1: Embedding a YouTube Video May Cost You a Bundle in ASCAP Bills

Emboldened by a recent court victory that found YouTube liable for back royalties audio used in its videos, ASCAP, American Society for Composers Authors and Publishers, has in turn begun to hit up Web sites for royalties based upon their embedding of YouTube clips.

To be clear, ASCAP has said it will not be seeking licenses from those who embed YouTube clips in solely personal blogs, but those who embed such clips on commercial sites, such as Jason Calicanas’ Mahalo, might be expecting a letter in the mail.

The matter has already broke out on Twitter, where Calicanas first announce he had received the letter, leading to a new hashtag #ascapfail. Others have reproted receiving similar letters. Previously, YouTube told recipients of such letters to just direct ASCAP to YouTube but now it is much less clear if YouTube will be of much help.

2: Hackers Undermine Piracy Evidence With Hadopi Router

According to some hackers in France, the country’s new three strikes law, in addition to a constitutional hurdle that the new law is designed to overcome, may have yet another issue. According to the report on Torrentfreak, they have created a tool that is designed to crack passwords on secure wifi access points and use those for file sharing.

The law, as it is written now, allows a judge to file an Internet use up to 1,500 euros and disconnect them for four weeks if they are negligent in allowing their network to be broken into and use for piracy. This router, theoretically, would allow hackers to use the access of non-negligent wifi users, thus confusing things further.

3: Look Familiar?

Finally today, to end Friday on a lighter note, Brandon at iCodeBlog has a very amusing tale of copyright infringement.

As do many coding blogs, Brandon’s blog uses tutorials to help teach some of the basics. To that end, Brandon posted a sample of a very simple iPhone “Tennis” game with instructions on how to make it.

So imagine his surprise when he found that exact application for sale for 99 cents in the app store.

According to Brandon, a company by the name of BlaBlaIncTech uploaded his app as a wholly original work and was selling it. The application is no longer available in the App store, likely pulled due to the copyright issues.

Still, it says some pretty negative things about the iPhone App Store when a quick tutorial app can get put online and charge a dollar per download…

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.

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There was a great deal to go over this week including the release of WordPress 2.3.3 and other blog security issues. Also covered is the new Prologue theme for WordPress and the ability to convert WP into a contact manager.

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