- “‘I’ve never felt so ill,’ says one reporter about the NY Times’s coverage of the Duke lacrosse-team case.” [New York Magazine]
- Double-standards for judicial seminars. [Point of Law; Volokh]
- 14-year-old British student arrested for not wanting to do class project with non-English speakers? [Volokh]
- Our October 13 entry on the pros and cons of complusory licensing in copyright provoked one of our longest comment threads ever.
- Will regulators shut down an aversive-stimuli special-education school? Should they? [Village Voice via Cowen]
- Cheap crime deterrent: wearing pink. [Prettier than Napoleon] Meanwhile, professors debate shaming in general. [Markel on PrawfsBlawg and SSRN; Berman; Markel reply; Kerr on Volokh; Markel reply]
- Trent Lott about to implement bad public policy out of spite. [RiskProf]
- Greg Beck has good analysis of the Emerson v. NBC garbage disposal suit. Always glad to see Public Citizen support liability reform. [CL&P]
- Is “erroneous removal” a problem? [Point of Law; TortsProf Blog]
Posts Tagged ‘copyright’
Why there aren’t DVDs of some of your favorite old TV series
The reason, Mark Evanier notes on his blog, we don’t see DVDs of shows like “SCTV” and “WKRP in Cincinnati” is the difficulty and expense of rights clearances for music used during the show, even if it’s just a character humming. More on the difficulty and problem of rights clearances: Oct. 17, 2005 and links therein.
Warner Home Video better hope that a class action attorney with time on his hands doesn’t read the post’s last sentence about a DVD advertised as uncensored that isn’t uncensored; maybe it can be averaged out with the suit over Wal-Mart’s CDs.
Update: A commenter raises an important point:
Google and YouTube
Ingesting a gigantic litigation risk? (Lattman, Oct. 9; Althouse, Oct. 10; discussion at WSJ). More: Jul. 20, Oct. 2.
More: “Dick Parsons, the chairman and chief executive of Time Warner, fired a shot across the bows of Google, saying his group would pursue its copyright complaints against the video sharing site YouTube.com.” (Jane Martinson, “Google faces copyright fight over YouTube”, The Guardian (U.K.), Oct. 13).
Salonquest scare letter: photos of our products violate our copyright
Public Citizen Litigation Group’s Greg Beck blogs a refutation though, alas, he doesn’t single out the attorney who makes the absurd claim. Beck notes the problem:
Even if a claim like Aquage’s is without legal merit, however, many small online sellers who receive a threat like this would rather cut their losses and back down than risk a lawsuit. It’s usually not worth hiring a lawyer when you are only hoping to make a few bucks off the sale in the first place.
Indeed.
YouTube: “They are going to be toasted”
The war over “W”
The wildly popular oval “W” stickers sported nationwide by supporters of President Bush’s 2004 re-election bid are at the center of a federal copyright case in Texarkana. This week, a judge set a Nov. 7 trial date.
Jerry Gossett of Wichita Falls claims the stickers are based on his idea, which he copyrighted in 2001. He accuses the Republican National Committee and campaign material maker Spalding Group of stealing his concept after he pitched it to them.”
A plaintiff’s expert has estimated damages at $100 million, defense attorneys said….
Texarkana, where Bill Clinton appointee David Folsom presides as the federal judge, has a reputation as a plaintiff-friendly venue, but Altman [Gossett attorney William Altman of Wichita Falls] said he simply sought a speedy docket.
(Mark Babineck, “Designer of a Bush logo seeks a ‘W’ in courtroom”, Houston Chronicle, Sept. 9).
Violence toward Barney, cont’d
For years lawyers representing the owners of the children’s-show character Barney have been firing off cease-and-desist letters to parodists who’ve portrayed various forms of violence being visited on the purple dinosaur (see, for example, Jun. 25, 2001). Now one such exchange has escalated, as the Electronic Frontier Foundation has sued Lyons Partnership, owner of Barney rights, seeking a court’s declaration that Stuart Frankel is not committing infringement by publishing a Barney parody site. (Robert Ambrogi, Legal Blog Watch, Aug. 24). Update Nov. 30: Lyons backs off.
World Cup nastygrams, cont’d
“Save a Cocktail Napkin, Win a Lawsuit”
In a 2004 case entitled Grosso v. Miramax Film Corp., the Ninth Circuit ruled that federal copyright laws do not pre-empt state-law contract claims over allegedly swiped ideas for entertainment ventures, shows and products. Other federal judges have rejected that position, but a West Coast boom has ensued in idea-submission lawsuits against Hollywood and TV producers, and large plaintiff’s firms like L.A.’s Engstrom, Lipscomb and Lack are getting into the field. (Amanda Bronstad, National Law Journal, Jul. 31).
“Our Lawyer Made Us Change The Name Of This Song So We Wouldn’t Get Sued”
Peter Lattman reports about the band Fall Out Boy:
“Our Lawyer Made Us Change The Name Of This Song So We Wouldn’t Get Sued” was originally called, “My Name is David Ruffin and These Are the Temptations,” Wentz says. After Ruffin broke with the famed Motown group, he kept attending shows and would steal the microphones away from his former bandmembers, unable to wean himself from the limelight. Wentz says his original song title, “was a play on Ruffin’s egomania and general narcissism.” Here are the song’s lyrics.
Wentz’s father advised his son against using the song title, for fear that the group would be sued. Did the younger Wentz listen? “No, because he was my dad. He advised me against a lot of things that I do,” he said with a playful hint of mischief in his voice. According to Wentz the Younger, the band’s lawyers also told them they’d be slapped with a hefty lawsuit, and offered up a few options — they could sign a waiver; include a reference to Ruffin in the song (which somehow would shield against a lawsuit); or change the name of the song.
Lattman wonders why including Ruffin’s name in the song would shield against a lawsuit, and the answer comes from the Sixth Circuit’s deplorable decision in the Rosa Parks case, which we covered Apr. 15, 2005:
The Sixth Circuit held that the rappers did not have a first amendment right to name their song “Rosa Parks” because they could have called it “Back of the Bus” rather than use an allusive title. One looks forward to more federal court diktats over song titles. (Parks v. LaFace Records (6th Cir. 2003)).
Lattman reports that Wentz says the band is hit with a lawsuit a day and has to retain an attorney half-time.