The Licensing Plate

France: All your books are belong to us

If the phrase “digital pirate” conjures up a lone socially challenged male with a large collection of Manga comics and Cory Doctorow ravings, think again. Some of the biggest “pirates” in the world are nation states.

Last week France passed a law that permits the state to seize authors’ rights on books published before 2001.

The Register (full article)

‘Cowboys & Aliens’ Comic Book Author Sues Universal for Copyright Infringement

Cowboys & Aliens keeps causing headaches for Universal Pictures. The Jon Favreau-directed summer sci-fi western disappointed at the box office, grossing just $175 million worldwide despite costing about that much to produce. Now the studio has been hit with a lawsuit by a comic book artist who claims the movie infringes his 1995 story, also called Cowboys & Aliens.

The Hollywood Reporter (full story)

Philip K. Dick Estate Sues Media Rights Capital Over ‘Adjustment Bureau’

Attorneys for the estate of iconic science fiction author Philip K. Dick have filed suit in US District Court in California against Media Rights Capital over what it alleges is an attempt to get out of payments for the rights to use Dick’s short story as the basis for the Matt Damon thriller The Adjustment Bureau.

Deadline New York (full article)

Sony Is Said to Buy Film Rights to Jobs Biography

Sony Pictures Entertainment, the studio that the produced high-speed and high-profile movies “This Is It,” with Michael Jackson, and “The Social Network,” about Mark Zuckerberg, could do it again with the Apple co-founder Steven P. Jobs.

The New York Times (full story)

(EU) New principles agreed for out-of-print book licensing

The European Commission has created the basis for the digitising and distribution by libraries of out of print books that are still protected by copyright, it has said.

Pinsent-Masons (full story)

Winners And Losers In The News Aggregator Copyright Case

Today’s upholding of the contended ruling – that commercial aggregators’ clients should pay – is a blow to the PR industry. Public relations professionals will now have to pay extra for receiving news alerts about the companies they work for. The NLA had delayed collection of fees until the case got straightened out. Fees could get passed on to those companies.

paidContent.org (full story)

Frustrated judge pushes Google digital book deal

A Manhattan federal judge set a September 15 deadline for Google Inc, authors and publishers to come up with a legal plan to create the world’s largest digital library, expressing frustration that the six-year-old dispute has not been resolved.

Reuters (full story)

CBS Sues Writer of NBC’s ‘The Firm’ Claiming Show Was Stolen

A nasty legal fued has broken out over the upcoming TV series based on characters in John Grisham’s seminal legal thriller.

The Hollywood Reporter (full story)

Libraries expand digital access to orphan works

The University of Florida George A. Smathers Libraries have joined the HathiTrust Digital Library, a partnership of major research institutions and libraries working to ensure that the cultural record is preserved and accessible long into the future.

There are more than 50 partners in the HathiTrust, and membership is open to institutions worldwide. Currently, the HathiTrust has 8.9 million digitized volumes.

University of Florida (full story)

Warner Bros. Wins Key Legal Ruling Impacting All ‘Wizard of Oz’ Remake

The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals hands down a potentially big decision on some iconic characters thought by many to be outside copyright protection.

The Hollywood Reporter (full story)

Righthaven Defendant Awarded $3,800 in Attorneys’ Fees–Righthaven v. Leon

Judge Navarro ordered Righthaven to pay $3,815 to the attorneys for one of its defendants, Michael Leon. This award came about because Righthaven did not properly serve Leon’s complaint.

Technology & Marketing Law Blog (full story)

Newspaper chain fights for copyright troll’s survival

Stephens Media, the Las Vegas-based media chain, is fighting to keep its latest business model alive: copyright-trolling.

After standing on the sidelines while professional content-troll Righthaven fights in court, the newspaper company that seeded the venture joined the fray late Tuesday, telling a federal judge who questioned the business model’s latest iteration that the litigation factory is not a “sham.”

ars technica (full story)

Lit Lawyers: The Fake-Memoir Business

Who gets hurt when a purported work of non-fiction turns out to be fake or to contain fictional elements? And can that hurt be converted to a dollar amount? (The second question is, of course, rhetorical: in America, any and all damage is worth something.) A better question might be: who benefits?

