HHR New Media, Entertainment and Technology Group

UPDATE (4/14/09, 12:14 pm):  The court found the Pirate Bay defendants guilty and sentenced them to 1 year in prison and ordered them to pay $3.6 million in damages to several record labels.

Tomorrow a Swedish court is expected to announce it’s ruling in a criminal case that has been closely watched by nearly everyone with a stake-financial or otherwise-in the free-wheeling world of P2P file swapping.  At its core, the ruling will determine whether the operators of the Pirate Bay, the popular torrent search and indexing site, are guilty of violating Sweden’s copyright law.  A conviction-which many observers expect-could lead to imprisonment and a possible fine, as well as a shut-down of the site.  However, despite the potential immediate impact on the Pirate Bay and its operators, the broader implications of a guilty verdict, including whether or not it will serve as a deterrent against unauthorized file-sharing, are a little less certain. Continue Reading »

One copyright case that owners and licensors of digital content should be following closely in the coming months is the one brought against Universal Music Group by Stephanie Lenz, a Pennsylvania mom who posted a video on YouTube of her young son on a tricycle with Prince’s “Let’s Go Crazy” playing in the background. Universal submitted a DMCA takedown notice claiming that the video infringed its copyright in the Prince song. YouTube immediately removed Lenz’s video.  Lenz was able to get it restored seven weeks after filing a DMCA counter-notification asserting that her video constituted fair use of the song. Lenz then sued Universal for interfering with her legal right to post the video online. Continue Reading »

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act celebrated its 10^th anniversary this week.  That milestone provides us with an excuse to take a brief look at the statute and some ways it has affected the digital marketplace.

The DMCA was initially intended as the US implementation of two treaties adopted by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) in 1996 to establish rules for two evolving forms of digital media: music and computer software and databases.  However, as the legislation was introduced in Congress, additional provisions were added in response to lobbying efforts by two distinct constituencies.  

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On Monday, President Bush signed what some are calling a controversial law entitled The Prioritizing Resources and Organization for Intellectual Property Act of 2008 or “Pro-IP Act”.  The Pro-IP Act is designed to increase protection of intellectual property by imposing harsher criminal penalties for intellectual property piracy and counterfeiting, including expanding the ability of the government to permanently seize goods and creating an Intellectual Property enforcement officer or “czar”, a new cabinet position whose sole job is to increase intellectual property enforcement. 

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