Thursday, December 3, 2009

Bloodrayne 2

http://www.gamedaily.com/games/bloodrayne-2/pc/game-features/gogcom-adds-bloodrayne-2-to-drm-free-game-line-up/

It seems that the latest trend in video games is to be three letters short: no D, R, or M. Digital Rights Management has long been the standard of keeping goods that would appear to the public in a digital format, such as music, movies, e-books and video games, to the user who purchased it and only that user. While some forms of DRM have been stricter than others, ranging from a gentle suggestion that you kindly not share your iTunes downloaded music with all of your friends, to a very strict and nearly unhackable code that ads a digital watermark to music. PC games have been relying on DRM to keep them from being pirated at an even faster rate, but this has been slowly going the way of the flighless dodo bird.

More and more new media sources are recognizing DRM as obsolete, and an inefficient way of keeping users from sharing media over the internet. This is especially pertinant for PC games, which have a fanbase that dabbles in destroying anti-piracy measures for fun.

Mass Effect 2 DRM

http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3177087

It was revealed on November 25th that the popular game, Mass Effect 2 will come to PC with barely any Digital Rights Management (DRM) at all. According to the article from 1up.com (which focuses more on the PC system requirements than this breaking news for the way digital rights for video games will be handled, but what can you expect from an online gaming magazine) Mass Effect 2 will continue in a recent trend of relaxed DRM, relaying the statement from Bioware community director Chris Priestly

"The boxed/retail PC version of Mass Effect 2 will use only a basic disk check and it will not require online authentication. This is the same method as Dragon Age: Origins. Digital versions will use the retailer's protection system."

The first new media company to begin recognizing DRM as a failed experiment and cutting back on it was Apple, but it seems that many other media producers are following this pattern. It seems that the question soon will be less "How much DRM?" and more "What will replace DRM to protect digital goods?"

Friday, November 20, 2009

http://www.pcworld.com/article/182333/china_rules_microsoft_violated_intellectual_property_rights.html

This article details a recent case that took place in a Chinese court. The plantiff, Zhongyi, claimed to have rights over the Chinese character fonts that are used by Microsoft, which are in their operating systems. The claim is that Microsoft sought permission for licensing these fonts in Windows 95, which Zhongyi agreed to. However, after this was over, Microsoft went on to use this same font set in Windows 98 and Windows XP, and the plantiff is aiming to stop production of these products which contain his illegally used font. It is agreed that this is more of an issue over the scope of the licensing agreement than anything.

The Chinese courts ruled that Microsoft was guilty of copyright infringement, and ordered them to stop producing versions of the operating systems with these specific fonts.

ACTA

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/13/AR2009111300852_2.html?hpid=news-col-blog&sid=ST2009111300859

This article entitled "Copyright Overreach Goes on World Tour" is about a recent trade agreement, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), which will potentially help globalize the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which has been in play for over 10 years, but is proving to be more controversial every day, as certain restrictions that are a part of it seem to downplay common sense. One example is that you cannot put a DVD purchase on your ipod because of this act, even though you are the owner of it. The countries involved in ACTA are the United States, South Korea, Japan, Canada, and parts of the European Union.

This article points out that this agreement would help to cement the user-hostile DMCA in place in the US, and give a possibility for a rather frightening future of intellectual property ownership and the laws surrounding it.

Friday, November 6, 2009

The law school blues

http://www.yaledailynews.com/news/university-news/2009/10/23/law-graduates-settle-suit/

This case is between two law school students, Brittan Heller and Heide Iravani, studying at Yale, and a group of posters who defamed them on the internet. A bunch of photos of these two law students leaked on the internet and were eventually posted on a law school forum, which their lawyers claim to be the most prostigious law school forum on the internet that is frequented by both law students and law firms looking to hire students. Both girls claim to have lost job and internship opportunities because of the things posted, and fear that it will affect their future career.

I think that it depends on how these pictures found their way to the forum that would determine whether it is defamation. If the girls had posted them in a public place, such as facebook or myspace, then it would have been reposting, and if anything, they had defamed themselves. Despite this, the judge sided with the two girls, even though it was noted that this case was subject to the "Streisand Effect", where a relatively minor instance on the internet tries to get covered up by the embarrassed party through legal means, and as a result, it erupts into the news and on all sorts of websites, making it more public and embarrassing in the end.

