Copyright

NEW YORK -- An alliance of leading media and Internet companies rallied yesterday behind new guidelines intended to control the spread of copyright-protected videos on the Web. The group included Walt Disney Co., Viacom Inc., Microsoft Corp. and News Corp.'s MySpace. Notably missing was the biggest name in online video: Google's YouTube. YouTube has been at the heart of a booming trend as Internet users create and post their own videos online. Many people also record and upload copyrighted content such as TV shows and movies.

WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court gave a significant boost yesterday -- the second in the past decade -- to the multibillion-dollar "gray market" that brings in brand-name goods from overseas for sale here at bargain prices.In a unanimous decision, the court ruled that U.S. manufacturers who have copyrights on their goods lose the right to control the distribution once they sell the goods to overseas buyers.The "gray market" has thrived as a source of lower-priced goods for mass-retailer discount stores like Kmart and Price Clubs.

WHAT DO Mickey Mouse, Snow White, "Rhapsody in Blue," "The Great Gatsby" and "Gone With the Wind" have in common? They all faced expiration of their copyrights.But Congress has ridden to the rescue of entertainers, Hollywood conglomerates and heirs to literary and recorded works. It passed a bill extending the current 75-year copyright protection to 95 years. So Mickey Mouse's clock won't run out in 2003 -- followed by Snow White, Goofy and Dumbo -- but in 2023 instead.That aligns U.S. copyrights with European standards.

WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court promised yesterday a broad ruling on the laws that govern the multibillion-dollar "gray market" for U.S.-made consumer goods that are brought into the United States from abroad and are then sold at bargain prices.The court said it would decide whether it is legal to sell in this country any brand-name goods that were sold earlier to a foreign distributor and are protected by a U.S. copyright.In a case involving hair-care products, a federal appeals court has ruled that the owner of the copyright may sue a discount company for infringing on its rights under the Copyright Act if the products pass through another country and are brought back for sale without its permission.

WASHINGTON -- Sending a cloud of legal uncertainty over the computer software industry, the Supreme Court yesterday took away copyright protection for a vital part of the Lotus 1-2-3 program for creating spreadsheets.The case had offered the court a chance to rule broadly on copyrighting the part of a computer program that explains how to use it. But a 4-4 split produced only a narrow ruling on the Lotus spreadsheet itself.The court upheld a ruling by a federal appeals court in March that nullified a copyright for the menu and sub-menu commands that guide a computer user to generate spreadsheets created by Lotus Development Corp.

Scene from any of the last few centuries: An artist paints a picture and attempts to exhibit and sell the work.Scenario possible only over the last decade: The artist's image is scanned into a computer, placed on the Internet and downloaded worldwide, wherever someone wants a copy of the artwork.Fortunately for Michael Whelan, a book illustrator in Danbury, Conn., a friend happened to be looking through a computer bulletin board when he came upon a few of Whelan's images being offered for sale.

Billions of dollars and the commercial future of the Internet are on the line as Clinton administration officials, media and technology executives and consumer advocates meet in Geneva today to discuss a stack of controversial proposals for overhauling copyright law.In the first government-level meeting in decades of the World Intellectual Property Organization, participants hope to update international law for the digital age. Cyberspace is widely seen...

Imagine you're a high school band teacher. Your budget has been slashed and you're short of money for sheet music.Would you spend $40 for a CD-ROM containing every march by John Philip Sousa? One that lets you print unlimited, top-quality copies of the score, or any instrument part? That can play each march on a PC so your students can hear how it's supposed to sound?Of course you would. So figures Marlin Eller, whose Seattle company, Sunhawk, publishes such CD-ROMs. He wants to sell one to every high school band director in the country.

WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court voted yesterday to stay out of the legal battle between Apple Computer Inc. and Microsoft Corp., clearing the way for Microsoft to continue using the graphic displays that are the core of its Windows software.The court acted on one of the most closely watched cases concerning copyright protection for computer software. At issue is the scope of protection that federal law gives to the graphic images that software creates on a computer screen.In the lower court ruling that the justices bypassed without comment, a federal appeals court said that the copyright shield for computerized graphics is only a limited one because many of those images are merely natural adaptations of existing ideas.

In a decision that bolsters Realtors' hard-fought position of denying public access to multiple listing services, a federal judge has ruled that an electronic home-sales listing run by a Montgomery County Realtors association deserves protection under copyright law.The decision in U.S. District Court in Baltimore is expected to help define the degree of creativity needed to maintain exclusive rights in the business of collecting, organizing and sellingelectronic data...

