HHR New Media, Entertainment and Technology Group

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• Late last week,  Judge Louis Stanton of the US District Court for the Southern District of New York ruled that plaintiffs in the high-profile copyright class action case against YouTube could not seek statutory damages for videos that are not registered under US copyright law.   Judge Stanton also dismissed plaintiffs’ punitive damages claim, but did permit claims based on live broadcast footage, which were brought by the English Premier Football League, the lead plaintiff in the case, to proceed.  Continue Reading »

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• The New York Times, owners of Boston.com, and GateHouse Media agreed on the eve of trial to settle their copyright lawsuit.  As part of the settlement, the complete details of which aren’t available, the headlines and first sentences from GateHouse articles will be removed from listings on Boston.com, although Boston.com will continue to link to GateHouse.  While the settlement appears to be a victory for GateHouse, some are questioning whether GateHouse’s objections to the content in the links made business sense as Boston.com was sending traffic to GateHouse.  The new restrictions may cause Boston.com to think twice about doing that in the future.  Other smaller media and content sites may want to consider these ramifications in raising similar issues.  Read here for more on the dispute.
• Controversy is already brewing at the President’s virtual home regarding privacy issues.  In what some called a “YouTube exemption” to the privacy policy at WhiteHouse.gov, YouTube was apparently permitted to plant tracking cookies on the computers of visitors to the White House site.  When objections were raised, the policy was quickly amended to limit the placement of cookies only on machines that actually click on the video.  The debate seems to point to the tricky nature of balancing the optimal privacy policy with the transparency of the actual terms of that policy.   More on the issue is here.
• In what may be the first of its kind corporate policy, Ireland’s largest ISP, Eircom, has agreed to implement a “three strikes and you’re shut down” policy for P2P file sharers.  The policy is the result of a settlement in a lawsuit against Eircom that was broght by the Irish branches of EMI, Warner, Universal and Sony.  While the concept of a graduated response has been debated before (it was actually specifically rejected by the European Parliament last year), Eircom now appears to be set to be the first ISP in the world to voluntarily cut off P2P users without court orders.    For more on this issue, read here.
• North Carolina joins a list of states now considering charging sales tax on digital downloads to help raise revenue for the state – a move that could deter customers who are already facing tough times.  More details here.
• In a move that is being widely criticized, Cox Communications, the third-largest cable company, has announced plans to test a system to manage Internet congestion by rating traffic based on its urgency and importance.   Coincidentally, Google released a new set of tools to enable users to find out if their ISPs are hindering traffic.  Read here for more.

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•  Yahoo is getting out of the stand-alone Internet radio business.  It has reached an agreement with CBS Radio for the operation and ad-sales operations for LAUNCHcast radio channel.  Yahoo employees will continue to handle programming.  According to this report in the WSJ, the decision was driven, in part, by rising royalty rates for streaming music.
• Here’s an interesting piece from Advertising Age discussing the use of widgets in advertising and marketing campaigns.  The upshot:  the surface is only beginning to be scratched.
• A piece in the New York Times Bits blog discusses how YouTube’s slogan “Broadcast Yourself” can also, inadvertently, mean “Broadcast Your Taste in Videos.”   Apparently by suscribing to a YouTube channel, your user name and picture are posted on the channel page, for all the world to see.  And there is no wasy to keep your subscription private.  We will have a longer post on these type of privacy issues soon.  Stay tuned.

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 »