Swartz v. Doe

http://www.digitalmedialawyerblog.com/2009/11/swartz_v_doe_tennessee_ruling.html

This article is actually an evaluation of the case of Swartz v. Doe, taking it apart and evaluating how the judge got to his conclusion, so it is particularly helpful for me, a poor interactive media student trying to work her way through various case laws. The case was between Donald and Terry Swartz, who are business owners that make their living through purchasing real estate and converting them into drug rehabilitation centers. The defendent, who wished to remain anonymous and went by the name "John Doe" in the court records, hosted a blog (on blogspot, nevertheless), which made negative claim about the Swartz's business dealings and personal lives, claiming them to be arsons, and a bunch of other negative things. The Swartz's ordered google to reveal who this anonymous blogger was, but he refused to give up his identity.

There are two things at play here, defamation and privacy. John Doe caused defamation that could hurt the Swartz's business, but on the other hand, he might be entitled to remain anonymous because of his right to privacy. In the end, the judge decided that the proper way of going about things would have been to notify John Doe that his identity was wanted because of his post, give him reasonable time to respond, and if he wanted to deny it to give them a reason. Since google contacted him and gave him several months to respond, the judge ruled that his privacy rights had not been violated.

Friday, October 30, 2009

Battle of the I's: Ixia v. Ineoquest

http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/ineoquest-wins-trade-secret-case,1013451.shtml

The company Ixia has brought on multiple lawsuits against Ineoquest involving multiple things, including trade secrets. In the most recent ruling, the court sided entirely with the defendant Ineoquest, and have asked for the court to order Ixia to pay for their fees.

One of the things Ixia was trying for ward to get Ineoquest to stop doing business with a slew of clients that they believed to be their own, and considered it a trade secret breach, but the court found this to be untrue.

Apple and Psystar's trade secret agreement

http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2009/02/apple-and-psystar-finally-agreeto-keep-trade-secrets-secret.ars

There has been a fierce battle between Apple and the company Psystar that resulted in a lawsuit over a computer that Psystar was distributing that Apple deemed to be a clone of their own. This article has nothing to do with that, however, and everything to do with how trade secrets are shared and handled.

They have agreed to define exactly what is meant by trade secret laws in this case. Any file labelled "Confidential" will be considered something that can be seen by attorney's and up to two employees in either company, and anything labelled "Confidential - Attorney's Eyes Only" will limit it to being seen by only the attorney and court. This is a pretty vital step in a long and ongoing case.

It may seem a bit unnecessary, since it isn't really a case dealing with trade secrets, but the fact that they needed to specify how information is handled in court to prevent any trade secret infringement shows exactly how important these trade secrets are to companies.

Friday, October 23, 2009

AAA cybersquatting case

http://www.goerie.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20091022/NEWS02/310219845/-1/NEWS03

This news article also has to do with a company called AAA. However, this version of AAA is an auto club, as opposed to the AAA Apartment locating service that is in a dispute with First Call, as detailed in the post before this. It is important to note that this is completely legal within IP law, since they are not in the same field and therefore not competing with one another, it is perfectly legal for two companies to own the same set of letters and claim it as their own intellectual property. 

On to the article: A man from Erie is being accused of cybersquatting for holding on to the domain name AAA.net, when the company AAA would like it to link to their own site, AAA.com. The case has been settled, and James Van Johns (The previous owner of AAA.net and nominee for coolest name of the year, as awarded by myself) has been forced by the courts to hand over the rights to the domain AAA.net, but hasn't been ordered to pay any extra money, since it was decided that his intent was not malicious. 

This applies to what we have been learning in class because of the cybersquatting laws that we have learned about. Although the article doesn't specify what business or reason James Van Johns owned that applied to the AAA business, although it implied that he was simply using it as a way to make ad revenue from people who ended up there by mistake. If he had a legitimate business under that name, then it would have been a different issue. 

First Call v. Craigslist

http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=110553

The previous lawsuit that First Call had against Craigslist dealt with a trademark violation in May, and had to do with an ad that was put on the Craigslist site. First Call has a trademark for their name in the real estate business, and Craigslist agreed to post ads from a different real estate agency, AAA Apartment Locating, that contained the phrases "First call", "Call first" and "Call us first", which First Call says were deliberately used to confuse the customer. However, recently, First Call has decided to drop this lawsuit, but are still holding strong in a case against AAA Apartment Locating for trademark infringement. 

