Copyright Law

WASHINGTON -- Endorsing a first, tentative step toward modernizing the nation's intellectual property laws, the entertainment and information industries yesterday welcomed a draft recommendation from the Clinton administration on extending the copyright law to cover on-line services and other corners of cyberspace.Record companies, film studios and book publishers have been increasingly concerned about illegal copies of musical recordings and texts being exchanged over electronic networks.

I love to read, and I've been doing it ever since I was able. My wife is also an avid reader. But my wife and I are blind, and we can't get our hands on very much to read. There are services for us, of course. Government entities and nonprofit organizations convert books into Braille, audio, or digital form for our use. But only 5 percent of all books published undergo such a conversion. A few more are available as commercial audio books, but these are often abridged, and those that are unabridged are quite expensive.

DO YOU HAVE the right to make a backup copy of a DVD movie in case your kid scratches or breaks the original disk? A federal court in California says no. But don't worry - you can copy a taped version of the movie without risking time in a federal slammer. This bizarre twist in the fight over U.S. copyright law occurred this month, when a U.S. District Court judge in San Francisco ruled that a popular commercial DVD copy program violated the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and ordered its publisher, 321 Studios, to stop selling it within a week.

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.

WASHINGTON -- Publishers of directories, including telephone books, got a strongly worded message from the Supreme Court that they will get no protection from federal copyright law for the effort they put into compiling their data.In a unanimous ruling, the court's first major ruling on the way a 1976 copyright law applies to directories, the justices went to unusual lengths to denounce the notion that the work of compilation is to be rewarded with copyright.Justice Sandra Day O'Connor devoted 19 of the 23 pages of her opinion to denouncing what has been called "the sweat of the brow" doctrine of copyright law. That phrase has meant that a compiler of data is to be considered to have created something worth copyrighting just by gathering up the facts.

The dismissal of criminal charges against a Rockville college student, indicted for creating a computer bulletin board where hackers could exchange copies of copyrighted software, does not open the door for wholesale abuse of software producers, industry experts said.In fact, the judge who threw out the indictment said Congress should consider expanding criminal penalties for copyright violators.Also, the Clinton administration is resisting calls to weaken copyright laws that protect software companies; instead, it has proposed strengthening laws that authors of books, music and software could use to sue people who use their work unfairly.

I love to read, and I've been doing it ever since I was able. My wife is also an avid reader. But my wife and I are blind, and we can't get our hands on very much to read. There are services for us, of course. Government entities and nonprofit organizations convert books into Braille, audio, or digital form for our use. But only 5 percent of all books published undergo such a conversion. A few more are available as commercial audio books, but these are often abridged, and those that are unabridged are quite expensive.

It may be an art-world first: An art collector is suing a sculptor for reproducing her own work.Dallas collector Frank Ribelin filed the suit last month against artist Beverly Pepper. In it, Mr. Ribelin claims that "Ternana Wedge," a cast-iron sculpture he commissioned from Ms. Pepper and for which he paid $90,000, lost value when she created a copy of the piece for the Smithsonian Institution.Ms. Pepper's New York gallery owner, Andre Emmerich, who is also named in the suit, says the pieces differ in size and texture -- that, in fact, they are variations on a theme, a concept that artists, including Degas (with his ballet dancers)

WASHINGTON -- The Commerce Department is suggesting that the nation's copyright laws be strengthened to protect "content" on the information highway -- including a recommendation that the theft of more than $5,000 of copyright material on-line be made a criminal offense.In a 250-page report released yesterday, the Commerce Department also said Congress should make it illegal for people to produce or use any technology whose main purpose is to defeat copy protection or use restrictions for on-line work.