The New Yorker (full story)

Righthaven Cheerleader Wanted by Irony Police

Via Electronic Frontier Foundation:

Sherman Frederick is the former CEO of Stephens Media, former publisher of the Las Vegas Review Journal, and one of Righthaven’s biggest cheerleaders. When the litigation campaign of Stephens Media’s copyright enforcer Righthaven first got underway, Frederick famously wrote “So, I’m asking you nicely once again—don’t steal our content. Or, I promise you, you will meet my little friend called Righthaven.”

In the wake of last week’s ruling against Righthaven in Righthaven v. Democratic Underground, Frederick wrote an unintentionally ironic column for Stephens Media entitled “Content protection — Night of the unthinking commentator.” Frederick starts out with an ad hominem attack, comparing bloggers commenting in favor of the Nevada federal court’s ruling to “a bunch of kids camping out in the backyard, sticking a flashlight under their chin and telling each other scary stories.”

Following his strained and somewhat nonsensical metaphor, Frederick suggests that readers should instead look at three posts by GametimeIP blogger Patrick Anderson. Frederick links to the three posts, and then copies, verbatim, from each. Five sentences from the first article, three from the second, and ten sentences from the third. The quotes are not denoted as such, but basically everything after “Article 1, which in part points out:” is copied.

Which is, to say the least, quite ironic. Righthaven v. Democratic Underground is a case about copying five sentences from a Review-Journal news article. To bolster his claim that commenters are writing without thinking about the real IP issues, Frederick does exactly what his company has contended was infringement. Without, apparently, thinking about it.

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Lit Agency Responds To Concerns About E-Services, ‘Conflict Of Interest’

When literary agency Dystel & Goderich announced yesterday that it would be providing e-book services to its authors, it stressed that it has “no intention of becoming [an] e-publisher” (as a few other literary agencies have done) and that it would not “muddy the waters” by competing with traditional publishers. Today, the agency’s Miriam Goderich responded to more concerns about a conflict of interest.

mocoNews.net (full story)

The Bookseller.com Discusses the “Future of Copyright”

Traditional copyright is dead, in terminal decline or, at the very least, not fit for purpose in the digital age. That was the message at last week’s Focus 2011: The Book Tomorrow—The Future of the Written Word, Unesco’s rather expansively titled conference on digital books held in Monza, Italy, where industry leaders, librarians, academics and copyright campaigners gathered to discuss how authors’ works should—or should not—be protected as the industry moves forward.

TheBookseller.com (full story)

Amazon Kindle Spam: Direct Publishing System Gets Gummed By Influx Of Junk eBooks

Spam has hit the Kindle, clogging the online bookstore of the top-selling eReader with material that is far from being book worthy and threatening to undermine Amazon.com Inc’s publishing foray.

Thousands of digital books, called ebooks, are being published through Amazon’s self-publishing system each month. Many are not written in the traditional sense.

Reuters (full story)

UK Newspapers Launch Their Own Pay-For Web Aggregator

UK newspapers have launched their own online service offering pay-for news alerts to PRs clippings agencies, despite ongoing court proceedings against their strategy.

The eClips service is aimed at existing clippings collectors who provide media monitoring services for clients in public relations, and has been in development for two years by the Newspaper Licensing Agency (NLA).

paidContent.org (full story)

EFF Urges Supreme Court to Block Law That Erodes Public Domain

Via Electronic Frontier Foundation:

San Francisco – The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) asked the U.S. Supreme Court to block a federal law that erodes the public domain and hurts libraries, artists, and others who want to exercise their First Amendment right to share and receive information in an amicus brief filed today on behalf a coalition of libraries and other digital repositories.

The law in question is Section 514 of the Uruguay Round Agreements Act, which takes potentially millions of works by foreign authors that were previously in the public domain and puts them back under copyright protection. Works affected by this law include Sergei Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf, music by Stravinski, paintings by Picasso and drawings by M.C. Escher, and writings by George Orwell and J.R.R. Tolkien — material that has been used and performed countless times. Now that the works are back under copyright protection, use of the works may require paying hefty license fees.

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Righthaven Agonistes

A federal judge ruled Monday that publishing an entire article without the rights holder’s authorization was a fair use of the work, in yet another blow to newspaper copyright troll Righthaven.

Not really a big surprise.  One of the points I made at this month’s CSUSA panel on this topic was that when you push too hard on enforcement, someone who matters — either legislators, judges or rampaging mobs — will punish you and leave in a place that is outside what you thought defined the range of outcomes.  In a bad way.

Likelihood of Confusion (full story)