CyberLaw P.C. recently launched a new website, available at USCopyrightGroupDefense.Com, aimed at providing information about U.S. Copyright Group and its copyright infringement cases against numerous John Doe defendants. The site features general information about U.S. Copyright Group, including details about the parties, ISPs and works involved in many of its cases, most of which are filed in Washington, D.C. The Read More

  The first federal court review of open source software licenses was recently undertaken by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. The decision, Jacobsen v. Katzer, No. 2008-1001, slip op. (Fed. Cir. Aug. 13, 2008), is important because it finds that infringers of open source licenses are subject to Copyright laws, as opposed to only being in breach of contract for a violation of an open source Read More

  Japan is preparing to grant more “fair use” in its copyright laws that is intended to increase competition and bring the nation’s intellectual property laws more in line with the United States and other industrialized nations. Section 107 of the United States Copyright Act (17 U.S.C. 107) sets out certain exceptions to a creator’s copyrights. These exceptions are generally known as “fair use” exceptions. A Read More

  Comcast is publicly proposing a “P2P Bill of Rights and Responsibilities,” which would apparently define certain obligations of peer to peer application users on the Comcast data network. Reports indicate that the “Bill of Rights” would align itself with “self–regulation” standards as to content, such as movie and television ratings, which Comcast asserts would help to curb copyright infringement. Critics Read More

  The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) won a copyright lawsuit against the operators of TorrentSpy.com primarily because of the defendants’ tampering of evidence. The court determined that the defendants had destroyed evidence after another judge had ordered them to keep server logs, user IP (Internet Protocol) addresses and other information. TorrentSpy argued that it destroyed certain records Read More

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has declared that RIAA copyright lawsuits against peer to peer (P2P) network users are failures. The EFF argues that P2P networks continue to grow, and that the lawsuits targeted at users that download music and other material impose unfair burdens on a few users, while thousands of others continue to use such networks unfettered. EFF argues that the appropriate policy is to Read More

  Google and Microsoft are complaining to the FTC about, in their view, content providers’ overly broad copyright notices on content provided by entities such as the NFL, MLB, NBC Universal and more. The allegations of the complaint suggest that copyright holders are using “strong-arm” tactics to scare users into compliance. Copyright holders dismiss the complaint as an attempt to liberalize public sentiment Read More

  A company founded by an ex-plumber is suing for copyright infringement over the “SexGen bed, a software application that allows two characters to have sex in the game.” Eros, the firm that develops and sells the software online, alleges that another character in Second Life found a technical exploitation that allowed the object to be copied and resold at a substantial discount over the price Eros was Read More

  In a case fast approaching being titled “The Entire World v. YouTube,” NBC has announced plans to file an amicus brief in the suit alleging copyright infringement against YouTube for allowing users to upload copyright protected content. YouTube is a popular video-sharing site that was recently purchased by Google for $1.65 billion dollars.   This matter features two interesting subplots. First, we Read More