In April 2011, I had an article titled, You May Not “Like” This Title: Everything Stored On Facebook Is Discoverable, published in the NYU Law Journal of Intellectual Property and Entertainment Law. The premise is that enjoying the openness of Facebook may come at an unexpected cost, especially for those who do not understand how the […]
Category: Cyberspace
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 […]
Have you purchased your .xxx domain yet? I am only half joking. Many companies (big and small) that have absolutely no relation to the pornography industry have been buying up their tradenames at the .xxx level. They have been reserving those domains from registration (see: Walmart.xxx) so that third parties cannot scoop up the domains and […]
How much money is a Twitter follower worth, what about the value of an individual Tweet, and who actually owns a Twitter account? Those are a few questions that may be answered if a lawsuit that was filed on July 15, 2011 in the United States District Court Northern District of California ends up going to […]
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 […]