Sorry! - Credit: myguitarzz on Flickr (CC BY)

Toyota has apologized to DesktopNexus, and has claimed that the ordeal was a result of internal miscommunication.

From: Scott DeYager
Date: Wed, Nov 19, 2008 at 12:52 AM
Subject: Desktopnexus Toyota Wallpapers
To: tips@torrentfreak.com

Dear Torrentfreak.com,

The recent request Toyota made to have certain photos of Toyota vehicles removed from the public wallpaper site, DesktopNexus, was the result of an internal miscommunication.

To protect the legal rights and agreements we have with the photographers we hire, we ask that the photographs not be used for direct consumer advertising, sales brochures and the like.

If people wish to post their own photos of one of their own vehicles, that’s their right. In fact, we’re pleased that people would want to show their Toyota vehicles to the world. So have at it. Consider the wallpapers on DesktopNexus to be fair game for personal use.

Please let your readers know that we offer a sincere apology to the DesktopNexus site and its users for any inconvenience or disruption this miscommunication may have caused.

Thanks for your understanding,

Scott DeYager
Toyota Motor Sales, U.S.A., Inc.
Corporate Communications

Yay!  I’m glad I was able to help out with this.  Here’s a post on the DesktopNexus blog that talks about the internet responce.

• TorrentFreak

TorrentFreak reports that Quote Unquote Records has had their site pulled because their ISP demanded copyright registration forms for their music.

Around a week ago, the label was notified by its webhost that it had some copyright music files on its server, which was no surprise to them since they were tracks by Arrogant Sons of Bitches, one of the label’s bands. The tracks the webhost referred to were actually written by Jeff himself. Jeff spoke with someone at the host on the telephone, explained that they were his own tracks and was informed this wasn’t a problem.

Three days later the labels site went down completely, due to Jeff hosting his own copyright files on his own site - a claimed violation of the hosting company’s Terms of Service. In order to solve the problem, Jeff would have to send his copyright registration forms to the host by mail, to prove he held the copyright, a problem in itself, explains Jeff:

“I called the company to explain that a lot of this material was NOT in fact registered with the US copyright office, instead we did the ol’ poor man’s copyright. The music that was copyrighted was done so under a Creative Commons License, which is a digital copyright that cannot be viewed if the website where the files are posted is down.”

I can imagine their ISP potentially losing their immunity in copyright lawsuits for preemptive strikes like this,.  I’m pretty sure the DMCA says that ISPs are to act only when notified of infringements on their services, not before.

• TorrentFreak
• Slashdot

Whitehouse

The president has signed the Enforcement of Intellectual Property Act of 2008.

The White House successfully lobbied the Senate to remove language tasking the Department of Justice with suing copyright and trademark infringers on behalf of Hollywood (.pdf), the recording industry, manufacturers and software makers. But the Bush administration also said it didn’t want (.pdf) a copyright czar, a position on par with the nation’s drug czar Congress created in 1982 to wage the war on drugs. Lawmakers, however, sent him the package anyway and the president signed.

The czar is not likely to be appointed until after the elections.

What a great way to waste taxpayers money.  Actually, I’m not that upset about all this.  The more copyright law is enforced, the more people will realize how bad it is.  I’m not as interested in getting by the law as changing it.

• Wired
• BetaNews
• TorrentFreak

Jammie Thomas and Lawyer - Credit: mightyomedia on Flickr

U.S. District Judge Michael Davis of Duluth, Minnesota, has declared a mistrial in the case of Jammie Thomas. This (at least temporarily) gets rid of the $222,000 penalty 24 tracks she made publicly available on Kazaa.

“Jury Instruction No. 15 was erroneous, and that error substantially prejudiced Thomas’ rights. Based on the court’s error in instructing the jury, it grants Thomas a new trial,” the judge ruled (.pdf).

Still, Judge Davis’ decision does not derail the RIAA’s case against Thomas on retrial or any other pending or future case. Davis ruled that the downloads from Thomas’ open share folder that RIAA investigators made, 24 in all, “can form the basis of an infringement claim.” The RIAA’s investigators make downloads in every case.

This is a pretty big deal. I’m not getting too optimistic yet though.

• Wired
• EFF
• Recording Industy vs. The People

Ars Technica reports that the House of Representatives have introduced a bill which could roll back open access in the name of copyright.

The House of Representatives has seen the introduction of legislation, HR 6845 that, depending on its final format, may significantly curtail or eliminate the NIH’s ability to continue its open access policy. The current bill would prevent any arm of the federal government from making research funding contingent upon “the transfer or license to or for a Federal agency of… any right provided under paragraph (1) or (2) of section 106 in an extrinsic work, to the extent that, solely for purposes of this subsection, such right involves the availability to the public of that work.” Those Section 106 rights include the reproduction of the work.

Although that would seem to rule out the existing NIH policy, there is a certain amount of legal wiggle room there. For example, the NIH could fund a private entity to maintain PMC, and thus have the right to reproduction transferred to an independent entity. Nevertheless, the bill would appear to directly target the prior legislation that put the NIH in the business of mandating public access in the first place.

If you want the public to fund your research, then the public should have free (libre) access to your publications.  If profit is your motive, you can fund the research yourself.

• Ars Technica
• Slashdot

Ars Technica reports that 100 different groups have requested access to the secret Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, which, among other things, is rumored to contain significant changes to copyright and patent law.

