Copy Rights

first-sale doctrine in copyright law, which allows you to buy and then sell things like electronics, books, artwork and furniture, as well as CDs and DVDs, without getting permission from the copyright holder of those products … which the Supreme Court has recognized since 1908 … challenged now for products that are made abroad, and if the Supreme Court upholds an appellate court ruling, it would mean that the copyright holders of anything you own that has been made in China, Japan or Europe, for example, would have to give you permission to sell it … copyright holder would now want a piece of that sale. [This seems to me to be exactly the opposite of the direction copyright jurisprudence should be taking. An appeallate court upheld this??] … In August 2011, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit upheld a lower court’s ruling that anything that was manufactured overseas is not subject to the first-sale principle. Only American-made products or “copies manufactured domestically” were. “That’s a non-free-market capitalistic idea for something that’s pretty fundamental to our modern economy,”

She's the only person to go all the way to court when sued by the recording industry over music file-sharing -- and this week, she'll be fighting back again.... a federal judge decided last September that he made a mistake in telling jurors that the companies didn't have to prove that anyone downloaded the songs she had allegedly made available....

graduate student stands accused of sharing copyrighted music files for years on P2P networks. Tenenbaum is defended by Harvard Law professor Charles Nesson, but the Free Software Foundation has also shoved its oar into the water and is paddling around a bit, trying to make some waves.

Last month, a Swedish court found the four men behind the popular Pirate Bay website guilty of assisting copyright infringement, sentencing each of them to one year in prison and a $905,000 fine. Shortly afterword, Pirate Bay lawyer Peter Althin demanded a retrial due to bias -- given the trial's judge is a member of the same copyright protection organizations as several of the main entertainment industry representatives. A second judge was tasked with determining bias has themselves been removed from said task -- for bias....

A Swedish court today found the Pirate Bay guilty of copyright infringement, otherwise known as pirating (surprise!). With all the news lately of pirates capturing ships off the Somali coast, it's easy to forget that online pirates are out there as well.