Late last week, a suit was filed against Google in the U.S. District for the Southern District of New York by a variety of organizations representing visual artists with respect to unauthorized scanning of visual images in Google’s Library Project and on other Google services.  The court had originally denied the plaintiffs’ request to join [...]

[Read more →]

With thanks to Michelle Jacobs for passing this on to me, the British Parliament is currently debating the Digital Economy Bill which aims to provide greater online protections for copyright holders, including provisions that suspend Internet accounts of people who download copyright material illegally.  Full story from the BBC here.

[Read more →]

From the file of “public goods are not always what they seem,” if they can be made the subject of curatorial exclusivity (can they?), the Museum of Modern Art in New York has added the “@” symbol to its permanent collection. From the museum’s site: “MoMA’s Department of Architecture and Design has acquired the @ [...]

[Read more →]

Excerpt from a longer video that is accessible here.

[Read more →]

Readers of this blog will be familiar with my affinity for vampire stories, and the fact that in recent months I’ve been particularly partial to Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight Saga, although I must admit (I’m sure to Mike Madison’s great relief) that my fascination with the series is waning and I’m trying to expand my “literary” [...]

[Read more →]

A while back I blogged about the stated preferences of Stephenie Meyer (author of the Twilight series of books) with respect to online uses of her unpublished manuscripts.  While trolling various authors’ official websites, I found another interesting comment by a vampire book writer about unauthorized uses of her work, this time with direct reference [...]

[Read more →]

While broadening my literary horizons, but still remaining firmly in the pre-teen science fantasy camp, I’ve recently discovered a series of books by Cassandra Clare – the Moral Instruments trilogy (soon to be many more books than a trilogy).  She writes for pretty much the same audience as Stephenie Meyer of Twilight fame so I [...]

[Read more →]

On the way back from the AALS Annual Meeting, I was chatting with co-blogger Deven Desai who will be familiar with this question but I’m not sure that either of us has a clear answer to it.  I was intrigued when Disney released its first full length animated feature with an African-American princess (The Princess [...]

[Read more →]

So here’s some controversial advice:
“So that’s your advice is it? As my agent? On the week my book comes out in paperback, I should produce my own pirated version and give it away free? Why don’t I just punch my publisher in the face? That would be less work.”
My agent rocked back in his [...]

[Read more →]

According to today’s NY Times, the most pirated movie of 2009 was the popular Star Trek prequel.
The award for “most notorious film piracy”, however, goes to X-Men Origins:  Wolverine which made it to illegal file-sharing avenues on the Internet one month before being released in the theaters.
Other movies that made 2009’s “most pirated” list included [...]

[Read more →]

Further to my recent post on the issue of the women jailed for recording a few minutes of the Twilight sequel, New Moon, it has been announced that the charges against her have been dropped and she has been released from custody.  A news story here contains interesting statements from both the producers of the [...]

[Read more →]

I have noticed recently while playing around on YouTube and Google Video seeking exam question fodder that many fans of popular movies and TV shows who make mash-up videos of material from the shows post a notice at the beginning or end of their video saying “no copyright infringement intended”.  It strikes me that this [...]

[Read more →]

Cross posted from The Faculty Lounge.
So while enjoying the guilty pleasure of watching the Today show at a hotel room yesterday morning, I – along with the rest of the world – heard the public declaration from favorite Family Ties mom, Meredith Baxter, that she is now officially coming out as a lesbian.  Extract from [...]

[Read more →]

[Read more →]

Given that the Twilight sequel, New Moon, opens this week, I just have to blog about something Twilight-related.  I’ve been writing lately about celebrity privacy rights, and the right of publicity – and considering the extent to which celebrities should be legally protected against paparazzi intrusions.  Of course, there are other ways for them to [...]

[Read more →]

This morning’s Politico.com features a story entitled “Who Gets Whacked?” – a guide to Sarah Palin’s recent “Going Rogue” memoir summarizing how Palin treats various Washington players. The story features fairly extensive quotation from the book, which the authors of the story got in advance of today’s release.
Reading the story made me think Harper [...]

[Read more →]

In case anyone missed it, Glenn Beck unsurprisingly was unsuccessful in a WIPO arbitration proceeding seeking transfer of the domain name:
“http://glennbeckrapedandmurderedayounggirlin1990.com/”
An amusing account of the decision and the aftermath is available here.
(Thanks to my student Carolyn Blake for passing this along to me.)

[Read more →]

From the SF Chron:
Did Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s office use a coded veto message to send the f-bomb to Tom Ammiano, soon after the San Francisco assemblyman made news by telling the governor to “kiss my gay ass”?
Schwarzenegger’s people say no. But the X-rated evidence is hard to miss in a message that Schwarzenegger sent to [...]

[Read more →]

Yesterday, while sitting in Toronto airport I had an hour or so to kill so I thought I’d take advantage of my new ear buds (Ann, they’re pink!) and plug into my netbook to watch some video on demand.  To my surprise – although I shouldn’t have been surprised being an IP prof – I [...]

[Read more →]

With the second movie in the Twilight series (New Moon) imminently about to appear on the big screen, I found myself getting interested in this pop culture phenomenon, particularly as I strolled around a bookstore this afternoon and found just about every magazine cover devoted to the exploits of the teenage vampires and werewolves in [...]

[Read more →]