The CopyKat

It been eight years since the publisher John Wiley & Sons sued Supap Kirtsaeng for re-selling Asian market textbooks in the USA - and now despite his ultimate win in the Supreme Court under the 'first sale' doctrine, his textbook business is shuttered and he has moved into academia - BUT in his first print interview he makes clear his conviction that he wasn’t doing anything wrong by reselling those textbooks, and that the lawyers who helped him prove it are entitled to be paid for their work because he found counsel willing to represent a student and small business owner against a global company with billions of dollars in annual revenue. So he now wants almost $2 million from John Wiley - but so far he has been knocked back by the trial court and the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Now the Supreme Court will hear Kirtsaeng’s second petition for certiorari, this time to resolve uncertainty among the federal appellate courts on the appropriate standard for fee-shifting in Copyright Act litigation. 

The song that inspired one of America’s greatest freedom fights is now the subject of a battle over its own. A California non for profit organisation has filed a class-action lawsuit against Richmond Organization and Ludlow Music over the copyright to “We Shall Overcome,” a song the Library of Congress calls “the most powerful song of the 20th century.” “It’s an important part of our political and social history and we certainly see the irony in the fact that this song, which has represented the civil rights movement, needs to be emancipated itself,” says Mark Rifkin, an attorney and partner with Wolf Haldenstein Adler Freeman & Herz, who is representing the We Shall Overcome Foundation in the suit who will argue that “The basic story is the song was written well before anybody copyrighted anything” - that " the song belongs in the public domain", and seeks a return of "unlawful licensing fees" from the publishers. Could be fun!

Justin Bieber’s 2010 hit song ‘Somebody To Love’ faced a claim back in 2013 when he and his producer Usher, were accused of copyright infringement.  The lawsuit was brought forward by singer De Rico and songwriter Mareio Overton.  De Rico and Overton’s track was also titled ‘Somebody To Love,’ from their similarly-titled album, My Story II. In 2014 the court dismissed the case finding significant differences in the songs. However, in June of 2015, the US Court of Appeals in Virginia re-opened the lawsuit and since then, the case has been ongoing. But Bieber keeps failing to show up to depositions and having cancelled twice said he was ‘unable to sit for deposition’. As a result, the singer has now been ordered to pay over a whopping $10 million and the court has scheduled discovery to be completed by April 18th. Errrrrr, that's TODAY JUSTIN!

With a retrial scheduled for May, Oracle and Google have failed to settle the copyright lawsuit over Android operating system. Reports said that the CEO of global software major Oracle, Safra Catz and Google Chief Executive Sundar Pichai met for six hours on April 15 in a court-ordered settlement conference before a U.S. magistrate in San Jose, California, in an attempt to stave off retrial in May. U.S. Magistrate Judge Paul Grewal, who mediated the talks issued a statement saying the talks were unsuccessful.

And finally: Universal Music Australia, Warner Music Australia, Sony Music Entertainment Australia and Albert Music have combined in an effort to combat offshore site Kickass Torrents, filing an application in the Federal Court of Australia to have Kickass blocked from local access. The action is under Section 115A of the Australian Copyright Act 1968 and the companies are seeking to have Kickass Torrents and its affiliated proxy sites blocked by Australian ISPs in an effort to tackle local and global music piracy.

Fighting for Bieber

Fight For the Future, a new US campaign group, has launched a series of photographs showing an arrested and then imprisoned Justin Bieber, on the grounds that the now unfringed pop sensation would have been arrested and possibly imprisoned at the start of his career if the provisions of U.S. Senate bill S. 978 had then been US law – on the basis that Bieber’s rise to fame began with YouTube videos of the pocket rocket singing cover versions of popular songs.

Reports say the new bill will amend the criminal penalty provisions for criminal copyright infringement would make it a felony to stream unlicensed content ten times during any 180-day period and that and has a total economic value, either to the copyright holder or the infringer, of at least $2,500. The Bill (link below) has the support of the nearly 50 entertainment industry organizations, including the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA). It is opposed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Entertainment Consumers Association, among others. The Bill’s sponsor, Amy Klobuchar told reporters “The Bill is not intended nor does it allow law enforcement to prosecute people who may stream videos and other copyrighted works to their friends without intending to profit from the work of the copyright owner. It also does not allow prosecutors to go after individuals that innocently post links on their blogs to copyrighted protected works.”

FFTF say this about what they want from copyright:

“What people want from technology is usually pretty clear...

People love huge open libraries of music, books and video. They don't like censorship and legal landmines that get you sued for making amazing things. They love privacy and open platforms to create and invent. They're happy to pay for good stuff, but hate being coerced to pay for mediocrity and middlemen.

And people are right to want all these things, even when governments and corporations, with their own narrow interests, try to paint this new, expansive cultural freedom as dangerous or destructive. Our goal is to make the public's interest vividly clear, so clear that not even the most powerful lobbyists and smartest monopolies can destroy it.

We're living during a global shift as big as the industrial revolution. Because of the internet, our future will work very differently than the world our parents and grandparents created. We, as a society, are literally building a new world. Fight for the Future is here to bring the most essential human values back into the debate about how society uses technology. We believe there's hardly anything as important as ensuring that our shared future has freedom of expression and creativity at its core.
To do it, we need your help. If you have ideas, tell us. If you care about this stuff too, follow us in whatever way’s best for you (email's best for us). We’ll be gentle on your inboxes, and we’ll try our best to only send things that are awesome. When we do, share it. Hard. Popularity and passion make good ideas dangerous to special interests.

We're friends with EFF, Public Knowledge, FSF, Creative Commons, Demand Progress, Mozilla, Question Copyright and many more. We care passionately about making real concrete change, and we are here to be successful. Plus we're hiring.

To be a bit more concrete, we're asking:

• After spending thousands of years building libraries of donated books, why do governments try to tear them down when they happen spontaneously online?
• Why can't I give money directly to every musician I like, instead of paying Apple or Spotify and leaving virtually nothing in the pockets of the artists?
• Why does the US pay so much for cellphone service? And for slow internet?
• How is it possible that singing "Happy Birthday" in public is still illegal, and why does anyone stand by these laws?
• Will every kid growing up in every developing country have access to every book ever made, as soon as they get a smartphone? Or will the books cost $12, an impossible expense for a poor kid?
• Why have we all been sitting idly while the movie and music lobbyists have been systematically advancing legislation that strips freedoms, blocks innovation, and exclusively advances Hollywood's financial agenda? “

http://fightforthefuture.org/

Bill at http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/BILLS-112s978rs/pdf/BILLS-112s978rs.pdf