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 […]
Category: Intellectual Property
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 […]
Large internet copyright infringement lawsuits have been filed in 2011, and not all of them relate to movies consumers pay to see at the theaters. In fact, pornographic film studios are suing downloaders with regularity this year, creating a new revenue stream out of lawsuit settlements. Sometimes it is worthwhile for accused infringers to settle […]
The Online Copyright Infringement Liability Limitation Act (OCILLA), also known as DMCA 512 was passed in 1998 as part of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). OCILLA is also known as the “Safe Harbor” provision in the DMCA, which shields internet service providers (ISPs) from being forced to pay any monetary damages as a result of […]
In order for a copyright holder to get personal information of someone whom is considered to be illegally infringing the copyright, the copyright holder likely must subpoena the infringer’s internet service provider (ISP). The person accused of infringing activity has the right to file a motion to quash the subpoena; however, the accused infringer will […]
Generic top-level domains (gTLDs) include .com, .net, .org, .edu, and other variations in what is considered to be the back-end of a domain name. In 2000, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) introduced .aero, .biz, .coop, .inof, .museum, .name, and .pro. Then, in 2005, .cat, .jobs, .mobi, .tel, and .travel were added […]
Ever since domain names have been open for public registration, domain owners have been guilty of cybersquatting on other peoples’/companies names. Some cybersquatting cases are more clear than others. If I register the domain name BurgerKing.com, it is unlikely that I can defend it by showing a legitimate use for owning the URL. However, if […]
The most active group of movie producers in the realm of litigating apparent copyright infringement in 2011 seems to be producers of pornographic material. I have no hard evidence that this is the case, but from the sheer amount of cases I hear about, including some demand letters that clients have brought to my attention, […]