King, the Candy Crush Saga company, Sues 6Waves for Game Copyright Infringement

  Georgios Kollidas - Fotolia.com What is the Copyright Infringement Finder and is it worth it? Photographer Jason Wilder had a problem common to nearly everyone who creates intellectual property: His work was routinely being used online without his permission— and without payment. So Wilder did something about it, creating the Copyright Infringement Finder (CIF) add-on for the Firefox browser. “I have been a professional concert photographer for about 10 years now, and no one ever really wants to pay for concert photos,” Wilder told CorpCounsel.com. “They’d rather take them without licensing them and hope no one finds out, instead of paying a small licensing fee.” The CIF add-on uses Google’s image-searching technology and allows owners of images to right-click on an image in the Firefox browser window to find other sites that are using that same image. “All my images are copyrighted,” Wilder notes, and because “I know which…

Photographers based in the UK now have an easier and cheaper legal path to take if they discover someone infringing upon their copyrights. Chris Cheesman of Amateur Photographer writes that photographers can now receive do-it-yourself justice without having to hire a lawyer: Intellectual property disputes can now be resolved using the ‘small claims track’ in the Patents County Court (PCC), following a Government announcement of a ‘simpler and easier’ system last month. Photographers can pursue damages for breach of copyright, for up to £5,000, without even appointing a solicitor, unlike before where they may have been put off by a potentially long, and expensive, legal fight. Furthermore, the damages limit may rise to £10,000 under Ministry of Justice proposals, possibly as early as next year. Crucially, under the new system, photographers can avoid the prospect of a lengthy court battle and the fear of having to pay the legal fees…

A new court test of fair use on the Internet appears likely due to a lawsuit filed June 7 by photographer Kai Eiselein against BuzzFeed. Eiselein, who is demanding damages that could total over $3.6 million, claims that BuzzFeed infringed his copyright in a photograph he posted on Flickr in 2009 showing a soccer player heading a ball. According to Eiselein, BuzzFeed included the photo without his consent in a collection titled “The 30 Funniest Header Faces” published in June 2010. After he sent BuzzFeed a takedown notice in May 2011, the company removed the photo and renamed the collection “The 29 Funniest Header Faces.” By that time, however, Eiselein alleges that the set of images including his photo had spread virally from BuzzFeed to dozens of other websites. Eiselein asserts that BuzzFeed is liable for contributory infringement for the photo’s use on those sites—and on sites that published it after…

(Image: CNET/CBS Interactive) A U.S. appeals court “appeared skeptical” on Tuesday about handing Oracle a $1.3 billion damages package previously served by a jury, which was later overturned. According to the Reuters news agency, Judge William Fletcher called Oracle’s attorney’s figures that were used to drum up the damages figure as “pie in the sky dreaming,” which may lead to the software giant losing the damages it was first awarded. But if Oracle doesn’t get its way, seven years after the allegations first came to light, the company is gunning for a new trial, reported Bloomberg. Oracle is taking on German enterprise software powerhouse SAP in a legal ding-dong that led to it admitting massive infringement of Oracle’s copyright. A jury awarded Oracle the billion-dollar-plus sum in 2010 after an SAP subsidiary, TomorrowNow, unlawfully downloaded millions of Oracle files. SAP bought the company to begin supporting Oracle customers at a lower cost…

The City Council is poised to criminalize “revenge porn” locally following years of inaction by state lawmakers — who have let a similar bill languish in Albany since 2014. Under a proposal by Councilman Rory Lancman (D-Queens), anyone who posts someone’s “intimate image” without permission could be sent to jail for a year and slapped with a $1,000 fine. The legislation would also expose offenders to civil penalties — including “compensatory and punitive damages” — even without a criminal conviction. Lancman’s bill — which has the support of Mayor de Blasio — is being “primed” for a vote by the Public Safety Committee, his office said Friday. Assemblyman Ed Braunstein (D-Bayside) introduced similar legislation in Albany three years ago, but it has yet to win the support of the Codes Committee. “There’s people who blame the victim for taking the pictures or allowing that significant other to take the pictures…

