Free for a Fee

The Stanford Copyright & Fair Use page just added a new tool to its Charts and Tools page, the “Section 108 Spinner.”

Minow: Tell us about the new Section 108 spinner. How does it work and what is its purpose?

Brewer: The “Section 108 Spinner” was actually the first tool we created, but because at that time the Section 108 study group had still not released their findings, we held off on releasing this tool and instead developed and released the “Digital Copyright Slider” first.  Once it seemed clear that Section 108 was not going to change any time soon, we decided to go ahead and release the Spinner. The Spinner is focused more on educating and serving the needs of librarians, library staff and archivists.  Basically it is there to help them determine when a reproduction of a copyrighted work would be covered by Section 108, the Library and Archives exemption in US Copyright Law.  We are focused on promoting the online tool, but we do have some copies of the print tool that we’re handing out at conferences or other events.  If we hear from people that having access to the print tool would be valuable for their institutions (for their staff in ILL, Special Collections, Collection Management, Public Services, etc.), we might consider making the print tool more broadly available as well.

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Media organizations and public interest groups Thursday filed “friend of the court” briefs in the Joel Tenenbaum file-swapping case, supporting a judge’s earlier decision to allow some video from the case to be streamed live over the Internet.

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Blizzard notched another victory in its legal campaign against World of Warcraft bots when a judge on Wednesday ruled that a leading bot violates the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. MDY Industries LLC, the firm that develops and sells the Glider bot, already suffered a major setback last summer when the judge granted Blizzard summary judgment on several key issues. This week’s decision deals with the issues the judge believed could not be decided until the conclusion of this month’s trial. The judge ruled that Glider violated the DMCA’s ban on “circumvention devices,” and he also found that MDY’s founder, Michael Donnelly, was personally liable for the actions of his firm.

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The content in this post was found at http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2009/01/judges-ruling-that-wow-bot-violates-dmca-is-troubling.ars and was not authored by the moderators of freeforafee.com. Clicking the title link will take you to the source of the post.

Few companies know as much as they should about Internet law. Every company runs across its share of scammers, disgruntled employees and lawsuits. How often a company sidesteps trouble and how often a company gets left holding the bag, often comes down to which side knows more about the laws affecting the Internet and which side has taken steps to use these laws to its advantage. Here are a few Internet legal basics that take many companies by surprise:
1) Information is the Key

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The content in this post was found at http://blawgit.com/2009/01/27/six-things-your-company-needs-to-know-about-internet-law/ and was not authored by the moderators of freeforafee.com. Clicking the title link will take you to the source of the post.