WaPo: “Could Net Radio’s Extinction Be Close?“:

Faced with huge song royalty increases, Net radio may soon face extinction. That is according to Internet radio Webcaster Pandora’s founder Tim Westergren. He told the Washington Post his popular music Webcasting site is about to go offline because of increases in royalties his company must pay to the music industry. Westergren says that the Copyright Royalty Board’s agreement with SoundExchange, the royalties collecting arm of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), is about to increase fees Pandora pays and thereby turn its small profits into a deficit.

EFF: “Required Reading for “User-Generated Content” Sites“:

In an important ruling handed down yesterday, a federal district court threw out a copyright infringement suit brought by adult video producer Io Group against Veoh, concluding that the video hosting site qualifies for the DMCA safe harbor. The ruling should be required reading for the executives of every “Web 2.0” business that relies on “user-generated content.”
Veoh, like YouTube, is a streaming video site that hosts videos uploaded by users. Io Group sued Veoh in 2006 after finding clips from 10 of its copyrighted adult films on the Veoh site. So far, this is a familiar story — user-generated content site gets sued by copyright owner for naughty uploading habits of users (see, e.g., lawsuits against MySpace, iMeem, YouTube, Redlasso, Hi5, Multiply, Stage6, MP3tunes, Scribd, Usenet.com, Bolt, and Grouper). But this is the first case to get to a final ruling, and it’s a total victory for Veoh.

Read this document on Scribd: DMCA Ruling: Io v. Veoh

SlashDot: “iPhone Web Claims Draw Governmental Rebuke in UK“:
“Apple has been running an iPhone ad saying ‘all parts of the internet are on the iPhone’, but it had to be withdrawn after Britain’s Advertising Standards Authority ruled that it gave ‘a misleading impression of the internet capabilities of the iPhone’ because the iPhone cannot access Flash or Java – features that are essential to some websites. This raises an interesting issue of where do you draw the line between essential and non-essential features of websites. What should the web look like? Should government authorities be the ones making that decision?”

Newsday: Gas Station owners say Cuomo’s charges are wrong:

Particularly grating on the retailers was the statement in Cuomo’s news releases saying the stations “engaged in false advertising by only listing the lower cash prices on their street view signage in order to lure patrons to the pump.” A story last week about the Long Island investigation said “both prices – one for cash and one for credit card payment – must be listed on all signs.”
Yesterday, both Beyer and Cohen said that’s inaccurate. State law allows retailers, if they wish, to post only the lower cash price on their large signs near the street as long as they make clear on the sign that the price is only for cash purchases and that signs on the pumps list both cash and credit prices.

Joshua Daniels: “Lost in Translation’: Anime, Moral Rights, and Market Failure“:

This Note examines the process by which Japanese anime series are translated, dubbed, and distributed in the United States, with a particular focus on cases in which the dubbed version has been heavily edited from the original source material. These heavily-edited dubbed versions are often commercial failures because they are rejected by many U.S. fans who are familiar with the original Japanese version of the series through the consumption of illegal “fansubbed” versions. Even though these transactions seem wasteful and thus should be avoided, their occurrence on several different occasions over the years is difficult to explain.
HT Copyright Law Twitter
This Note argues that these cases are the result of a failure of the anime licensing market to take into account the legitimate interests and expectations of U.S. fans in the integrity of the series, which ought to be considered even though the moral rights of the original creators technically might not be infringed. Drawing upon prior scholarly literature which justifies the fair use defense in copyright law as a means of curing market failures, this Note proposes the adoption of a limited fair use defense for infringing “fansubs” where the authorized dubbed version of the series has been heavily edited and there exists no other legal means by which U.S. fans may enjoy the series in its original form in the United States.

ABA Journal: Trump Claims Firm Invaded Privacy By Posting Name on Website:

Donald Trump is involved in a dispute with his former firm Morrison Cohen which led to litigation in April. The firm claims he owes unapid fees, he accuses the firm of malpractice. As of August, the firm indicated on its website that it had represented him. He is now suing in New York Supreme Court for breach of NY’s Civil Rights Law regarding use of his name with his consent (8/8/2008 08-110830).

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: “Sheboygan Women (sic) Files Landmark Case Over Web Links“:

Boyden said some companies require other Web sites to get permission to link to them, but he knew of no companies, much less a government body, that have tried to enforce violations of that condition if the links didn’t infringe on a copyright or trademark.
Boyden said not all speech is protected, including links. For instance, someone might use a link to communicate a threat or violate a copyright, and that wouldn’t be protected.
The lawsuit doesn’t show how Reisinger used the link to Sheboygan police or the city’s cease-and-desist order, but Boyden said it appeared from the lawsuit to be protected speech.

Knowledge@wharton: “War of the Words: Scrabulous is off Facebook, but did hasbro Win the Game?
:

On the corporate side, the issue is less about money than copyright infringement and brand control. Wharton faculty note, however, that Hasbro may be doing more harm than good to its brand by going after Scrabulous. It not only risks alienating existing Scrabulous users, they say, but also misses the opportunity to capitalize on Scrabulous’s success in the difficult-to-harness social networking world.
Peter Fader, co-director of the Wharton Interactive Media Initiative, believes Hasbro’s action is an “incredibly bad business decision.” There is no evidence the Agarwalla brothers were doing “something absolutely disparaging” to the Scrabble brand, he says. In fact, Scrabulous “has been such a fabulously good thing for the Scrabble franchise [that] Hasbro should have been celebrating.”