MySpace founder's website wanes lyrical

Original lyrics to A Day In The Life by  Lennon & McCartney

A group of US music publishers led by Warner Chappell, Bug Music and Peermusic have won a lawsuit against a lyrics website run by Brad Greenspan, one of the co-founders of MySpace. The American's National Music Publishers Association had previously announced its members were suing LiveUniverse in August 2009, alleging that the site was infringing copyright by making lyrics available without a licence from the relevant publishers. Judge George Wu ruled in favour of the publishers last week, without a full hearing, because of Greenpan’s "misconduct": Greenspan failed to provide information (discovery) and failed to show up for hearings as required by the court.

In his default judgment Judge Wu said “[the] Defendants have wilfully infringed upon plaintiffs’ copyrights, even after being sanctioned, both by this court and Magistrate Judge Abrams” and “Their blatant disregard for the civil justice system favors a substantial damages award.” LiveUniverse was ordered to pay the claimants $12,500 for each of 528 listed songs which the site published lyrics without permission, a total of $6.6 million, while an injunction bans Greenspan from publishing any other lyrics on his site without first getting permission from the relevant publisher. 

Peermusic III Ltd. v. LiveUniverse Inc., 09- 06160, U.S. District Court, Central District of California (Los Angeles) 

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-10-11/publisher-win-6-6-million-from-greenspan-lyrics-websites.html

The original lyrics to A Day In The Life, the last tack on the Beatle's Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band sold for $1.2 million in July 2010 

A Rose by Any Other Name

No matter what you call it or how you try to frame it, internet streaming is internet streaming.

Zediva tried to claim otherwise, setting up a rather elaborate system that attempted to get around the copyright law requirements for licensing movies streamed over the internet.  A lot of times this is how the law is figured out, attempts to get around it lead to law suits and court-issued clarifications.  (See the Napster/Grokster/Limewire string of cases.)  But in this case, the Zediva folks missed an important part of copyright law history, and the District Court for the Central District of California issued an injunction.

How Zediva tried to avoid licensing fees

First, I want to acknowledge that I was not able to locate a copy of the decision so my information is coming from various news sources, all listed at the end of this post.

Zediva set-up the service to mimic a video rental store.  Users rented a dvd that Zediva had purchased and the dvd was played in a remote dvd player also purchased by Zediva and shown to the customer via the internet.  One article mentions that users would sometimes get messages that movies were out of stock.  I’m guessing this occurred when customers had rented out all of the DVDs Zediva had purchased of that film. 

Rather than finding this system as a way of remotely renting purchased DVDs, the court found that this was just an annoyance and potential source of confusion for customers learning about video streaming. 

Zediva wasn’t paying licensing fees, trying to rely on the first sale doctrine saving their rental model.  But, as one law professor pointed out, Zedvia seemed to have missed the case where renting a video to be watched in a booth inside the store was infringement.  (That case was Columbia Pictures Indus. v. Redd Horne, Inc. from 1984.)  Even if Zediva could persuade the court that it was renting and not streaming movies, the facts are more similar to Redd Horne than to a regular video rental store.

However, the court did not buy the rental concept and instead found that Zediva was transmitting the performance to the public and thus infringing copyright.  Wonder if they’ll be another attempt at a work around…

Media Post News: http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=155164

Read Write Wed: http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/citing_copyright_law_judge_orders_movie_streaming_service_shut_down.php

CNET: http://news.cnet.com/8301-31001_3-20050579-261.html?tag=mncol;2n

BT flood warning to High Court

BT has warned the High Court that if an injunction to block access to the Newzbin2 website were to be granted, it would be the ‘thin edge of the wedge’ opening the floodgates to content owners desperate to prevent sites pointing to pirated content. BT told the court that it could face up to 400 applications for injunctions in the next year if the Motion Picture Association (MPA) prevail in an action against the UK telecoms giant.

The MPA has applied for an injunction as part of a long running legal battle with Newzbin, which provides links to content on the Usenet network, and the MPA say that in particular the site links to hundreds of unlicensed movies. In an earlier High Court battle (Twentieth Century Fox v Newzbin) the content owners were successful and Mr Justice Kitchen handed down a significant judgment holding that the Usenet indexing site was ‘liable to the claimants for infringement of their copyrights because it has authorised the copying of the claimants' films; has procured and engaged with its premium members in a common design to copy the claimants' films; and has communicated the claimants' films to the public.’ The judge ordered the website to introduce filters to stop others from linking to unlicensed films. After that court victory Newzbin went offline, only to relaunch as Newzbin2 from Sweden. The former owners of Newzbin claim they now have no connection with the new site, which is allegedly run by a group called Team R Dogs.

The MPA now wants to force BT and other ISPs to stop users accessing the site. The injunctive relief is being looked for despite the fact that provisions of the Digital Economy Act which were drafted to allow for injunctive relief were put on hold by last minute amendments to the Act - in effect removing the right to injunctive relief under that Act. The MPA is using section 97A of the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, which provides for possible injunctions against internet intermediaries. Section's 97A is the UK's implementation the EU Copyright Directive, which has not previously formed the basis for legal action in this country but it has been used to force ISPs to block sites involved in distributing pirated content in Denmark and there are cases pending other European countries. In May this year a German court has granted the MPA preliminary injunction against the (current) Germany-based Web hosts of file-sharing hub The Pirate Bay, CyberBunker. Spain has passed the reintroduced legislative proposals known as the SINDE law which it easier for content owners to target copyright infringing websites and will offer a fast-track system for content owners to take action against commercial websites that exist primarily to assist others in their illegal file-sharing offline.

Richard Spearman QC, acting on behalf of the MPA, told the court that if a blocking order is granted, they will demand that UK ISPs, including BT, TalkTalk and Virgin Media, blacklist the website or face court action. He told the court that there was now "no other way of impeding the infringement of copyright" than to obtain a court order. "[Newzbin2] allows repeat and mammoth-scale copyright infringement," Spearman said. "If BT could not see that happening then they have to be the biggest ostrich in history."

BTs legal representatives said: "Rights holders in the music and movie industries have already identified 100 copyright infringing websites which they would like to see blocked. Claimants would [also then] seek orders blocking access to websites alleged to contain defamatory allegations or private and confidential information".

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/dec/16/mpa-bt-newzbin2 and see http://the1709blog.blogspot.com/2011/02/year-of-intermediary.html