1: And Warner Makes Three

First off today, emboldened by its recent victory, which allowed its antitrust case to progress against Universal, Redbox has filed a nearly identical lawsuit against Time Warner, making them the third, along with Universal and Fox, to be sued by the company.

Redbox makes DVD rental kiosks that are common at grocery stores and malls, but movie studios, frustrated at what they see is an attack on their DVD sales business, have been pushing wholesalers to withhold new releases from Redbox for 28 days. This has lead Redbox to file a lawsuit against all three now claiming both copyright misuse and antitrust violations. The judge in the case with Universal dismissed the copyright misuse claims, mostly due to the fact copyright misuse is a defense against copyright infringement, not a cause for a lawsuit, but allowed the antitrust claims to move forward.

However, oddly enough, Redbox has added the copyright misuse claims back into its suit against Time Warner, making the lawsuit an almost perfect copy of the one it filed against Universal and Fox. I guess we’ll see if they get a different result.

2: Pirate Party swashbuckles into Finnish politics

Next up, The Pirate Party has yet another new chapter, this one in Finland where it has registered as an official political party. Having collected the necessary 5,000 signatures, the party is officially recognized in the country, following on the heels of similar groups in the UK, Czech Republic and Australia.

The Pirate Party has been the most successful in Sweden, where the party earned over 7% of the popular vote in the recent EU elections and earned a seat in the EU Parliament as a result. According to a representative the Finnish Pirate Party will support “a reform of copyright laws, protecting privacy and freedom of speech as well as transparency in politics.”

3: Apple sued for infringing “1000 TVs” copyright

Finally today, gear up for a dose of copyright FAIL. Photographer Louis Psihoyos is suing Apple claiming that his “iconic” photograph, entitled “1000 TVs” was used without permission in the i.TV app, which is a TV guide app for the iPhone and iPod Touch. He is seeking actual and other damages that he feels is in excess of $2 million.

There’s only one small problem with the lawsuit, Apple doesn’t actually make the I.TV app, I.TV does. You can find this out youself by visiting the I.TV site or just looking in the app store. Since the app isn’t for sale it seems likely Apple will be protected by the DMCA and this lawsuit will go nowhere. That is, until the correct defendant is added.

Suggestions

That’s it for the three count today, we’ll be back tomorrow with three more copyright links. If you have a link that you want to suggest a link for the column or have any proposals to make it better. Feel free to leave a comment or send me an email. I hope to hear from you.

Want the Full Story?

Tune in every Saturday morning for the live recording of the Copyright 2.0 Show or wait and get the edited version Monday morning right here on Plagiarism Today.

1: Ustream Sued By Boxing Promoter Over Pirated Broadcast

First off today, livestreaming site Ustream is in legal hot water after being sued by a boxing promotional company owned by Roy Jones Jr., Square Ring Inc., after a recent pay-per-view match between Roy Jones Jr. and Omar Sheika was streamed for free to 2,300+ users on the site.

Ustream has said they believe that the DMCA protects them in this case and that the lawsuit is without merit, but they did say that they are taking both short term and long term steps to improve their copyright enforcement on the site.

This follows on the heels of a major overhaul at Ustream’s competitor, Justin.tv, to filter out and block copyrighted video from being played on the site.

2: Judge reject’s Universal’s bid to end Redbox suit

Next up, the ongoing dispute between DVD rental kiosk maker Redbox, which is owned by Coinstar, and the movie studios is, well, ongoing. However, the copyright element of it seems to have been removed at this time.

Redbox sued Universal and Fox for copyright misuse and antitrust violations for plans to withhold new releases for 45 days from the company in a bid to increase more lucrative home sales. The movie studios have not been too pleased with the success of Redbox, which places small red DVD rental kiosks in grocery stories and other locations, as it feels the service undercuts their DVD sales by renting them for a dollar per day.

The judge, however, dismissed the copyright misuse claims, the reason being that there is no such thing as a copyright misuse lawsuit. Copyright misuse is a defense against copyright infringement, not an action for a suit. However, the judge has allowed the antitrust claims to move forward, meaning that this fight has likely just started.

3: P2P Not to Blame for Content Industry Failures Says EU

Finally today, a recent study in the EU has released some numbers that will be unnerving to those in the content industries. According to the report, barely 5% of Web users paid for content within the last three months and the news among non-payers is not very promising.

Of those, about half said they would consider paying if prices were lowered, quality were raised and/or selection improved. However, 80% said that they would not pay even if all of the free options disappeared,

This has to make music and movie studios nervous as the former begins to dabble with “all you can eat” approaches to music, especially in the EU, in hopes of turning people into legitimate customers, even at drastically reduced prices.

Suggestions

That’s it for the three count today, we’ll be back tomorrow with three more copyright links. If you have a link that you want to suggest a link for the column or have any proposals to make it better. Feel free to leave a comment or send me an email. I hope to hear from you.

Want the Full Story?

Tune in every Saturday morning for the live recording of the Copyright 2.0 Show or wait and get the edited version Monday morning right here on Plagiarism Today.

This is something of a bittersweet episode of the Copyright 2.0 Show as Chris Matthieu, the usual co-host of the show, will be taking an extended leave of absense following this episode. In his place will be Patrick O’Keefe of the iFroggy Network.

Goodbye’s aside, it was still a very busy week for copyright news with a a lot of major stories including a conclusion to the Google Book lawsuit, one that literally dates back to the beginnings of this site, and tons of other stories.

All in all, there were seventeen stories this week including news from all over the copyright world including our “Weird Story of the Week”.

This week’s stories include:

• Google Settles Book Search Case
• Redbox Accuses Universal of Foul Play
• More DMCA Notices on Private Videos
• Conflicting Views of “Making Available”
• Unnecessary Censorship Strikes Weird Al
• And Many more…

You can download the MP3 file here (direct download). Those interested in subscribing to the show can do so via this feed.

Show Notes