People who have their nude pictures posted on the Internet without consent — a vile practice known as revenge porn — have little legal recourse. That’s changing, but only very slowly, with legislation proposed in California earlier this year joining New Jersey as the second state with laws specifically targeting the practice.* The California bill passed the state Senate earlier this month and this week the California legislature will debate it. If the bill passes in its current form, posting revenge porn would be considered a misdemeanor and posters of their ex-girlfriends’ nudes could face up to a year of jail-time or a fine of up to $2,000. Despite what sounds like a much-needed bill for a practice that victims and advocates like Holly Jacobs — the first Floridian, according to her lawyer, to sue her ex for the alleged distribution of non-consensual pornography — say is becoming increasingly common, not everyone thinks explicit…
Copyright News
King, the company best known for the social-mobile juggernaut Candy Crush Saga, is suing game studio 6Waves for allegedly infringing on the copyright of two of King’s other games. In a filing with the Northern District Court of California, King asserts that 6Waves is “blatantly cloning two of its most popular games.” Update 9:15pm PT: 6Waves responded to a request for comment with the following statement from Sharon Lau, the company’s director of Corporate and Legal Affairs: 6waves cannot provide detailed comments at this stage but we deny all allegations of the copyright infringement complaint by King.com Limited. Puzzle solving games and themes like farming and jewels are not unique and have been created by many other companies. Such popular gameplay and themes cannot be copyrighted. The 6Waves games in question, Treasure Epic and Farm Epic (pictured above right), are available on Facebook, as are the games they are accused…
SACRAMENTO (AP) — State lawmakers are attempting to limit a distressing social media phenomenon known as “revenge porn,” where spurned suitors post intimate photos of their ex-lovers on the Internet for all to see. The Assembly is set to debate a bill that would make such conduct punishable by up to a year in jail, while Gov. Jerry Brown is considering separate legislation that would make it a crime to impersonate or bully a domestic violence victim online. The measures are forcing lawmakers to consider where to draw the line between unfettered free speech and privacy rights. “Right now law enforcement has no tools to combat revenge porn or cyber-revenge,” said Sen. Anthony Cannella, a Republican from Ceres who proposed one of the bills. “Unfortunately it is a growing trend and there are a lot of victims out there, a lot more than I ever imagined. … It’s destroying people’s…
In recent years, though, a decidedly unsexy brand — derided for decades, with little sign of an image improvement — has become one of the city’s most imitated: the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. Powered in part by the rise of online shopping, which has helped small-time entrepreneurs market their subway-inspired creations widely, the transit agency now issues up to 600 notices a year for copyright infringements to protect trademarks on train line logos, subway maps and other system imagery. That represents a more than twentyfold increase since 2005. But the authority’s focus has not been limited to New York’s starving artists. It has flagged Massimo Vignelli, the designer of the beloved if confounding 1972 subway map, whose 2008 update for Men’s Vogue used trademark route symbols without permission. There have been illicit pastries resembling MetroCards, and earrings made of surviving subway tokens. A stern letter was sent regarding an amateur, all-female…
People who download pirated media content such as TV shows and movies may soon get a warning in real time, if a US cable company’s efforts become reality.A report on Variety.com said Comcast Corp. is developing the mechanism and is urging major studios, content companies, and distributors to join it.”As sources described the new system, a consumer illegally downloading a film or movie from a peer-to-peer system would be quickly pushed a pop-up message with links to purchase or rent the same content, whether the title in question exists on the VOD library of a participating distributor’s own broadband network or on a third-party seller like Amazon,” Variety editor-in-chief for digital Andrew Wallenstein said. He said this may be an alternative to the Copyright Alert System (CAS), which is a voluntary initiative being used since February.CAS warns subscribers engaging in copyright infringement up to six times before the Internet service provider…
A recent federal court decision confirms that, without more, merely linking to content of copyrighted content is not direct infringement of the copyright in that content.Plaintiff sued defendants for copyright infringement based on defendants’ alleged unauthorized sale of educational materials online. A paralegal in plaintiffs’ law firm sought to buy some of the infringing materials, and one of the defendants sent her a link to material that had been uploaded to a file locker. Plaintiff moved for summary judgment, arguing in part that the link constituted infringement.The court denied plaintiffs’ summary judgment motion, but not because of the linking. It found that there was a triable fact as to whether defendant had uploaded the infringing content to the file locker. The court held that “as a matter of law, sending an email containing a hyperlink to a site facilitating the sale of a copyrighted work does not itself constitute copyright…
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…
Chalk this up in the “funny, but not really” category: Last week, a company working with Microsoft to combat copyright pirates asked Google to remove multiple Microsoft web pages from Google searches—for infringing Microsoft copyrights.Yep, Microsoft filed a Digital Millenium Copyright Act takedown request against itself, as Torrentfreak first spotted.This wasn’t a case of internal idiocy or revenge, and it’s also not quite as amusing as it may appear at first glance. Instead, it highlights the harmful way copyright holders use automatically generated DMCA takedown requests to try to scrub the net of pirated content, casting a wide net that often ensnares innocent webmasters with false infringement claims. Google’s record of LeakID’s DMCA takedown request against Microsoft.com.(Click to enlarge.) If a copyright holder feels that a particular website is ripping off its work, it can send Google a DMCA takedown request and ask for the infringing site to be removed…
The industries that rely on copyright are today an integral part of the U.S. economy, accounting for millions of jobs and contributing billions of dollars to the G.D.P. Moreover, the creative content they produce contributes to the development of the broader Internet economy, spurring the creation and adoption of innovative distribution technologies. Not only do these industries make important economic contributions, they are at the core of our cultural expression and heritage. It is no exaggeration to say that U.S. music, movies, television shows, computer software, games, writings and works of art have changed the world. Copyright Policy, Creativity, and Innovation in the Digital Economy. Today, the Department of Commerce Internet Policy Task Force released its anticipated Green Paper, Copyright Policy, Creativity, and Innovation in the Digital Economy. The Internet Policy Task Force (IPTF) is a coalition of Department of Commerce bureaus launched in 2010 “to identify leading public policy and…
Zynga claim that the app’s name abuses the ‘With Friends’ moniker they use for their family-friendly games. Bloomberg reports that Zynga are accusing the app’s developers of selecting “the name Bang With Friends for its casual sex matchmaking app with Zynga’s game trademarks fully in mind.” Launched in January, Bang With Friends works by signing into Facebook. Users select the friends they’re “interested” in and if those lucky individuals have also installed the app and already selected them, then both parties are sent an email. Forbes writer Kashmir Hill has already pointed out that the app doesn’t live up to its own promises of anonymity, as users who go to add the app on Facebook will be told if any friends of theirs have. Until recently the founders of the app had chosen to be anonymous, though in June this year, CEO Colin Hodge was interviewed by Business Insider. Hodge…