Godfread Law Firm - Intellectual Property and Business Law » Copyright Law

IP Addresses Are Not People

Paul — Wed, 04 May 2011 17:40:05 +0000

This is probably not news to anyone. But it has been a significant issue in copyright litigation lately. A judge in the of the Northern District of Illinois dismissed a suit filed by the Steele Law Firm on the grounds that it hadn’t identified any individuals as defendants and hadn’t served anyone either. A list of IP addresses would not suffice. Much of the fury over the copyright troll litigation has been that the plaintiffs have a list of IP addresses and nothing more. They then subpoena ISP’s who disclose the name of the subscriber who was assigned the IP address. Plaintiff’s then contact that subscriber demanding money.

This leads to a number of problems, not least of which is that the person who’s name appears on the ISP billing statements is often not the person who did any infringing activities. The infringer, if there is one, might not be in the household or even known to the person being identified. There is often a great deal of pressure to settle however, even if the person identified by the IP address is totally blameless.

Story on Techdirt with Judge Baker’s Opinion

“Tweakers” and “Pioneers” in innovation

Paul — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 17:25:17 +0000

I came across this post in the Freakonomics blog about how we value “pioneers” or people who make something entirely new and the “tweakers” who take existing works and improve them. Its a good article about an interesting problem because both “pioneers” and “tweakers” make art and technology better, but in different ways.

Fair Use – Priority Marketing Blog

Paul — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 11:36:39 +0000

I missed this when it was originally published. I spoke to the IABC a couple of weeks ago about internet law for marketing and public relations professionals. In attendance was Jen Carlton of Priority Marketing who blogged about the copyright and fair use portion of my talk. Thank you Jen!

I’m not surprised that the group found fair use to be interesting because its one of the more frequently contested and misunderstood areas of copyright law. You can read Jen’s post for a bit of fair use law and I’ll probably be blogging about it again soon.

FCC Tweets Baseball Updates To Avoid Blackouts

Paul — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 22:34:41 +0000

Those disclaimers spoken on Major League Baseball broadcasts, you know:

“Any rebroadcast, retransmission, or account of this game, without the express written consent of Major League Baseball, is prohibited,”

Well, after Fox and Cablevision couldn’t agree and blackouts during the playoffs ensued, the FCC stepped in with Twitter updates of the games in progress. Its not particularly interesting that someone would tweet about baseball games. I’ve checked the #twins hashtag on Twitter during a Twins just to see what other people think of the game. That the FCC would do it, more interesting. I’m fairly certain that MLB won’t sue the FCC, partly because facts, such as what’s the score aren’t copyrightable (not withstanding the “account of this game” language).

H/T to Consumerist

Digital Locks Loosening?

Paul — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 20:02:00 +0000

The Librarian of Congress has recommended new exemptions from the prohibition on circumventing digital copy protections including one exemption for “jailbreaking” phones so that you can install your own software.

Another sign that perhaps section 1201 might not be as broadly applied going forward is this recent decision from the Fifth Circuit. That case involved the use of software that controlled uninterruped power supply devices. GE and PMI were accused of copyright infringement and circumvention because they had accessed and used the software which had an already circumvented or compromised dongle. The Fifth Circuit held that GE/PMI’s activities were not otherwise infringing and thus the circumvention was not actionable under section 1201. This seems to be a somewhat different position than that taken in the DeCSS case.

I’m not sure if this is really part of a trend, but it is encouraging for anyone who believed otherwise non-infringing activities should not give rise to a copyright lawsuit merely because a digital lock was circumvented. Section 1201 has been used unsuccessfully in the past to try to prevent competition in the markets for garage door openers and printer ink cartridges.