Can’t-they-both-please-lose? dept.: Columbia’s Tim Wu is confident that excepting 15 seconds of Lennon’s Imagine for purposes of criticizing it will count as fair use, which one may hope would be true without necessarily predicting that the courts will agree (WSJ law blog, May 20; earlier).
Posts Tagged ‘Beatles’
“Judge awards Heather Mills £24.3 million in divorce ruling”
Indicating perhaps that divorcing Paul McCartney is an only slightly less remunerative affair than being Bear Stearns, even if she didn’t get the claimed £125 million. (David Byers, Times Online, Mar. 17). Reader Jim T. sends along this video of Mills’s press statement and describes as “hilarious” the “references of how it is ‘very, very sad’ that her daughter was only awarded enough travel expenses to travel ‘B class’ even though Heather Mills was just awarded $50 million dollars.” (& welcome Above the Law readers).
James Lileks on copyright law
From his syndicated column (“Obliging the Entertainment Industry Poobahs”, Newhouse, Nov. 29):
Think of all the unauthorized copyrighted material you have in your head right now: Beatles tunes, Stephen King plots, images of Mickey Mouse.
Thief!
Well, you’re not exactly a criminal — but give it time.
The Digital Millennium Copyright Act has just been amended again, and if the changes make the entertainment industry happy, that does not bode well for your future.
Tomorrow the law may be amended to prevent you from reading Doonesbury while moving your lips, since that’s an unauthorized reproduction that shifts content from one form to another….
The Overlawyered iMix
On August 25, a San Mateo County court will hold a fairness hearing over a nationwide class action settlement over iPod batteries that will provide $50 coupons for class members and $2,768,000 in fees for the attorneys. Because the lawsuit was filed before the Class Action Fairness Act took effect, the state court does not have to comply with the new federal requirement that attorneys’ fees reflect the actual redeemed value of the coupons, rather than the face value, one of many sensible provisions of the Act that trial lawyers, the New York Times, and dozens of prominent Democrats (including leading 2008 presidential contenders Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, and John Edwards) opposed. In honor of this fairness hearing (as well as in honor of a pending lawsuit alleging that Apple is monopolizing the music market by selling music in a proprietary format), Overlawyered presents the Overlawyered iMix: