Taxes and the Internet
Taxes and the Internet have generated a continuous stream of discussion ' but not much more. For all that has been written over the years, remarkably little has happened, other than the passage (and periodic temporary renewals) of the Internet Tax Freedom Act, and pressure on national firms' online operations to collect tax (as described below). The 'problems' ' untaxed economic activity ' that have created so much uncertainty for e-commerce firms and their customers alike remain just as much of an unknown risk, without a solution in sight. Perhaps the continued growth of e-commerce will simply be the unintended result of this inaction, the tax accountant's equivalent of the physician's motto, 'do no harm' ' that is: our tax system has done nothing to get in the way of e-commerce.
<b><i>Commentary: </b></i>Keep the Core Neutral: ICANN Policy Proposes to Restrict New Domain Names
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers ('ICANN'), the private California corporation set up by the United States Commerce Department in 1998 to manage and control the Internet's root server, is developing a policy to introduce new generic Top-Level Domains. Unfortunately, the draft policy ignores freedom of expression guarantees, expands the rights of trademark owners on the Internet and sets up an arbitrary and subjective process in which ICANN will decide what ideas may be expressed in Internet domain names ' and by whom.
Bit Parts
Book Publishing/Personal Jurisdiction; Copyright Infringement/Preliminary Injuctions; Right-of-Publicity Claims/Insurance; Theatrical Productions/Personal Jurisdiction; Video-Game Statutes/Constitutionality.
Features
Clause & Effect
Recording Agreements/Forum-Selection Clause; Royalty Claims/Letter of Inducement; TV Music Scores/Synchhornization Royalties.
Keeping Track of Celebrity Image Use
For celebrities, image is everything. For the entertainment lawyers who represent their interests, that means confronting ever more complex efforts to profit from (or poison) a client's fame. Among the talent-side lawyers, there's a small club of firms doing the lion's share of the image work for the big stars.
Cameo Clips
Concert Tours/Deal Breakdown; Right of Publicity/Web Photo Display; TV Interviews/Anti-SLAPP Law.
Features
Decision of Note: No Interference Seen in Failure of Deal Talks
The Appellate Court of Conn-ecticut affirmed that the rap group Fort Knox failed to establish that a member's brother tortiously interfered with the group's business expectancy of entering into a recording contract with rap mogul Master P.
Solving the Fight over Union Residuals
The Writers Guild of America has been negotiating with the Alliance of Motion Picture & Television Producers for a new collective bargaining agreement. The current agreement expires on Oct. 31, 2007. The current agreements of the Directors Guild of America and Screen Actors Guild of America end on June 30, 2008. This article summarizes some of the key conflicts that may trigger threatened guild strikes. Most of these issues relate to the income base and calculation of residuals. This article suggests a simple and fair alternative method for calculating residuals that eliminates all the contentious issues, not just in the pending negotiations of the guild agreements, but also in practice.
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