U.S. experts debate Google copyright ruling
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Thats the $64,000 question now that a court in Belgium ruled that the search engine company violated that nation's copyright laws.
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Google Inc.  is confident its  popular video-sharing site YouTube and other Web services  Google offers have strong legal protections under current  copyright law, company attorneys said on Tuesday.
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Lawyers for Belgium's French-speaking newspapers and Internet search engine Google clashed in court, during a hearing into a copyright case against the US giant.
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Copyright law doesn't always win the day.  The U.S. 10th Circuit Court of Appeals' ruling in Golan v. Gonzales is a major victory for the First Amendment and the overwhelming majority of creators.
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Google has been sued by adult site Perfect 10 for alleged copyright infringement. Perfect 10&#39;s suit says that Google&#39;s Web search engine allows people to see copyrighted images owned by the company (access
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Google announced yesterday that they have agreements with several large libraries to scan books whose copyrights have expired. Joseph O&#39;Sullivan, Software engineer and Adam M. Smith, Business product manager
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Internet law professor Michael Geist looks at a copyright clash that could re-write the laws of online life.
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Google is testing a new Web service intended to become a repository of knowledge from experts on various topics, one that could turn into a competitor to Wikipedia and other sites.
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A year ago, my colleague Katie Hafner wrote a story about the growing number of lawsuits facing Google. The cases ranged from copyright claims, to challenges to Google&#8217;s use of other companies&#8217; trademarks in its advertising system, to complaints about how some Web sites were ranked in Google&#8217;s search results. It now looks like some people [...].
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Viacom is up in arms over a new YouTube proposal, and Google is searching for an attorney to help the company tackle the media-sharing issues that the search giant inherited with its controversial YouTube acquisition.
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Online search leader Google Inc. has won a key court ruling in a patent dispute over its popular three-dimensional software that provides Internet tours of the Earth.
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A handful of lawmakers, law professors, and consumer groups have raised objections to a new U.S. copyright bill that could significantly increase the fines for copyright infringement.The Prioritizing Resources and Organization for Intellectual Property Act (or PRO IP Act ), debated before a congressional subcommittee Thursday, would allow courts to assess copyright infringement damages for each piece of a compilation or derivative work found to infringe copyright, instead of treating the compilation as one infringement.The maximum fine for infringing three songs in one compilation would increase from $150,000 to $450,000 under the bill, introduced Dec. 5, said Gigi Sohn, president of Public Knowledge, a consumer rights advocacy group. The fines for infringing five poems in one compilation would rise from $150,000 to $750,000, said Sohn, referring to a letter signed by 25 IP professors.The bill would also make it easy for courts to forfeit computers and other property alleged to be used for infringement in civil copyright lawsuits, and it would allow the U.S. government to pursue criminal copyright enforcement before the creator registers a work or product with the U.S. Copyright Office.&quot;While we agree that enforcement of intellectual property laws is essential to encouraging creativity, certain provisions in the proposed act risk undermining this essential goal by threatening consumers with an overbroad and inapposite enforcement regime,&quot; Sohn told the House of Representatives Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet and Intellectual Property. &quot;These provisions of the bill ... represent a step away from a rational, realistic copyright regime.&quot;The bill will hurt the consumer electronics industry with companies that make recording and copying devices scared to introduce new products because of a fear of lawsuits, added Representative Rick Boucher, a Virginia Democrat.&quot;The effect on innovation will be real, and it will be adverse,&quot; Boucher said.But supporters of the bill said it&#39;s needed. Counterfeiting and piracy cost U.S. companies between $200 billion and $250 billion a year, said Representative John Conyers, a Michigan Democrat and chairman of the House Judiciary Committee.Conyers, the primary sponsor of the bill, tried to dispel criticism that the legislation was targeted only at music and movie piracy. Counterfeit drugs, automobile parts, and airplane parts are &quot;placing human lives at risk,&quot; he said.Copyright theft also costs hundreds of thousands of jobs, added James Hoffa, general president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, a large trade union. Members of the union deliver DVDs, CDs, and video games from legitimate companies, he said. &quot;When pirated DVDs and CDs are sold on a street corner in an underground economy, we lose jobs,&quot; he said.Government agencies also lose tax revenue through pirated or counterfeit goods, Hoffa said. &quot;Lost tax revenue has a significant and potentially debilitating impact on American working families,&quot; he added. &quot;By most anyone&#39;s calculations, the bridges and roads that our members both build and travel over are in a critical state of disrepair throughout the country.&quot;While Representative Lamar Smith, a Texas Republican, called copyright infringement &quot;massive,&quot; others raised concerns that the bill goes too far. Representative Zoe Lofgren, a Democrat from Silicon Valley in California, noted that the bill could increase the penalties for infringing a 10-song CD from $150,000 to $1.5 million. &quot;I think that&#39;s unreasonable,&quot; she said.Public Knowledge&#39;s Sohn noted that a Minnesota woman was fined $222,000 for 24 songs in a court case that ended in October. She called on the subcommittee to kill the portion of the bill that would increase copyright damages for compiled works.&quot;I don&#39;t think anybody&#39;s arguing that statutory damages are inadequate,&quot; she said. &quot;I&#39;m not sure that increasing penalties 10 fold or 20 fold does anything other than stop legitimate innovators.&quot;
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Net law professor Michael Geist takes a look at US criticisms of the way much of the world handles intellectual property.
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The Supreme Court said Friday it will consider whether Internet file-sharing services are responsible for their customers illegally swapping songs and movies, a multibillion-dollar case testing the limits of copyright law in the digital age.
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Viacom's Philippe Dauman calls for industry-wide technology to block copyright-infringing content, rather than proprietary systems like Google's.
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In this installment of the copyright issues debate, I asked Rick Cotton, the general counsel of NBC Universal, and Tim Wu, a Columbia law professor, to clarify their thoughts about fair use.
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Google has won a patent regarding the design of it's search pages, although don't expect a rush of infringement lawsuits. This patent and over seven million others will be searchable through Google Patent Search, also announced Thursday.