This deals with trademark directly, although there is an interesting spin on who is liable for what. Craigslist didn't create the ads, they were merely a host. The article notes that this is the first time Craigslist has been sued for user created content, but it isn't the first time it has happened on the internet, citing Google and other search engines as repeat offenders, being sued for allowing ads to contain trademarked terms to gain hits. Even though AAA Apartment Locating could very easily be guilty, I don't think Craigslist would have been in much trouble, since websites are usually exempt from legal issues dealing with what is posted on them. This is probably why First Call chose to drop the lawsuit all together. 

Friday, October 2, 2009

IBM patents electronic checkbox.

http://tech.yahoo.com/blog/null/49348

Here is a slightly older news article, from late 2007, about a ridiculous patent case involving computer giants IBM. Apparently, IBM tried to patent the idea of an electronic checkbox; more specifically, the type of electronic checkbox where you drag your mouse through multiples of them and they select that way. The patenting of this type of checkbox was successful, because although the idea of checking a box is nothing new, and even the idea of checking a box using a mous is not new, the idea of being able to drag a mouse across multiple of these boxes and using this movement to check multiple boxes is technically novel, and fits within the four patent checks.

It does seem a bit like they are trying to abuse their ability to patent, and this article reflects this opinion, by mentioning the Patent Reform Act of 2007 that was created to help stop the abuse of patents. A line must be drawn between what is a sincere novel item that is beneficial to society and financially beneficial to the creator, and what is a money hungry patent that is basically a set-up to a lawsuit should anyone try to use this technology.

Uniloc v. Microsoft

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090930/ap_on_bi_ge/us_microsoft_uniloc_patents_4

In searching for news that dealt with patent cases in new media, it was impossible to avoid the issue that is currently going on with Microsoft, because there are updates posted to every news site at least twice a day. The case has been running for six years, and is still going strong, as the company Uniloc is trying to sue Microsoft for using a code that makes it impossible to install software on multiple machines. Uniloc claims that they had a patent on the software code that created a similar function, and that the code by Microsoft is similar in multiple parts.

Initially, a jury awarded Uniloc $388 million, but this was recently taken back by a federal court who stated that this number didn't properly account for the money lost in the patent case.

The first case was decided by a jury, and it makes me wonder how a court expects this sort of issue to be handled by people off the street, when even a media student who is experienced in patent law is a bit boggled by the six years of back and forth debate between these two major players in new media. This makes the idea of patent centered court seem positive, because it would be experienced people only dealing with this very complex section of the law, even though there are many arguments against keeping a patent centered court.

Friday, September 25, 2009

Journalism fair use

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/15/AR2009051503000.html?sid=ST2009060402767

This article by Bruce Brown and Bruce Stanford of the Washington Post from earlier this year talks about how journalism is a dying industry, but can be saved by a few simple changes to the law. Some of the changes they propose pertain to copyright laws and fair use. Their main target in this article is google, claiming that the age of the search engine is what is killing the journalism industry, because they "crawl the Web and ingest everything in their path." The article proposes that google should follow the fair use doctrine, which allows for the use of a quote or two from any given article, without stealing the whole thing for their news database. The current system is making it very difficult for journalistic media, a traditional print media, to transfer into the digital age, especially because search engines like google are able to take their copyrighted material if they submit their websites into the search database, so they are forced to choose whether they want to be excluded from a network that most people use to look up news, or risk having their content ripped apart and plagiarized by google. The simple solution, according to this article, is to instill fair use rules, where google can only use so much of the article in their news section.

Thursday, September 24, 2009

A&E sued for using University of Tennessee fight song

http://www.tennessean.com/article/20090826/NEWS03/908260398/1017/NEWS/%20Rocky%20Top%20%20clip%20puts%20network%20A&E%20in%20court

Television network A&E got in legal trouble after using the song "Rocky Top", which is the fight song for University of Tennessee, after they were repeatedly denied permission to use it. There was an episode of the show "City Confidential", which was detailing a murder that happened in Knoxville, Tennessee. Due to the nature of the show, the owners of the "Rocky Top" fight song denied it's use in the series, but A&E used a 12 second clip of it during the final cut of the show. It is a common misconception that the "Rocky Top" UT fight song is in the public domain, but it is actually owned by the children of the couple who originally penned it in 1967. A&E representatives argued that it was fair use, but the owners stated that it is copyrighted intellectual property, and by letting this relatively small incidence go, they risk being taken advantage of by other people looking to use the theme song without paying.

In the end, fair use would probably not fly for this case, because of the nature of the use. Since it was used on a commercial television program, that is making profit for the television network, it will probably be ruled in favor of the copyright holders.

