HHR New Media, Entertainment and Technology Group

The ongoing convergence of cloud-based products and services with the delivery and consumption of entertainment content continues to raise novel legal questions in the United States. As more and more businesses turn to the cloud, the scope and bounds of copyright law, in particular, continue to be impacted by new and disruptive offerings promising consumers the “cloudification” of their entertainment content. Whether conceived of in the form of a remote, cloud-based

DVR, a Slingbox-enabled satellite TV set-top box or a dime-sized antenna receiving and transmitting TV broadcasts via the cloud, U.S. courts over the last six years have continually weighed in on the balance between copyright holders’ exclusive rights to exploit their works and consumers’ and service providers’ ability to make lawful use of these works through emerging cloud-based technology solutions. Continue Reading »

Next Tuesday Dan will be participating in a panel entitled “Unique Cloud Based Solutions” as part of DCIA’s Cloud Computing Conference being held in conjunction with the NAB Show in Las Vegas. Joining Dan on the panel will be executives from Akamai and IBM. More information on the conference is available

here.

The courts are continuing to shape copyright law’s “first sale doctrine” as the second of two separate, “first sale” cases was finally decided. Two weeks ago, we discussed how the US Supreme Court extended the doctrine to apply to overseas goods. And in a decision dated March 30, a Southern District of New York judge ruled that the doctrine does not apply to the sale of digital goods. Continue Reading »

Last November, we discussed two separate cases regarding copyright law’s “first sale doctrine” and how

their decisions could affect the future of content creation and distribution. Section 106 of the Copyright Act grants copyright holders the exclusive right to distribute copies of their works, but Section 109 allows the owner of a copy of a work “to sell or otherwise dispose of” that copy without permission of the copyright owner. Yesterday, the US Supreme Court issued its decision in Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley & Sons, in which it held, by a 6-3 decision, that the first sale doctrine applies to copyrighted goods that are manufactured abroad. Continue Reading »

As we previously reported here, the EU voted in 2011 to extend copyright protection for sound recordings from 50 to 70 years. Two major record labels, Sony Music and Universal, recently received media attention for their response to provisions in the new law, which is set to take official effect in EU member states on November 1, 2013. By rushing out releases of archival Bob Dylan and Motown material just weeks before the original 50-year copyright clock on those recordings was set to expire, the labels were exercising what’s known as the “use it or lose it” option under the new law. (Although there is no similar provision in U.S. copyright law, the EU extension clearly impacts American artists who have recorded in Europe at some point in their music careers.) Continue Reading »