German Chancellor Angela Merkel took the opportunity to promote international co-operation for copyright protection prior to the Frankfurt Book Fair. In her weekly video podcast, the Chancellor criticized Google’s digital library as creating a serious threat to copyright holders on the internet. Said Merkel, “The German government has a clear position: copyrights have to be [...]

Unknown da Vinci painting unveiled via fingerprinting. Value increases from $19,000 (purchase price) to above $160 million. From CNN. Record labels suffering from power of technology, artists, and consumers seek a new business model. From MediaShift (PBS). Yoko Ono promotes Creative Commons licensing with remix contest. From boingboing. Contest here. Micro-brewer sued for Trademark infringement [...]

Apparently, the reggae band Groundnation finds that Fergie’s will.i.am produced single Voodoo Doll took a little too much inspiration from their 2000 release Waterfall. Substantially similar baselines? Groundnation’s Waterfall: Fergie’s Voodoo Doll: More here and here.

After filing a lawsuit claiming that the Grammy winning Viva La Vida infringed his 2004 track If I Could Fly, Joe Satriani has reached a settlement with Coldplay and the suit has been dismissed. Details of the agreement are lean, but it is rumored that financial reparations were made and Coldplay will not have to [...]

Apparently agreeing with recent criticism of the deal, the Department of Justice  urged a federal court on Friday to reject Google’s disputed settlement with book authors and publishers. The class action settlement in The Authors Guild Inc. et al. v. Google Inc. as proposed, could potentially lead to copyright infringements. As such, the Department, proposed [...]

A group of authors and publishers, represented by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), and the Samuelson Law, Technology, and Public Policy Clinic at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law (Samuelson clinic), filed an objection last week to the proposed Google Book Search lawsuit settlement. The coalition of [...]

In  written testimony given last week, United States Register of Copyrights Marybeth Peters, stated her concern that the proposed Google Book settlement would, “encroach on responsibility for copyright policy that traditionally has been the domain of Congress.” In response, Peter Drummond, Google senior vice president of corporate development and chief legal officer, defended the settlement, [...]

The Electronic Frontier Foundation recently posted an article questioning whether the Burning Man copyright and trademark policies are overly restrictive. We do empathize with BMO’s desire to preserve the festival’s noncommercial character and to protect the privacy interests of ticket-holders. But by granting itself ownership of your creative works and forbidding fair uses of its [...]