling songs bought on iTunes, Amazon, or other digital music venues is akin to copyright infringement.

"The court grants Capitol's motion for summary judgment on its claims for ReDigi's direct, contributory, and vicarious infringement of its distribution and reproduction rights," Judge Sullivan wrote in a summary judgment filed Saturday. "The court also denies ReDigi's … Read more

A Minnesota woman's fight with the recording industry over her illegally sharing copyrighted songs is finally over.

The Supreme court has denied the petition of Jammie Thomas-Rasset to hear her case, leaving Thomas-Rasset to pay $222,000 to an industry group.

The five-year-long case started in 2007 when the Recording Industry Association of America accused Thomas-Rasset of sharing 1,700 copyrighted songs. After the case's initial filing, the RIAA reduced the number of songs to 24 and the jury rendered a $222,000 verdict in the case.

After multiple appearances and decisions in court -- which included the … Read more

As Samsung products continue to be used by U.S. consumers at a growing rate, the company faces more competition from U.S. tech companies and a higher potential for legal battles. This means that the South Korean company must work to win the trust of U.S. lawmakers.

Apparently, Samsung has worked pretty hard at this over the last year. According to Bloomberg, the company spent a record amount of money on Washington, D.C. lobbyists.

In 2012, Samsung spent $900,000 on lobbyists, according to Bloomberg -- this is up from the $150,000 it spent in 2011. … Read more

A once-obscure copyright law that the U.S. Senate unanimously approved in 1998 has finally irritated so many members of the public that Congress might bother to defang it.

It's not like the flaws of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act have remained a state secret for the last 15 years: it's been wielded to threaten Princeton security researchers, restrict replacement garage door openers, and jail a programmer who dared to create an e-book converter. One federal appeals court even invoked the law when banning "linking" to certain DMCA-offending Web sites.

Not one of those extrusions of … Read more

The U.S. is one step closer to bringing Kim Dotcom to its shores.

The New Zealand Court of Appeal today ruled that the U.S. government will not be required to turn over all of their evidence against Kim Dotcom in order to obtain his extradition to the States. A summary of its case, the judges ruled, will do just fine.

The Wall Street Journal was first to report on the ruling.

Dotcom had been hoping to force the U.S. government to present all of its evidence against him before it could move forward with hopes to extradite him from New Zealand. … Read more

After targeting Web sites for copyright infringement for years, Hollywood is now setting its sights on mobile apps, according to Reuters.

Time Warner, Walt Disney, Sony, Viacom, and Twentieth Century Fox have all recently sent app "take down" notices to Google. Citing copyright infringement, these studios are demanding that the Web giant remove apps that use the likeness of characters in their movies or TV shows.

One of the offending apps is "Hobbit 3D Wallpaper HD," which has images from the popular movie, according to Reuters. Other apps are from movies like "Clash of the … Read more