Signatories of the letter include everyone from the EFF to the Australian National University to the Canadian Internet Policy & Public Interest Clinic to Korea’s Christian Media Network to the Dutch Consumentenbond to Thailand’s Drug Study Group (DSG) to the Ecologist Collective from Guadalajara, México to the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights. It’s a dizzying list with worldwide backing, but the more important question is whether it will have any effect.

It’s great that all of these organizations have banded together to voice their concern. Laws and agreements such as these need to be open to public scrutiny, not written behind closed doors.

• Ars Technica
• Slashdot

The anti-Scientology videos that were pulled from YouTube a few days ago have been reinstated after a successful claim of DMCA abuse.

YouTube may be rethinking their process for handling DMCA takedown notices this week, after receiving thousands of bogus notices alleging illegal content on the site. According to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), over a period of 12 hours, from Thursday night to Friday morning, YouTube received over 4000 notices, all for content critical of the Church of Scientology.

The notices were sent from an organization by the name of American Rights Counsel, LLC. However, Scientology detractors associated with the group Anonymous noted that no such limited liability corporation exists in the U.S. and that the text of the takedown notices is virtually identical to previous efforts from Wikipedia contributor oschaper, thought to be someone named Oliver Schaper (oschaper on Wikipedia and message boards). It’s possible that this individual was behind the notices, also filed by another apparently non-existent entity called ContentFactory America.

I feel that the detractors were well-prepared for this because of Scientology’s well-known efforts to abuse copyright law to censor material. Sadly, I don’t see many others being to prepared to deal with such abuses by other institutions.

• The Industry Standard
• Slashdot

Wired has posted a blog entry about the RIAA’s lawsuits, now 5 years in the making as of last Monday.

It was five years ago Monday the Recording Industry Association of America began its massive litigation campaign that now includes more than 30,000 lawsuits targeting alleged copyright scofflaws on peer-to-peer networks.

The targets include the elderly, students, children and even the dead. No one in the U.S. who uses Kazaa, Limewire or other file sharing networks is immune from the RIAA’s investigators, and fines under the Copyright Act go up to $150,000 per purloined music track.

But despite the crackdown, billions of copies of copyrighted songs are now changing hands each year on file sharing services. All the while, some of the most fundamental legal questions surrounding the legality of file sharing have gone unanswered. Even the future of the RIAA’s only jury trial victory — against Minnesota mother Jammie Thomas — is in doubt. Some are wondering if the campaign has shaped up as an utter failure.

Personally, I feel these two “money quotes” pretty much sum up all of my commentary:

Today, the RIAA — the lobbying group for the world’s big four music companies, Sony BMG, Universal Music, EMI and Warner Music — admits that the lawsuits are largely a public relations effort, aimed at striking fear into the hearts of would-be downloaders. Spokeswoman Cara Duckworth of the RIAA says the lawsuits have spawned a “general sense of awareness” that file sharing copyrighted music without authorization is “illegal.”

Settlement payments can be made on a website, where the funds are used to sue more defendants. None of the money is paid to artists.

• Wired
• Slashdot

In a case between adult entertainment sit Io Group and Veoh, a California court has ruled in Veoh’s favor, saying that the Digital Millenium Copyright Act does not make sharing sites solely responsible for their content.

The adult entertainment site Io Group sued Veoh for not doing enough to prevent 10 of their videos from being posted on the site. But Io did not notify Veoh of the infringement before filing the suit, and Veoh had already banned all sexual content and taken down the videos in question.

“The DMCA was intended to facilitate the growth of electronic commerce, not squelch it,” Judge Howard Lloyd of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California said.  “The court finds no reasonable juror could conclude that a comprehensive review of every file would be feasible.”

The ruling could provide significant fodder in a testy and far-from-resolved fight between content owners and media sharing sites, in which third parties (you and me) take from the former, feed the latter and sometimes share things we don’t own with everyone. At issue is whether hosting sites should or even can proactively monitor all uploaded content, and whether, if uploads of illegal content cannot be prevented or at least quickly taken down, they are a legally responsible entity.

I guess this will help out Google with the Viacom case.  Both Google and Viacom have released statements.  You can check out the Wired article if you want more info.

• Wired
• EFF
• Recording Industy vs. The People
• Ars Technica

The LA Times reports through a series of legalities, early images of Mickey Mouse are in the public domain.  The original work was on this case was done in 1999.

As Mickey turns 80 this fall, the most beloved rodent in show business is widely regarded as a national treasure. But he is owned lock, stock and trademark ears by the corporate heirs of his genius creator, Walt Disney.

Brand experts reckon his value to today’s Walt Disney Co. empire at more than $3 billion. Acts of Congress have extended Mickey’s copyright so long that they provoked a Supreme Court challenge, making Mickey the ultimate symbol of intellectual property.

…

For Brown, it was as if the glass slipper fit him perfectly. The key was location of the word “copyright” in relation to the name “Walt Disney.” There were two other names listed in between — Cinephone and Disney’s top studio artist, Ub Iwerks. Arguably, any one of the three could have claimed ownership, thereby nullifying anyone’s claim under arcane rules of the Copyright Act of 1909.

Welcome to the wonderful world of copyright law.

Wow…how do we all not know about this?  And if this happened in 1999, why hasn’t Disney launched an all-out legal battle yet?  (And why has no one tried to take serious advantage of this?)

• LA Times
• Lauren Vanpelt’s paper
• Freedom for IP