Mass defendant copyright infringement cases are not rare these days. Many movie studios (particularly adult entertainment companies) find it economical to attach a long list of John Doe defendants to their copyright infringement lawsuits. The procedure is typically the same. The company joins a bunch of Doe defendants, subpoenas the internet service provider(s) (ISP) to obtain […]
Category: Copyright
Here is a new tactic that I have not yet come across in my practice. Apparently, lawyers for copyright holders who are “sick and tired” of having their works illegally downloaded for free are working with internet service providers (ISPs) to send emails to alleged infringers with a paragraph that states, “If you click on […]
Lately, I have been keeping myself busy working on behalf of individuals who have been targeted as John Does by film companies based on claims of internet copyright infringement. Typically, my clients have had their internet service providers (ISPs) subpoenaed so that the film companies can scrap personal information attached to the John Does’ IP […]
23,322 defendants were named in what, at the time of filing, was the largest file-sharing copyright infringement lawsuit ever. It was based on the accusation that those defendants illegally downloaded the movie The Expendables. However, at least for now, a vast majority of those defendants are free from the reach of the movie’s film studio […]
In our world of increasing online copyright infringement claims, there are more and more people who are being accused of infringing activity who happen to be completely innocent with regards to the accusations. While it is smart for people to password protect their wireless routers, many fail to do so, which allows anyone to latch […]
Compare that video with the South Park parody video, below. South Park displayed that clip in one of its episodes which aired in 2008. Late last year, Brownmark Films, which produced the original non-parody video, sued Viacom and Comedy Central for airing the clip. The suit contended that the airing of the parody amounted to copyright infringement. […]
Pornography. A lot of people watch it. A lot of pornography that is watched is not illegally obtained. However, you can almost be sure that if you are downloading pornography through a BitTorrent client, you obtaining a movie for free that the copyright holder wants you to pay for. Such an act is illegal. Pornographic […]
A company called Righthaven LLC has been very busy filing lawsuits on behalf of the Las Vegas Review-Journal and the Denver Post based on a claim that others are stealing published information from the papers, which supposedly amounts to copyright infringement. At last count, Righthaven has filed a total of 275 lawsuits without providing any advance warning to […]
Are you on social networking sites? Do you use Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Flickr or a combination of the four? Perhaps you are on a smaller, niche social networking site. No matter what sites you are using, you are probably uploading photos – photos of yourself, your pets, scenic spots on your vacations – that you […]
Roughly a month ago, I discussed the announcement that starting in 2012, there will be many new top-level domains (TLDs) available for the public. Whereas now you can buy domain names with a restricted number of top-level domain tags such as .com, .net, .org, in the near future, you will be able to customize your […]