A Baltimore man has sued the Ravens for copyright infringement, alleging that the franchise continues to profit from a logo that he designed in 1995. Frederick E. Bouchat, a security guard from South Baltimore, filed suit last week in U.S. District Court. The amateur artist has long claimed that he created and copyrighted the franchise's original logo. He says the Ravens copied the image and gave him no credit. In the lawsuit, he says the Ravens have continued to show the logo in various films featuring clips from the 1996, 1997 and 1998 seasons.

RICHARD LEIGH, 64 Best-selling author Richard Leigh, a writer of speculative history who unsuccessfully sued for plagiarism over themes in Dan Brown's blockbuster novel The Da Vinci Code, died Nov. 21 in London of complications from a heart condition, his agent said. The U.S.-born Mr. Leigh, who had lived in Britain for three decades, was co-author of Holy Blood, Holy Grail, a work of nonfiction that claimed Jesus Christ fathered a child with Mary Magdalene and that the bloodline continues.

NEW YORK -- An alliance of leading media and Internet companies rallied yesterday behind new guidelines intended to control the spread of copyright-protected videos on the Web. The group included Walt Disney Co., Viacom Inc., Microsoft Corp. and News Corp.'s MySpace. Notably missing was the biggest name in online video: Google's YouTube. YouTube has been at the heart of a booming trend as Internet users create and post their own videos online. Many people also record and upload copyrighted content such as TV shows and movies.

A large white umbrella blown into the street, and an aproned waiter rushing to the rescue. A poem need not have a big subject, but what's there does need to add up to more than the surface details. Notice the way this poem by Mike White of Utah moves beyond realistic description into another, deeper realm of suggestion. - Ted Kooser "Wind" Not a remarkable wind. So when the bistro's patio umbrella blew suddenly free and pitched into the middle of the road, it put a stop to the afternoon.

At some time many of us will have to make a last visit to a house where aged parents lived out their days. Here Marge Saiser beautifully compresses one such farewell. -Ted Kooser "Where They Lived" One last time I unlock the house where they lived and fought and tried again: the air of the place, carpet with its unchanging green, chair with its back to me. On the TV set, the Christmas cactus has bloomed, has spilled its pink flowers down its scraggly arms and died, drying into paper.

What would YouTube be without Jon Stewart, South Park, SpongeBob SquarePants, The Colbert Report and dozens of other commercial video clips? Oh, just the hottest collection of America's home videos, self-made movies, no-name docudramas, videodiaries, bloopers, candidate cameos and gotcha outtakes. This video bulletin board is as eccentric, wacky, evocative, idiosyncratic and freewheeling as its users. And yet entertainment giant Viacom has charged that snippets of its stars, comics and cartoon characters that appear on YouTube are copyright infringement.

The notion of the Internet as a free ride, a place in cyberspace where almost anything is available for nothing, might at last be put to a real test. After weeks of fruitless negotiations, the media conglomerate Viacom - owner of MTV, Nickelodeon, Comedy Central and Paramount Pictures - sued Google and its wildly popular video-sharing site YouTube yesterday for what it claims is copyright infringement. Viacom, which is seeking $1 billion in damages, said in its suit that YouTube has benefited from what it called "massive intentional" violations of copyrights of Viacom-owned videos.

Home is where the heart ... well, surely we all know that old saying. But it's the particulars of a home that make it ours. Here the poet Linda Parsons Marion, who lives in Knoxville, Tenn., celebrates familiarity, in its detail and its richness. - Ted Kooser "Home Fire" Whether on the boulevard or gravel backroad, I do not easily raise my hand to those who toss up theirs in anonymous hello, merely to say "I'm passing this way." Once out of shyness, now reluctance to tip my hand, I admire the shrubbery instead.

How many of us, when passing through some small town, have felt that it seemed familiar though we've never been there before? And of course it seems familiar, because much of the course of life is pretty much the same wherever we go, right down to the up-and-down fortunes of the football team and the unanswered love letters. Here's a poem by Mark Vinz. -- Ted Kooser "Driving Through" This could be the town you're from, marked only by what it's near. The gas station man speaks of weather and the high school football team just as you knew he would -- kind to strangers, happy to live here.

BRUSSELS, Belgium -- Google Inc., the world's most-used Internet search engine, reached a settlement with Belgian photographers and journalists yesterday in a copyright dispute over how the company's news service links to newspaper content. The agreement removes two of five groups from a Brussels lawsuit that seeks to prevent Google from linking to Belgian newspaper articles for free. Google spokeswoman Jessica Powell declined to give the terms of the agreements with copyright agencies Sofam, which represents 3,700 photographers, and Scam, which represents journalists.