Free for a Fee

Every three years, the US Copyright Office reviews the Digital Millennium Copyright Act’s most controversial section—the ban on circumventing DRM, even for legal uses. The Copyright Office has the authority to issue three-year exemptions to that blanket ban, carving out space for DVD-ripping film school profs, for instance, or making it legal for people to bypass DRM in order to unlock cell phones.

Tomorrow, four days of hearings begin on a new round of exemptions (read the schedule).

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In A.V. v. iParadigms, LLC, 2009 U.S. App. LEXIS 7892 (4^th Cir. Apr. 16, 2009), the Fourth Circuit concluded that the archiving of high school student term papers by a plagiarism detection service is protected by the fair use doctrine. Having so ruled, the appeals court did not address the district court’s analysis of the enforceability of the clickwrap agreements executed by the minor students when they submitted their papers to the service.  The district court ruling on the issue of enforceability is, therefore, left intact.

The district court opinion offers some other general points of interest with respect to clickwrap agreements.

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Late last year, Google announced that it had reached a settlement with several major publishers that would end their copyright lawsuit against the Google Books service. The settlement would put in place an agreement between Google and existing copyright holders, and give the search giant rights to out-of-print and orphaned works—those for which the copyright holder cannot be identified. Despite the complexity of the settlement, it was on a fast track to approval, with a final thumbs-up scheduled for May. Now, it looks like a delay in the decision is inevitable as opposition to it seems to be rising and the Department of Justice looking into the antitrust implications of the deal.

A portion of the objections come from within the publishing community itself, where a small collection of authors and copyright holders have requested four more months to evaluate the proposed settlement before deciding whether to sign on to it. Google countered with an offer of a two-month delay. The judge ultimately approved a four-month extension.

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One of the longest-running battles in the recording industry’s war against file-sharing appears to have finally come to an end. Michelle (age 22) and Robert (age 18) Santangelo have settled a lawsuit filed against them by the RIAA in November 2006 for P2P use that occurred when Michelle was 15 and Robert 11. The siblings will pay the RIAA a total of 7,000 in installments due by November of this year—a paltry sum given that the RIAA started its settlement offers in the ,000-4,000 range and often raised the cost if the defendant contested the charges in court.

The RIAA had originally sued their mother, Patricia, in February 2005. Having no knowledge of how to download music, she denied the allegations and soon found herself preparing for trial—despite the fact that the judge presiding over the case called her “an Internet-illiterate parent, who does not know Kazaa from kazoo, and who can barely retrieve her e-mail.” Like the thousands of others who were targeted by the RIAA, she could have made the problem go away with a check for ,000. Instead, she spent over ,000 defending herself against the charges before running out of money and firing her lawyer (a fundraising campaign raised an additional ,000 for her defense).

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Plagiarism Today: “Twitter and the DMCA: A Fine Mess“:

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been getting a lot of requests for information about Twitter and their DMCA procedure. Most of these issues stem from avatar or backgrounds that are infringing, not the tweets themselves. It seems the exponential increase in Twitter members has brought with it a wide range of individuals who are decorating their profiles with the works of artists that didn’t grant permission.

However, I’ve been hard pressed to advise these people as Twitter’s DMCA process is an unadulterated mess. There are three separate policies, one of which appears to be out of date, two separate email addresses and three different means of filing a notice.

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