Fueled in part by its success in Virgin v. Thomas, the RIAA (on behalf of EMI Music, Sony BMG Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group) issued a new round of pre-litigation letters to college students across the country Thursday of last week. This is its ninth such round of letters since beginning [...]
Amazon.com, Inc. (Tickler Symbol: AMZN) will hold a conference call on October 23, 2007 at 5:00 p.m. ET to discuss its 2007 third quarter financial results. This announcement has tremendous relevance for those of us interested in the commercial viability of digital sales and downloads of DRM-free music -- since Amazon launched its online music [...]
There is a very well written blog entry by McQuinn on the blog MCQESQ entitled The Future of the Music Industry. You can read the article in its entirety here, and it is well worth the effort. It attempts with acute perception and finesse to dispel the rampant rumors that the music industry conglomerates are [...]
On Monday, Jammie Thomas’ attorney, Brian Toder, filed a motion asking that the judge set a new trial to determine damages or, in the alternative, for a remittitur. Thomas is the woman who was recently found guilty of copyright infringement as a result of which the Plaintiff was awarded $222,000. The Federal Rules of Civil [...]
Section 101 of the United States Copyright Act defines work for hire at as follows: (1) a work prepared by an employee within the scope of his or her employment; or (2) a work specially ordered or commissioned for use as a contribution to a collective work, as a part of a motion picture [...]
The "Star Power" theory of damage reduction in copyright infringement actions Most consumers instantly recognize brand names such as Coca-Cola®, Nabisco®, Frito-Lay®, and Sony®. As a result of their prior purchasing experience with these brands, a consumer is much more likely to purchase a new brand of cookies bearing the Nabisco®® label than they are [...]
This article originally appear in the print edition of Law on the Row, Volume 2, Issue 1 on September 9, 2002. Imagine two musical works written in a minor key using a standard jazz progression such as I-IV-II-V. Further imagine that Work B is alleged to be an infringement of Work A. The author of [...]
The author, Steven Corn is the co-founder of Big Fish Media, a digital music distribution company working with all the major download music services like iTunes, eMusic and Napster. He is the author of the blog, The Digital Lowdown. This article appeared in Issue 32 of Royalty Week, dated October 9, 2007 and is reprinted here with [...]
Imagine that you have a wireless network router in your home which you set up yourself. Also imagine that, because you are not computer saavy, you failed to establish a password for that router, or established a “weak” password consisting of only numbers, or your birthdate, or something of that nature. Consider now the proximity [...]
Expecting a reasonable verdict from a jury of twelve men and women who are incapable of getting out of jury duty to analyze the intricacies of The Copyright Act as applied to the Internet is somewhat tantamount to putting twelve monkeys in a well-equipped laboratory and expecting them to come up with a cure for [...]
