Hannah Montana Bill Advances

The Minnesota State House has passed the “Hannah Montana bill”, 119-12. The proposed legislation, which I discussed last month, bans software that jumps the queue at Ticketmaster and other sites that sell event tickets. The state Senate passed a slightly different version of the bill easrlier this month, and now must consider the […]

Is the DMCA Still Relevant?

That’s the question I’ve been asking myself (and, occasionally, others) for most of the last year. (As some of you know, I’ve spent quite a bit of that time working on a new paper about the DMCA, and I’m not jaded enough yet not to feel a twinge of regret at the prospect […]

Book Review: The Nine

I just finished Jeffrey Toobin’s popular new book, The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court. Overall I’d give it a positive review. Toobin has some interesting insights into the Big Picture of the successes and failures of conservatives under the Rehnquist Court (and the beginning of the Roberts Court), lots […]

All Eyes on Duluth

[UPDATE: As expected, the jury found liability for copyright infringement and awarded the recording industry $222,000. That is considerably less than the $3.6 million in damages theoretically available, but still represents a win for the RIAA. It will be interesting to see if this discourages other defendants from fighting through to trial.]
The […]

Well, Someone at Nixon Peabody Isn’t a Winner…

There has been extensive commentary and derision around the legal blogosphere about a preposterous corporate song commissioned by the law firm of Nixon Peabody, and then the firm’s subsequent efforts to threaten those who mocked it with IP saber-rattling. David Lat first posted the song, and here he summarizes the ensuing flapdoodle. A […]

Internet Filtering Mandates on Campus

Earlier this summer I spoke at the Institute for Computer Policy and Law, a workshop for professionals responsible for IT infrastructure in higher education. They were all abuzz about a campaign this spring and summer by the RIAA to target colleges and universities and demand that they take more actions to curb illegal downloading […]

Copyright Term Extension as a Partisan Issue

Given my interest in Info/law and in British politics, I cannot ignore this post from Bill Patry.
David Cameron, the Leader of Britain’s Tory Party, delivered a speech to the annual meeting of the UK recording industry trade group last week in which he committed his party to a 20-year extension of the copyright term for […]

Jimmy Thudpucker on the Evolving Music Industry

If you are an Info/Law type who is not a regular Doonesbury reader, check out yesterday’s strip. Former music legend Jimmy Thudpucker is back in the studio on Mark’s radio show talking about the future of music in a file-sharing world.  (As always with Doonesbury, the story arc will continue through Saturday.)  And as […]

Why Is the RIAA Cheerful?

The Washington Post reports that despite a decline in compact disc revenue of 13% last year, the RIAA is upbeat. Huh? Isn’t this the same RIAA that’s always portraying copyright-infringing downloads by college students as the death knell of the music industry? And how does this oddly happy vibe fit with the deal between Apple […]

30 Years Later, Copyright Cloud Lifted from Classic Film

So far, 2007 has been a year filled with an unusual amount of good copyright news for consumers and creators. First came the news (well covered by Bill, here and here) that, after years of resistance, E&O insurers were finally willing to cover documentary films that had not cleared rights to clips from earlier […]

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