Michael Jackson musical blocked by estate Broadway producer Nederlander filed a suit against the estate of Michael Jackson claiming the estate won’t clear the right to use songs, including Beat It, Billie Jean, and Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin. From TMZ. ASCAP files 21 scattershot copyright lawsuits The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) [...]

Nature sound recordist Martyn Stewart sued Apple Inc. and application developer Mitch Waite on Friday, alleging copyright infringement for use of his recordings in iBird. iBird, available from the Apple App Store in a variety of editions, provides an interactive field guide for novice and expert birders. Awarded Best Reference App by Macworld (2009), iBird [...]

Japanese far right blocks dolphin hunting documentary “Noisy rallies, online slanders, intimidating phone calls and veiled threats of violence” are compelling theaters into canceling showings of The Cove. The documentary depicts dolphin hunting and warns of high levels of mercury in fish — “a disturbing disclosure in this seafood-loving nation.” From NYT. Google backs down [...]

PlagiarismToday gave a rundown of 11 free web-based tools to help photographers and artists protect images online. Methods range from watermarking to non-repudiation database registration. For the active copyright owner, there’s TinEye — a reverse image search engine. TinEye indexes images based on pixel analysis as opposed to keywords, metadata or watermarks. Out of curiosity, [...]

YouTube’s head of user experience, Margaret Gould Stewart, talks about how the site manages copyright and contributes to an “ecosystem of culture.” Stewart notes that content owners deliver “assets” into a database. Uploads are compared to reference files in the YouTube database. Interestingly, content owners provide a usage policy on how to handle matches. “Most [...]

The Hurt Locker producers fire back Just prior to winning best picture at the Academy Awards, the producers of The Hurt Locker were sued by Master Sgt. Jeffrey S. Sarver. Sarver alleges the depiction of the film’s main character, Sergeant First Class William James, amounts to a breach of contract, right of publicity, defamation and [...]

Aviary announced the release of its online music creator (codenamed Roc) on Thursday. The Long Island, NY based company added the tool to its web-based creative suite which includes vector, color and audio editors, among others. Roc is released under a Creative Commons – Attribution 3.0 Generic license, giving users unrestricted access to its instrument [...]

LimeWire owes RIAA millions billions? Thirteen music industry giants and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) are looking freeze the assets of P2P file sharing service LimeWire post copyright suit: via Reuters. Judge questions copyright lawsuit jamming US District Court Judge Collyer demands a justification for the US Copyright Group joining 4,577 defendants into [...]