Intellectual Property Law Internet Law IT Law Computer Law

Penalties for a total of more than $ 1.2 million Polish złoty were imposed by the Office of Competition and Consumer Protection (UOKiK) on The Association of Authors (ZAiKS) and the Polish Filmmakers Association (APF), because of their agreement “to eliminate competition between them”.

In December 2005, at the request of the Board of Editors Press, UOKiK has began antitrust proceedings against ZAiKS and SFP. The decision to penalised those two organisations was issued on 29 August.

UOKiK has found that since 2003, ZAiKS and SFP, seeking to guarantee itself the highest profits, have operated under the unlawful antitrust agreement. SFP and ZAiKS concluded an agreement which established a uniform, rigid rates for the use of audiovisual works (such as DVD movies) and refused to negotiate them - announced Malgorzata Krasnodębska-Tomkiel (the President of UOKiK) at a press conference in Warsaw.

The decision of the President of the Office of Competition and Consumer Protection, DOK - 6/2008 of 29 August 2008 and the official press release are available at www.uokik.gov.pl website in Polish language.

There is an article available at www.valleywag.com website commenting on funny terms from TOU/TOS licenses. There is also a post regarding recent action of Carl Malamud at www.slashdot.org website. Go Carl!

California claims copyright to its laws, and warns people not to share them. And that’s not sitting right with Internet gadfly, and open-access hero, Carl Malamud. He has spent the last couple months scanning tens of thousands of pages containing city, county and state laws — think building codes, banking laws, etc. Malamud wants California to sue him, which is almost a given if the state wants to continue claiming copyright. He thinks a federal court will rule in his favor: It is illegal to copyright the law since people are required to know it. Malamud helped force the SEC to put corporate filings online in 1994, and did the same with the patent office. He got the Smithsonian to loosen its claim of copyright, CSPAN to stop forbidding people from sharing its videos, and most recently Oregon to quit claiming copyright on state laws.

I’d like to remind you of some of my post I’ve “commited” regarding licenses’ issues. Among other things are posts such as “Oh, those Internet’s contracts” and “TOS not so absolute“.

I think it is neither theft nor piracy. It’s just unauthorized copying.

Some people search for different websites with simple question in mind: where the inspiration ends and plagiarism begins? Their findings are published at www.pirated-sites.com website.

Joe Gratz wrote a post about a very interesting judgment in the case Lenz v. Universal Music Corp., No. 07-3783 (N.D. Cal. August 20, 2008), PDF file.

The purpose of Section 512(f) is to prevent the abuse of takedown notices. If copyright owners are immune from liability by virtue of ownership alone, then to a large extent Section 512(f) is superfluous. As Lenz points out, the unnecessary removal of non-infringing material causes significant injury to the public where time-sensitive or controversial subjects are involved and the counter-notification remedy does not sufficiently address these harms. A good faith consideration of whether a particular use is fair use is consistent with the purpose of the statute. Requiring owners to consider fair use will help “ensure[] that the efficiency of the Internet will continue to improve and that the variety and quality of services on the Internet will expand” without compromising “the movies, music, software and literary works that are the fruit of American creative genius.” Sen. Rep. No. 105-190 at 2 (1998).

I still wonder why such regulation were not included in analogical provisions of Polish or European Union law.

There is a PC game called Beijing 2008. It looks like the Polish anthem is the only one to be badly recorded and by “badly” I do not mean the sound quality. There is a reaction in the net of course. You may find an article availabe at www.wp.pl website which is devoted to this issue. But I was more intrigued by such a statement.

Authors’ right to the anthem are the property of the whole nation so there is a lack of obligation to recieve a consent to use it. But it does not mean it may be any use - answered Iwona Radziszewska -spokesperson of the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage of the Republic of Poland.

The state of Massachusetts has asked a federal judge for a temporary restraining order preventing three MIT students from giving a presentation on Sunday about hacking smartcards used in the Boston subway system.

You will read about the whole issue in article available at www.cnet.com website. the presentation is available at www-tech.mit.edu website, PDF file. As you may already know I fully support such actions. You may ask why? Because, for instance, I’d like to know as a potential consumer, that Apple had placed a hidden feature/switch in iPhone software that allows them to “secretly” delete installed applications. Read about that in the article available at www.itwire.com website.

Will the iPhone Dev Team now seek to delete this “kill switch” from future pwned versions of iPhone firmware, thus giving even more people a reason to pwn their iPhones?

Oh yes. Fu^H^HHack them all!

