Monday, June 08, 2009

Practice tips

Collection of previous "practice tips", through 1/20/09.

"Settlement strategy in post-announcement period needs to reflect possible changing circumstances" 1/20/09

"USA v. Dove exposes RIAA's faulty damages thinking" 1/16/09

"Statutory damages should bear some relation to actual damages suffered, Yurman v. Castaneda" 11/30/08

"Motions to Quash After Judge Gertner's November 24, 2008, Decision in London Sire Records v. Does 1-4" 11/25/08

"No Statutory Damages or Costs Recoverable for Recordings Registered After Defendant Started "Online Media Distribution" 9/25/08

"Take MediaSentry's deposition" 8/12/08

"Innocent infringement" defense 8/9/08

"If you're litigating the "making available" issue, consider bringing the London-Sire decision to the attention of the Court" 4/4/08

Rule 11 and the RIAA's new boilerplate 3/17/08

Collecting materials on MediaSentry relating to (a) illegality, (b) discoverability, and (c) admissibility 2/8/08

Notice of Constitutional Question when Filing Pleading Asserting Unconstitutionality of Statute 11/30/07

Some qood questions to ask about MediaSentry's "investigation" 11/29/07

Inquire into the Role of Matthew Oppenheim 11/13/07

Investigate Dr. Jacobson's Interest in "Audible Magic" and "CopySense" 11/11/07

Importance of getting pretrial discovery into plaintiffs' lost profits 10/9/07

Dr. Doug Jacobson's Testimony Refutes the RIAA Averment that its Investigator "Detected an Individual" 9/21/07

Consider making motions to dismiss complaint or motions for judgment on pleadings 9/11/07

-R.B.


Keywords: practicetip123 digital copyright online law legal download upload peer to peer p2p file sharing filesharing music movies indie independent label freeculture creative commons pop/rock artists riaa independent mp3 cd favorite songs

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Great article. On the OurStage website, they claim to give 100% of the monies back to the artists, not just $0.80. I've contacted them to see if this can be cleared up. Regardless, 80 cents is far better than what some record labels pay (i.e. 4AD apparently pays their artists on 6 cents per download out of the $0.99, as confirmed by real artists using their service).

---Anon

Not Telling said...

MPAA filed a lawsuit against RealNetworks Inc. for their RealDVD software...

Alleged violation of Anti-Circumvention clause in DMCA

Maybe you can comment on that.

Press release is here:

http://www.mpaa.org/press_releases/realdvd%20press%20release%209%2030%2008%20final.pdf

Anonymous said...

I expect that the contention of the MPAA is that in addition to copying the CSS encrypted movie to the hard drive that Real's software also copies the necessary decryption keys that any authorized player requires. This way the DVD itself isn't required for playback any longer -- which is the whole point.

These decryption keys are on a part of the DVD that can be read, but not written to on blank DVDs by normal consumer DVD writers. As such it makes it hard to just make a bit-copy of the encrypted DVD that will play like its original, since this necessary information can't be written to the new DVD.

But the keys have to be readable by any DVD reader or it would be impossible to play the movie. And if they can be read, they can be copied to a hard drive that doesn't have the restrictions of unwritable areas.

The MPAA might call this circumvention of a technological protection method.

XxX

Not Telling said...

I don't think that is what they are saying.

Real's software can decrypt the movie because it can read the key (Real is a CSS licensee).

But Real's software is just making a copy of the decrypted video onto the users's hard drive. It's not copying the decryption keys. That would be pointless.

I believe that it locks this copy with its own DRM so that you can't play it on more than 5 computers.

It's probably a clear case of circumvention. CSS is designed to prevent users from copying video off of a commercial DVD. That is its purpose.

But that is why that part of the law is terrible; it makes fair use illegal.

Anonymous said...

"It's probably a clear case of circumvention. CSS is designed to prevent users from copying video off of a commercial DVD. That is its purpose"

I don't think so. CSS isn't copy protection. It is **playback** protection. There is no circumvention involved, AFIK, because Real is a CSS licensee and their player is licensed to playback DVD content. Keep in mind that the CSS consortium lost their DVD jukebox case in court.