Through his lawyers, Girls Gone Wild impresario and frequent Overlawyered mentionee Joe Francis is wary of serving as the basis for a fictionalized character in an upcoming movie called Piranha 3-D. [IGN]
Posts Tagged ‘movies film and videos’
Censoring movie depictions of smoking
“There has been a growing effort over the past decade from groups such as Smoke Free Movies and SceneSmoking.org, which hosts the annual Hackademy Awards, to pressure Hollywood into cutting back the amount of smoking in films. Now those groups are getting government support for their cause from US Reps. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass) and Joseph Pitts (R-PA) and from a group of health organizations, including Legacy, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Medical Association and the World Health Organization.” [Washington Post] Legacy, incidentally, is a group created as a result of the $246-billion state-Medicaid tobacco settlement whose purposes include pushing for further “tobacco control” — one of many examples in this area in which government-driven funding is employed to further advocacy on one side of controversial issues.
“New Suits Could Chill Writers’ Use of Own Experiences”
Two lawsuits filed last month claim that writers improperly based fictional characters on the complainants. [Matthew Heller, OnPoint News] A much noted case last November, in which a Georgia jury awarded $100,000 to a woman who said she had been wrongly used as the basis in part for a character in the novel “The Red Hat Club”, may have encouraged the filing of such suits.
“Court: Movies must be accessible to hearing, visually impaired”
The Ninth Circuit greenlights a potentially significant ADA suit, reversing a trial court that “found that the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Arizonans with Disabilities Act do not require movie theaters to provide captions and descriptions.” [Yuma Sun, Legal NewsLine]
“Everyone on TV reads the same newspaper”
Do studio lawyers think it’s too dangerous to use real newspapers because they haven’t been rights-cleared? [Doctorow, BoingBoing]
Suing unauthorized movie sharers, cont’d
“In the past five months, Virginia-based law firm Dunlap, Grubb, & Weaver has filed suits against thousands of individuals accused of illegally downloading independent films—an operation that could yield the firm and its clients more than $19 million in damages.” Doing business as U.S. Copyright Group, the firm subpoenas ISPs to obtain IP addresses of illegal sharers “and threatens to sue each person for $150,000 unless they agree to a $1,500 to $2,500 settlement fee.” [ABA Journal] Earlier here, etc.
Suit alleges “Jersey Shore” show is criminal enterprise
The suit claims the hit MTV reality show profits “from showing fights that cast members deliberately provoked.” A New Jersey judge has denied a motion to dismiss. [AP/Daily Caller] More: Courthouse News, Asbury Park Press.
“Climate Scientist, Heated Up Over Satirical Video, Threatens Lawsuit”
The Penn State professor is steamed about being made fun of in the video “Hide the Decline.” [Ed Barnes, FoxNews.com]
RIAA/MPAA’s wish list for stopping piracy
It’s rather…ambitious. [Esguerra/EFF, BoingBoing, h/t reader Keith D.]
20,000 individual movie downloaders sued
Film biz follows RIAA path? “In what may be a sign of things to come, more than 20,000 individual movie torrent downloaders have been sued in the past few weeks in Washington D.C. federal court for copyright infringement. A handful of cases have already settled, and those that haven’t are creating some havoc for major ISPs.” [Eriq Gardner, THR Esq.]