An interesting judgment in the case Blueport v. U.S., No. 2007-5140 (Fed. Cir. 2008). The United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit upheld an appeal from the Court of Federal Claims, and acknowledged that the US government can not be held responsible for copyright or para-copyright infringement (some people call it also quasi-copyright). It was interpreted based on regulations provided in 28 U.S.C § 1498. One may be suprised by such approach, epsecially knowing that the US government strenuously lobbied for legal protection of TPMs in different international agreements. You may read about that at www.eff.org website. Sui generis hypocrisy? Read some comments available at www.arstechnica.com website and what Ethan Ackerman has to tell about it.

Warner Bros, the distributor of “The Dark Knight” movie, deemed as a success the period of 38 hours which lasted from the premiere of the Dark Night’s sequel to appearance of first unauthorized copies of this movie. I guess it is all about The.Dark.Knight.CAM.XviD-TRADINGSTANDARDS, The.Dark.Knight.TS.XVID-PreVail and The.Dark.Knight.PROPER.TS.XViD-mVs releases and all derivatives you may find in p2p networks. More details in the article available at www.webtvwire.com website.

Very interesting and funny situation happened.

“Piracy is BAD” proclaims every copyright dependent industry lobby group. “Downloading is stealing” is another popular one. How about “downloads are a lost sale”? Ubisoft clearly didn’t believe that last one, as they distributed a no-cd patch from the scene group RELOADED as a fix for one of their games.

More details available at www.torrentfreak.com and www.forums.ubi.com websites. I am not sure if such warez release was preed. If someone of my readers has more information please let me know.

There is a story of some logo “borrowing” described at www.ecogeek.org website. Paweł Tkaczyk posted a short note about a similar situation in Poland. If someone of you knows about any of such “borrowings” or “similarities” then I’d be happy to read about it. Trust me, I’m not going to sue anyone I just need it for, let’s say “scientific” purposes. :)

Sometime ago I did a post titled “It’s going to be interesting decision“. It was issued yesterday.

Blizzard owns a valid copyright in the game client software, Blizzard has granted a limited license for WoW players to use the software, use of the software with Glider falls outside the scope of the license established in section 4 of the TOU, use of Glider includes copying to RAM within the meaning of section 106 of the Copyright Act, users of WoW and Glider are not entitled to a section 117 defense, and Glider users therefore infringe Blizzard’s copyright. MDY does not dispute that the other requirements for contributory and vicarious copyright infringement are met, nor has MDY established a misuse defense. The Court accordingly will grant summary judgment in favor of Blizzard with respect to liability on the contributory and vicarious copyright infringement claims in Counts II and III.

When I see such legislative initiatives as reported by the European Digital Rights at www.edri.org website, I start to doubt about European integration if the process of adopting directives looks like that (you do remember how was the Directive of the European Parliament and of the Council on the patentability of computer-implemented inventions adopted and all this controversy with ignoring the voice of one country during the Council meeting right?). I see a lot of advantages of the Community Trade Mark system but lobbying in the European Union makes me annoyed at the bureaucrats and European bureaucracy and you should read this post in such manner. ;)

Update on July 8, 2008.
Philippe Aigrain has written a very detailed post regarding lobby process within the EU in the field of IP law. It is available at www.paigrain.debatpublic.net website.

1. WALL-E records audio from his favorite movie, Hello Dolly, putting in onto his own digital recorder (bypassing the macrovision DRM on the tape). A COPYRIGHT CRIME UNDER C-61

2. WALL-E archives the audio, he doesn’t merely time-shift it. He listens repeatedly! A COPYRIGHT CRIME UNDER C-61

3. WALL-E shares his DRM-broken music with his friend, another robot named EVE. A COPYRIGHT CRIME UNDER C-61

4. WALL-E watches Hello Dolly on multiple evenings, on the screen of an iPod. Hello Dolly is not available through the iTunes store, therefore he broke the videocassette DRM when he platform shifted it. A COPYRIGHT CRIME UNDER C-61

All details of this criminal personality are described in the article available at www.sffaudio.com website.

My last post has triggered some reponses so I’d like to clarify it, in a really short explanation. There is no requirement for copyright protection and enforcement in Poland. The Polish Act on Authors rights and Neighboring Rights of 4 February 1994 (Dziennik Ustaw No 24, pos. 83), consolidated text of 16 May 2006 (Dziennik Ustaw No 90, pos. 631), with later changes, explicitly provides that:.

Art. 1, sec. 4
The creator is eligible for protection independently of compliance with formalities of any kind.

How does it work in the US? 17 U.S.C. § 411. Registration and infringement actions (emphasis mine):

(a) Except for an action brought for a violation of the rights of the author under section 106A(a), and except for actions for infringement of copyright in Berne Convention works whose country of origin is not the United States, and subject to the provisions of subsection (b), no action for infringement of the copyright in any United States work shall be instituted until preregistration or registration of the copyright claim has been made in accordance with this title (…)

What does it mean? It means that an effective enforcement of copyright rights is not so easy for the owner. One more time - it applies to any United States work.