Catching Up: Miscellaneous Copyright Topics

Here’s a big bunch of unfiltered links about copyright-related topics that I have accumulated over the last couple of months. Most of these deserve more discussion, but are getting the short end of the stick.
Erik J. Heels, Drawing That Explains Copyright Law
Detroit News, Eminem suit targets Apple: “A ‘burning issue’ in the music industry today is whether the rights record labels hold to sell a recording artist’s CDs include the rights to authorize music downloads, or whether further permission is needed from the music publishers who hold the copyrights to the lyrics and sheet music.”
The Patry Copyright Blog, Bands and Partnerships: “It is common for bands to form a corporation or other juridical entity like a partnership. When preexisting works are transferred to such an entity, the ordinary provisions on individual ownership, duration, and termination of transfer apply. But what about works created after the juridical entity is created? This issue is presented, but not considered, in Lopez v. Musinorte Entertainment Corp., 2007 WL 579746 (9th Feb. 16, 2007).”
News.com, TorrentSpy lawyer battling ‘copyright extremism’: “Ira Rothken is technology’s answer to the radical lawyer, Silicon Valley’s version of Johnnie Cochran or William Kunstler. Tech start-ups sued by media conglomerates for copyright infringement typically call on Rothken, a medical researcher turned lawyer. He’s made a name for himself by bucking entertainment empires and by backing long-shot copyright cases, such as those involving RecordTV, ReplayTV and MP3Board.com.”
Coolfer: DRM: Who Wants What?
The Daily Swarm, Getty Images is listening through Paper Thin Walls: “Late last month, Getty Images – one of the leading visual image distributors that provides readily licensable photographs, video, artwork, and other creative content to websites and print publications around the world – announced the $42 million acquisition of Pump Audio, an online clearinghouse of pre-cleared music and sounds.”
Fred von Lohmann, EFF, YouTube Embedding and Copyright: “I’d say bloggers are generally pretty safe on this score, at least until someone notifies them that an embedded video is infringing.”
Law.com, Federal Judge Clears Law Firm Accused of Hacking Opponents’ Web Archives: “A law firm did not violate copyright and computer anti-hacking laws when it used a Web archive search tool to recover old Web pages of its client’s adversary, says a federal judge.…’They did not ‘pick the lock’ and avoid or bypass the protective measure, because there was no lock to pick,’ Kelly wrote in Healthcare Advocates Inc. v. Harding Earley Follmer & Frailey, No. 05-3524. ‘Nor did the Harding firm steal passwords to get around a protective barrier. … The Harding firm could not ‘avoid’ or ‘bypass’ a digital wall that was not there.'”
Rufus Pollock, Forever Minus a Day? Some Theory and Empirics of Optimal Copyright: “The optimal level for copyright has been a matter for extensive debate over the last decade. This paper contributes several new results on this issue divided into two parts. In the first, a parsimonious theoretical model is used to prove several novel propositions about the optimal level of protection. Specifically, we demonstrate that (a) optimal copyright falls as the costs of production go down (for example as a result of digitization) and that (b) the optimal level of copyright will, in general, fall over time.”
Jeff Neuburger, Technology Law Update: Seventh Circuit YouTube Reference Thwarted by Major League Baseball: “Judge Evans closes his account of the incident with a citation to a video of the incident available on YouTube. Naturally we had to check out the video. But alas! The url returns an error message: ‘This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by MLB Advanced Media.'”
Los Angeles Times, Can the music industry sue its way to profit?: “The entertainment industry’s legal successes against Napster, Grokster, etc., have failed to slow plummeting sales. How will cracking down on web radio be any different? Publisher Kurt Hanson and attorney Jay Rosenthal debate the economics of online music”
Los Angeles Times, AT&T to target pirated content: “The San Antonio-based company started working last week with studios and record companies to develop anti-piracy technology that would target the most frequent offenders, said James W. Cicconi, an AT&T senior vice president.”
Law.com, Citing Supreme Court Precedent, 11th Circuit Reverses Major Copyright Ruling: “In a decision called ‘curious’ by an intellectual property expert, a federal appellate panel in Atlanta has reversed its circuit’s 6-year-old opinion in a major copyright case, declaring the ruling’s mandate on behalf of freelance photographers to be ‘moot.'”