Law.com Subscribers SAVE 30%

Call 855-808-4530 or email [email protected] to receive your discount on a new subscription.

Search


Clause & Effect: <b>Examining Concerns In Sales of Rights In Compositions</b>
March 01, 2004
Songwriters often form their own music publishing companies. If the publishing company sells the songwriter's compositions, what rights will actually be conveyed in the sale?
Bit Parts
March 01, 2004
Recent developments in entertainment law.
Police Must Abide by 'Net Privacy Act
March 01, 2004
In the 17 years since the Electronic Communications Privacy Act was enacted, courts have ruled in hundreds of cases involving the illegal release of subscriber information by Internet companies. But only a handful of decisions have dealt with such information being improperly obtained by government officials. A federal court ruling issued last month ' castigating two Fairfield, CT, police detectives for using an unsigned warrant to attain AOL subscriber information ' is just the fourth such opinion,
DMCA Abuse?
March 01, 2004
After someone electronically lifted embarrassing e-mails from Diebold Inc. and posted them online, the company responded with a tactic that more and more companies are using to put a lid on Internet distribution of sensitive information: Diebold sent cease-and-desist notices to organizations hosting Web sites and forums that had published, or even linked, to the e-mails. The messages portrayed participants in Diebold's electronic voting business confirming their critics' worst nightmares about security vulnerabilities. Information may want to be free. But specialists say that sending such notices under the 5-year-old DMCA succeeds, in the vast majority of cases, in promptly curtailing online distribution. The technique is so effective, critics contend, that it is often abused in situations where no copyright protection applies or ' as with the Diebold case ' there would be a strong fair use defense.
Net News
March 01, 2004
A company that operates numerous music Web sites will have to pay the largest civil penalty levied to date over violating COPPA, and the Federal Trade Commission is apparently serving public notice that it intends to vigorously enforce the privacy rules.
BobVila.com in Nation's First Anti-Spam Case
March 01, 2004
Through his commercial Web site, home improvement guru Bob Vila recently became the nation's first target of the new federal anti-spam law.
States Reach Out to Collect Internet Taxes
March 01, 2004
Realizing the sizable impact of revenues from Internet sales, key states such as New York and California now require taxpayers to declare any tax they owe on out-of-state purchases.
Record Industry Still Pursuing File-Sharers
March 01, 2004
The U.S. music industry recently sued 531 more individuals for online copyright infringement through anonymous "John Doe" styled suits. The RIAA, continuing to cite digital piracy as a major cause of slumping CD sales for the third year in a row, announced that it filed five separate lawsuits against 531 users of undisclosed Internet Service Providers.
Web-Tracking Data: An Under-Utilized Legal Resource
March 01, 2004
Several years ago, businesses like WebSideStory began offering dedicated Web-tracking services. These services can capture and analyze many aspects of Web traffic and create a multitude of customized reports. Such digital market research has become indispensable to many online businesses. (Its use has also raised many concerns about privacy, which are beyond the scope of this article.) On the other hand, it offers significant, yet largely unrecognized, benefits to trademark attorneys in their efforts to assist clients. This article briefly outlines some of the ways that trademark attorneys can utilize this data.
Canada's Music Industry Joins Piracy Crackdown
March 01, 2004
Following the lead of their American counterparts, Canada's biggest music producers recently asked the courts to order Internet service providers to identify customers who illegally swap songs on the Internet.

MOST POPULAR STORIES