FACEBOOK wants to stop revenge porn BEFORE it happens - by getting people to send in their own naughty sex pictures. The social network is testing a system which uses image recognition to identify revenge porn and automatically delete it. Getty Images Social media makes it terrifyingly easy to spread revenge porn But this can only work if Facebook has copies of the dirty pictures in the first place. Zuckerberg’s firm is running a pilot scheme in Australia and has teamed up with the Office of the eSafety Commissioner to trial its new idea. Julie Inman Grant, e-Safety Commissioner, said people who were worried about “image-based abuse” should give Facebook their sexy pics. “It would be like sending yourself your image in email, but obviously this is a much safer, secure end-to-end way of sending the image without sending it through the ether,” she told ABC. Getty Images Would you be…

Technology and relationships are increasingly overlapping, but are laws dragging behind?(Photo: USA TODAY College file photo) Story Highlights Three out of four college students will be in a long-distance relationship at some point before graduation. A 2011 University of Rhode Island study found that 56% percent of students had received “sexually suggestive images.” As Millennials become increasingly tech-reliant in all facets of life — including relationships — some are facing unfortunate consequences. Three out of four college students will be in a long-distance relationship at some point before graduation, according to a study in the Journal of Communication. Sending nude photos to a partner may be one way to maintain the passion. In fact, a 2011 University of Rhode Island study found that 56% percent of students had received “sexually suggestive images.” But what happens when a relationship dissolves and a heartbroken ex has a library of nude photos of…

Jasmin Caldwell, KCEN 7:15 PM. CDT October 05, 2021 The defense team for a Twin peaks defendant filed a motion Thursday to get Mclennan County District Attorney Abel Reyna removed from their client’s trial — citing “illegal and outrageous” government conduct. Houston-based Defense Attorney Paul Looney demanded Reyna be replaced by a special prosecutor. He claimed Reyna was criminally victimizing his client — Cody Ledbetter and Ledbetter’s wife. “We just want a trial, but instead, we’re getting revenge porn,” Looney said. According to Looney, Ledbetter had images of himself and his wife engaging in sexual activity on his cell phone. After Ledbetter’s arrest, Looney said Reyna copied and distributed those images more than 150 times to counsel and staff for each of the Twin Peaks defendants. “There’s nothing kinky, nothing weird, it’s a married couple engaging in married activities,” Looney said. “It has nothing to do with any theory, or any…

Getty Images Facebook, Twitter and Google aren’t prepared for deepfakes ahead of the US presidential election, a top Congressman said after the tech giants sent letters last week about how they deal with high-tech doctored videos and other kinds of media manipulation. The companies “have begun thinking seriously” about the challenges, said Rep. Adam Schiff, a Democrat from California, but it’s their responsibility to prevent their platforms from being weaponized.  “It’s clear they are far from ready to accomplish that,” Schiff said in a statement.  Deepfakes are sophisticated video forgeries, created automatically by artificial intelligence, that can make people appear to be doing or saying things they never did. Though computer manipulation of video has existed for decades, artificial intelligence is making deepfakes and other so-called synthetic media more accessible and harder to detect. The companies — YouTube-owner Google, Facebook and Twitter — all responded in letters dated Wednesday to questions Schiff sent them…

The offshore Web site that hosts hoards of “revenge porn” — including illegal shots of underage girls — lost its sole source of revenue Friday following a Post expose of its sleazy operation. A Spanish online-ad company said it was pulling its business from Anon-IB — also known as the “Best Anonymous Image Board” — and thanked The Post “for making us aware of this.” Anon-IB was raking in $1,500 a day from Barcelona-based ExoClick in exchange for hosting ExoClick’s ads on its site, according to an estimate from the Web-monitoring firm Alexa. “ExoClick has a zero tolerance policy to any forms of illegal content on publisher websites (as per our guidelines),” spokesman Giles Hirst said in an email statement. “On discovery of such content we will always take swift action to remove ads and ban the publisher from our network.” Several women told The Post that nude images taken…

