SOPA fight heats up
Brad Plumer in the Washington Post summarizes the provisions of the bill as well as the state of play on it in Congress as of mid-month. Although much commentary has assumed that persons determined to...
View ArticleSOPA’s Hollywood accounting
Some advocates of the legislation cook the books when they count (and double-count and triple-count) the costs of piracy. [Julian Sanchez, Cato; Mike Masnick, TechDirt] Tweet Tags: copyright, RIAA and...
View ArticleSOPA on the ropes?
Welcome news, if true: key members of Congress are said to be backing away from the rogue-sites legislation as currently written and in particular are willing to drop the hotly contested provisions on...
View ArticleWebsites go dark to protest SOPA/PIPA
Among those closed today are Wikipedia, Reddit and Twitpic [Mashable, Kravets/Wired; Mike Masnick; Dan Fisher on yesterday's player-piano threat; our SOPA/PIPA coverage; Cato event tomorrow on Capitol...
View ArticleAfter SOPA protest day
What did the protests accomplish? [Image of one-day change in Hill opposition courtesy TechCrunch, PC World, Timothy Lee/Ars Technica] Some of the best protests [Ad Age, earlier on Flickr's clever...
View ArticleO lawmakers, heed not the mob’s wrath
They understand not the wisdom of SOPA [Julian Sanchez, Cato at Liberty] Tweet Tags: RIAA and file sharing O lawmakers, heed not the mob’s wrath is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost...
View ArticleThe gang that couldn’t shake down straight
Scam pretend-lawyers pose as real Hollywood lawyers firing off nastygrams to shake cash out of illicit downloaders. [Above the Law] Tweet Tags: copyright, fraud, nastygrams, RIAA and file sharing The...
View ArticleSpanish professor says recording industry group violates antitrust law
And the next thing you know, they sue him [Josh Wright, Mike Masnick] The blog post by Enrique Dans, who is professor of information systems at IE Business School, is here. Tweet Tags: antitrust,...
View ArticleGreat moments in damages calculation? Nope
Update: That’s what we get for posting hastily on a holiday weekend. We — and a great many other sites from CBS News to Business Insider to The Onion — took the below report seriously, but per Mike...
View ArticleCopyright and D.C. lobbying: that was fast
The House Republican Study Committee calls for reconsideration of over-restrictive copyright law, then un-calls for it a day later [TechDirt, rueful update; Alex Tabarrok] P.S. And check out this...
View ArticleJuly 18 roundup
“This is just stunning. DOJ is soliciting tips from the public in order to build a case against a single citizen.” [@radleybalko, William Jacobson, @andrewmgrossman] Apparently, Florida Gov. Rick...
View Article“You could be liable for $150,000 in penalties…”
“…settle instead for $20 per song.” Rightscorp, a new for-profit copyright cop, “is now preparing technology that could flood the Internet with ‘hundreds of millions of notices’ to alleged copyright...
View ArticleJim Hood, a go-to guy for Hollywood?
Who’d have guessed that movie studios would entrust populist Mississippi Attorney General and longtime Overlawyered favorite Jim Hood with a key role in pushing their rights as copyright owners against...
View ArticleA last laugh on ADA vs. Berkeley online courses?
Those free online course materials may be gone from the University of California, Berkeley, courtesy of a U.S. Deparment of Justice interpretation of the Americans with Disabilities Act and related...
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