Have Yourself a Vampire Weekend!
Publicity Rights, Indemnification and the Coolest Album Cover in Recent Memory In this post-album world, where we usually buy our music song by song, the album cover is something of a lost art. In 2009, Vampire Weekend infused some life into that art by building an...
The Case Against Grooveshark: Streaming Trouble (Part 5 in our Online Music Service Series)
Why Grooveshark Probably Needs a Defense or a License In our last post, we looked at the case against the “feeding end” of the Grooveshark, which meant we mostly discussed secondary copyright liability. We’ll now turn our attention to Grooveshark’s “streaming end.”...
The Case Against Grooveshark: Uploading Trouble (Online Music Service Series, Part 4)
Through the Grooveshark's Jaws In my last two posts, we took an overview of copyright law as it applies to online music services, and at six of the major new such services. We’ll now turn our focus to the specific services, starting with the inspiration for this...
The Long Shadow (Dancer) of Copyright Law
Accidental Infringement in the Real World Wasn’t I just blogging about how easy it is to accidentally infringe copyright with computers? Well, reality TV shows and news-shows have the same problem because they record sound and images (which is making a copy) in...
Overview of the New Online Music Services: Part 3 of Our Online Music Service Series
Seven Different Ways to Get Your Recommended Daily Requirement of Music This is the third installment of our series on the legal aspects of online digital music services. We turn now to the services themselves: here are thumbnail sketches of the six major new online...
Rick's Chapter in Understanding Developments in Cyberspace Law Published
Aspatore Press, an imprint of Thomson/Reuters, has published Understanding Developments in Cyberspace Law: Leading Lawyers Examining Privacy Issues, Addressing Security Concerns, and Responding to Recent IT Trends(whew!), part of Aspatore's Inside the Minds series....
Copyright and Digital Content: A 40,000-Feet View (Part 2 in our Online Music Services Series)
Seven Things to Keep in Mind... Last time, we looked at what customers want from online music services. To help you understand how copyright law governs online digital content (such as music files), we thought we’d provide a 40,000-feet overview of copyright law,...
Pre-Filing Investigations Are Sometimes Pretty Important!
It might be just as important not to be a jerk about it. How badly does a patentee have to anger the trial judge before it is sanctioned for bad faith litigation? Apparently, the patent-holding company Eon-Net managed to cross that line by (1) failing to investigate...
Of Groovesharks and Big Fishes: the New Online Digital Music Services and Copyright (Part 1)
Part 1: Introduction: Will Consumers Ever Get What they Want? As many you already know (from Brandon Gee’s good article in The Tennesseean), a group of local songwriters have recently sued the operator of Grooveshark for copyright infringement. (You may view the...
The Expendables 2: Revenge of the Obscure Venue Statute
How a Switch in Time Saved 23,322 John Does (Their Identities, for Now, at Least) In a series of posts a couple of weeks ago, I discussed an important decision out of the West Coast case* regarding anonymous internet speech. In that decision, U.S. Judge...
Is Copyright Law Just a Jedi Mind Trick?
You Might Need to Be a Jedi to Separate Form from Function in a 3D Object How a Small Difference Between British and US Copyright Law Made a Big Difference There’s been a good deal of buzz on some of geekier websites that I frequent about this decision.* At first, it...
"Filter Bubbles": Be Aware but Don't Despair
We Control the Web More than the Web Controls Us I tweeted a little while ago about The Economist’s review of Eli Pariser’s, The Filter Bubble: What the Internet Is Hiding from You. Pariser is a pretty big deal--definitely one of thought leaders about the internet. ...