Friday, September 11, 2009

Pandora Radio

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/techchron/detail?blogid=19&entry_id=30975

This article from late 2008 describes Pandora Radio's predicament with copyright law, and how the Webcaster Settlement Act saved it from needing to pay most of it's ad revenue in royalty fees. Pandora Radio is an internet radio station that allows for free listening to music online. Much like regular radio, the listener is able to choose a station but not a specific song. It relies entirely on advertisements for money. Before this settlement, Pandora was on the verge of shutting down, with over 70% of it's ad revenue going to paying for the copyrighted material that it plays. Copyright Royalty Board's 2007 Internet radio royalty decision that it must pay the outstandingly large fee of $500 per channel was financially wrecking the company and it was looking for a way to pay similar fees to satellite radio, which pays for performance fees that equal about 7.5% of their revenue.

I think this is a wonderful act, which allows for the legal listening to music through the internet, while artists are still getting the respect, recognition, and financial compensation that they deserve. It is a step in the right direction towards stopping the digital anarchy and rebellion against the music industry's astronomical rates by the people, which resulted in the copyright infringement heavy pirating.

Four men charged with copyright infringement conspiracy.

http://www.reuters.com/article/pressRelease/idUS241157+09-Sep-2009+PRN20090909

This article talks about how four digital pirates are being charged with copyright infringement for taking material, such as movies and music, and posting it to host servers where it can be downloaded by millions of others. They have just been charged so far, and there has been no court case held yet, so there is no news yet of the ruling, but based on the definition of copyright infringement and the federal attitude towards piracy in the past, it would be surprising to see a not guilty verdict. While it is old news that digital piracy is a crime and considered to be copyright infringement, there are a few things about this article that I found interesting.

The most important word used here is "conspiracy" which is defined in law as "An agreement between two or more persons to commit a crime or accomplish a legal purpose through illegal action." I am writing this with only a basic knowledge of law, but to me this means an act that hasn't been committed yet, but was only in the planning stages. So if these four men are being charged with copyright infringement conspiracy, doesn't that mean that they had not yet been actually performed the infringement, which would make them equal with the millions of people who own music and movies digitally and have an internet connection, so they logically had all of the tools necessary to carry out an illegal act.

Friday, September 4, 2009

AP wins lawsuit against AHN

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10285827-93.html

In July 2009, All Headline News agreed to pay the Associated Press in a settlement out of court. AP accused AHN of stealing from their breaking news sources in their online posts. The case drew from a 1918 case, in which the supreme court ruled that "hot news", or breaking news, can be considered an intellectual property law if a second news source takes it from the first news source.

This is a great example of how intellectual property laws are being applied to new media, because it is mostly concerned with how news is relayed via the internet. Since the Associated Press has recognized that print is a dying art form, they have been making a steady effort to secure their intellectual property rights as a news source on the internet, where it is very easy to copy and paste breaking news information and claim it as your own. This effort includes sending take-down notices to multiple blogs that have copied their news stories.

Tom Waits sues advertising agency

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/6305403.stm
http://www.gigwise.com/news/27194/Tom-Waits-Settles-%5CSound-Alike%5C-Lawsuit

This story is from 2007, which makes it severely outdated in this field, but it is the most recent Tom Waits lawsuit to surface. Throughout his 30+ year career, Waits has retained a very unique style; a low, gravely voice chanting over eccentric music mixes, and in these years many advertising agencies have tried to use his signature music in commercials. Waits has never accepted a commercial deal, and has stated that he will never let his music be used for commercial purposes. So many advertising companies have tried to imitate his style by creating off-brand versions of his songs and using those instead. Time and again, Waits has brought these advertising agencies to court for using his likeness in their commercials without his permission.

Time and again, the courts have been ruling in his favor. This particular case was against the German car company Adam Opel AG and advertising agency McCann Erickson, and the original lawsuit was for $300,000. The defendents' claim was that the song used was not meant to imitate Waits, claiming that it is based on a Brahms composition. Tom Waits claimed that this advertising company had contacted him multiple times about using his music in their commercial, and that he had turned them down all times. The case was settled out of court in the end, and history has proven that the court tends to side with Waits in cases where an advertising agency hires an imitator to copy his style.

In the end, this proves that the law considers not only an artists work to be his intellectual property, but also all obvious likenesses of his work, especially when there is evidence that the imitation is used in place of his work, when permission is denied.

Saturday, August 29, 2009

Welcome to my blog

I will be using this space to, as the title suggests, discuss current events in IP law as relating to New Media, it will be updated twice weekly.