A recent pronouncement by Associated Press (AP) to adopt a more aggressive effort to “fend off copycat competition and “misappropriation” in the dwindling market for timely reporting,” has stirred the online news-outlet community and its players. In his capacity as the CEO of MediaNews Group Inc., and the Chairman of Associated Press board of directors, […]
James Gannon is an Osgoode Hall alumnus and is currently an articling student at McCarthy Tétrault. Much attention has recently been paid to proposed legislation that would require Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to step up their efforts to prevent subscribers from downloading copyright-protected content through the Internet connections they provide. These initiatives are often described […]
Susan Corbett is a Senior Lecturer in Commercial Law, Victoria University of Wellington In response to a barrage of criticism, unprecedented in response to a topic as alien to the average kiwi as copyright law, New Zealand Prime Minister John Key has announced that section 92A of the Copyright Act 1994 will not come into force […]
Chris Castle is Managing Partner of Christian L. Castle Attorneys, Los Angeles and San Francisco. If you believe as I do that "voluntary collective licensing" is neither voluntary, collective nor a license, you will be interested in reading "Choruss's Covenant: The Promised Land (Maybe) For Record Labels; A Lesser Destination For Everyone Else," a very […]
Faraaz Damji is a first year law student at Osgoode Hall and is taking the Legal Values: Challenges in Intellectual Property course. In Yochai Benkler's article, “Coase's Penguin, or Linux and The Nature of the Firm” (Yale Law Journal, volume 112, online), Benkler attempts to address a major economic concern about open source software: What motivates contributors? […]
Scientific discourse has always been encouraged as a means of nurturing accuracy and development, but according to a recent article by Andre Picard, the internet has changed the nature of scientific debate for the worse. According to Picard, in the world of cyberspace, scientific “evidence” now increasingly takes the form of anecdotal reports, and “debate” […]
Over an eleven day period ending last Wednesday, three lay judges and one professional judge presided over the most closely followed and polarized trials in recent Swedish history. In their hands lies the fate of the Pirate Bay - the ever-popular BitTorrent website. With the court’s judgment due in April, file-sharers and copyright holders all […]
Chris Castle is Managing Partner of Christian L. Castle Attorneys, a law firm specializing in music industry issues, content based technologies and public policy. Ever encounter people who think that illegal downloading can be solved by "turning off" the Internet? That makes about as much sense as "voluntary collective licensing" or "ISP licensing" (used interchangeably). […]
In March 2007 Viacom filed a $1 Billion lawsuit alleging that YouTube “actively engage[s] in, promote[s] and induce[s] [copyright] infringement”. Viacom properties such as South Park, Mean Girls and An Inconvenient Truth have been posted on YouTube.[1] For their part, YouTube has asserted a seemingly ironclad defense: Under Section 202 of the Digital Millennium Copyright […]
A recent report in the Globe and Mail revealed that a potentially precedent-setting case of a Facebook impersonator, could lead to a slew of charges against “pranksters” on popular social-networking sites. The accused, a Manitoba high school student, was charged with the rare offence of personation after police had decided that the fake profile he […]