WASHINGTON -- In a ruling that could further liberate songwriting as a form of social criticism, the Supreme Court lowered yesterday the legal risks faced by composers who borrow music or words from a song for a new version that pans or ridicules the original.The unanimous decision appeared to go far toward rescuing musical parodies from legal action under federal copyright law, and to give wider legal leeway for such comic parodists as television's Mark Russell.The ruling involved the rap group 2 Live Crew's rewrite of the classic Roy Orbison-William Dees rock 'n' roll ballad, "Oh, Pretty Woman."

Jon Routson filmed Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. He filmed E.T. He filmed The Passion of the Christ and Kill Bill, Volumes 1 and 2. By his count, he has shot upward of 80 movies. And each time, he did it with a camcorder he secreted into movie theaters around Baltimore, often on the day of each film's opening. Routson, though, is no video pirate, if by that you think of someone making bootleg copies of movies to sell on the streets of New York or to dump onto the Internet. Routson made his bootleg videos for art. Really.

DO YOU HAVE the right to make a backup copy of a DVD movie in case your kid scratches or breaks the original disk? A federal court in California says no. But don't worry - you can copy a taped version of the movie without risking time in a federal slammer. This bizarre twist in the fight over U.S. copyright law occurred this month, when a U.S. District Court judge in San Francisco ruled that a popular commercial DVD copy program violated the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and ordered its publisher, 321 Studios, to stop selling it within a week.

I DON'T know many Americans who tolerate anyone treading on our Constitution. Yet those individuals the recording industry recently sued for wanton copyright violations on the Internet, if found guilty, did exactly that. Every time someone downloads a commercial book, song, film or software program that they ought to pay for, they're not just committing a crime, they're spitting on our Constitution and devaluing the American way of life. The Constitution is the blueprint that defines who and what we are as a country.

Antonius Kusuma isn't a novice with computers. He maintains them for a living for the brokerage giant Merrill Lynch & Co. Inc. So when he popped the tax-preparation software TurboTax into his computer at his Bordentown, N.J., home recently, he expected to complete his federal 2002 return without a problem. Three hours later, he abandoned the effort in exasperation -- and his choice words didn't even include the letters "IRS." "I was not able to activate my TurboTax even though it was the first time I installed it," Kusuma, 37, wrote in a complaint he posted to amazon.

IF 2002 WASN'T a great year for the people who create and market technology, it was a banner year for the lawyers who represent them. Courtrooms were packed with people in suits arguing about who has the right to make digital copies of what and whether they should go to jail for doing it. Lobbyists are arguing the same issues before Congress. Often, these cases don't raise much ruckus outside the tech world, but the decisions that arise from them will have a major impact on the way we use technology to work, play and communicate.

ATLANTA -- Reversing a lower court's decision, a federal appellate court has revived a lawsuit by heirs of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. who claim CBS violated copyright laws by broadcasting portions of his "I Have a Dream" speech without permission.In July 1998, a federal judge here ruled that King's famous 1963 speech, delivered on the Mall in Washington before about 200,000 people and a throng of reporters, was, in essence, public property. U.S. District Judge William O'Kelley dismissed the King estate's case in response to CBS' request for summary judgment.

WASHINGTON -- In a ruling that could further liberate songwriting as a form of social criticism, the Supreme Court lowered yesterday the legal risks faced by composers who borrow music or words from a song for a new version that pans or ridicules the original.The unanimous decision appeared to go far toward rescuing musical parodies from legal action under federal copyright law, and to give wider legal leeway for comic parodists like television's Mark Russell.The ruling involved the rap group 2 Live Crew's rewrite of the classic Roy Orbison-William Dees rock 'n' roll ballad, "Oh, Pretty Woman."

It is nearly midnight on open-mike night at Leadbetter's in Fells Point when Tom Swiss plugs in his Ovation guitar. Leaning on know-how gleaned from the World Wide Web, he strums a C chord, then an F and performs a rock classic."

It is nearly midnight on open-mike night at Leadbetter's in Fells Point when Tom Swiss plugs in his Ovation guitar. Leaning on know-how gleaned from the World Wide Web, he strums a C chord, then an F and performs a rock classic."

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...