A U.S. federal court has found file-hosting website Hotfile liable for copyright infringement, according to movie industry body Motion Picture Association of America.The US District Court for the Southern District of Florida also held that Hotfile’s principal, Anton Titov, was personally liable for Hotfile’s infringement, MPAA said in an emailed statement Wednesday. “This case marked the first time that a US court has ruled on whether so-called cyberlockers like Hotfile can be held liable for their infringing business practices,” it added. The order was marked on online court records as “restricted/sealed until further notice.” The opinion will be made public by the court in about two weeks, after confidential and proprietary information has been redacted, MPAA said. The court agreed with the movie studios’ complaint that Hotfile gave incentives to post copyrighted content. Five U.S. movie studios filed a copyright infringement suit against Hotfile in 2011, alleging that the company…

by: Alex Thomas, Rare.us Updated: Sep 30, 2021 - 10:29 AM SAN ANTONIO - A San Antonio woman is in trouble after police say she broke into her ex’s phone and posted nude photos of his former lover online. In August, a woman reported the photos to police, claiming that 26-year-old Adriana Luna posted the images on the man’s Instagram account. Authorities said the man dated another woman before getting into a relationship with Luna. The woman before had, sent him the nude photos. According to an affidavit, Luna and the man had what a “bad breakup.” TRENDING NOW: The San Antonio Express-News reported Luna kept her ex’s phone and broke into it, then posted the images. When Luna’s ex-boyfriend confronted her about it, she allegedly admitted to the crime. KABB reported that, according to an interview with the ex-boyfriend, Luna posted the photos with her mother’s help. The ex-boyfriend said…

Snippets from issue 1, 2013 volume of The Copyright & New Media Law Newsletter: Publishing and distributing content in today’s environment means working within a variety of models. An article or a series of articles published in a newsletter or website may become a mini e-book, the basis for a webinar or online course, or part of an online subscription-based database. These various models of monetizing content presume one thing—that ownership of the original content is clearly established when that original or first version of the content is written. - Editorial by Lesley Ellen Harris Orphan Works: Because museums operate as stewards of collections with a mission and responsibility—on the one hand to educate and communicate with their public and, on the other hand, to care for their collections—museums hold a unique perspective on rights issues. One of the most significant legal issues facing the contemporary museum is the orphaned works…

Fox News Channel sued TVEyes, a $500-per-month TV and radio broadcast search service, for copyright infringement on Tuesday. The suit, filed in U.S. District Court in New York, alleges that TV Eyes makes versions of the cable news network’s “award winning programming” available on its site for paid users without Fox News’ permission. The lawsuit accuses TVEyes of misappropriating “the entirety of the works that Fox News has developed at great expense and to reproduce, to distribute, to publicly perform and/or to publicly display verbatim copies of the works” without authorization. Also read: Fox News’ Shepard Smith Stumping For ‘True Blood’ Cameo According to the suit, Robert Bruder, director of client relations for TVEyes, admitted that the site was already using Fox News’ content when he approached the channel seeking a license to use that work. “Mr. Bruder notified Fox News that TVEyes had been using Fox News’s content without…

Know your rights! Read about the DMCA Act DIGITAL MILLENNIUM COPYRIGHT ACT OF 1998. What is copyright? Copyright is a form of legal protection automatically provided to the authors of “original works of authorship,” including literary, dramatic, musical, and artistic works. U.S. copyright law generally gives the author/creator or owner of an original creative work an exclusive right to: Reproduce (copy) or distribute the original work to the public (e.g., create and sell copies of a film) Create new works based upon the original work (e.g., make a movie based on a book) Perform or display the work publicly (e.g., perform a play) Violation of one of these rights is called copyright infringement. However, the use may be authorized by copyright limitations (such as fair use) described below. What types of works are protected by copyright? Literary works Music and lyrics Dramatic works and music Pantomimes and choreographic works Photographs, graphics,…