RIAA and file sharing – Overlawyered

A last laugh on ADA vs. Berkeley online courses?

Walter Olson — Sun, 19 Mar 2017 15:56:48 +0000

Those free online course materials may be gone from the University of California, Berkeley, courtesy of a U.S. Deparment of Justice interpretation of the Americans with Disabilities Act and related statutes, but they’re not gone from the Internet: “20,000 Worldclass University Lectures Made Illegal, So We Irrevocably Mirrored Them” [LBRY] Won’t that infringe on a lot of copyrights? The site claims not: “The vast majority of the lectures are licensed under a Creative Commons license that allows attributed, non-commercial redistribution.” Earlier coverage here, here, here, and here.

As someone put it, it looks as if the internet recognizes ADA litigation as damage and routes around it.

Tags: online speech, RIAA and file sharing, web accessibility

A last laugh on ADA vs. Berkeley online courses? is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Jim Hood, a go-to guy for Hollywood?

Walter Olson — Wed, 17 Dec 2014 11:15:58 +0000

Who’d have guessed that movie studios would entrust populist Mississippi Attorney General and longtime Overlawyered favorite Jim Hood with a key role in pushing their rights as copyright owners against online services and search engines? Not I [Eli Lehrer, Weekly Standard] More from Mike Masnick at TechDirt: “it appears the MPAA and the major Hollywood studios directly funded various state Attorneys General in their efforts to attack and shame Google.” Related: The Verge.

Sequel: Google goes to court to block a sweeping subpoena from Hood [ArsTechnica, HuffPost (Hood: “salacious Hollywood tale”)] “One of Hood’s letters critical of Google, published earlier this week by The New York Times, was ‘largely written by lawyers for the movie industry,’ the company points out.” More: Hood vs. Google, from our archives.

Tags: attorneys general, copyright, Google, Jim Hood, movies film and videos, RIAA and file sharing

Jim Hood, a go-to guy for Hollywood? is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

“You could be liable for $150,000 in penalties…”

Walter Olson — Sun, 08 Jun 2014 10:32:48 +0000

“…settle instead for $20 per song.” Rightscorp, a new for-profit copyright cop, “is now preparing technology that could flood the Internet with ‘hundreds of millions of notices’ to alleged copyright infringers.” [Joe Mullin, ArsTechnica]

Tags: copyright, RIAA and file sharing

“You could be liable for $150,000 in penalties…” is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

July 18 roundup

Walter Olson — Thu, 18 Jul 2013 04:05:00 +0000

“This is just stunning. DOJ is soliciting tips from the public in order to build a case against a single citizen.” [@radleybalko, William Jacobson, @andrewmgrossman] Apparently, Florida Gov. Rick Scott has the power to remove prosecutor Angela Corey from office, and her post-verdict description of Zimmerman as “murderer” is the sort of unprofessionalism that might advance that day [Ian Tuttle with much more about her career, earlier] Ken doesn’t hold back from telling us what he thinks of Nancy Grace [Popehat, earlier]
Washington Post covers USDA mandate of disaster plan for magicians’ rabbits [Lowering the Bar, David Fahrenthold/WaPo, earlier]
“Joel Tenenbaum’s $675,000 Music Downloading Fine Upheld” [AP]
“Hey look, an actual Third Amendment case” may be premature regarding this Nevada dispute, especially if we’re not sure cops = soldiery [Ilya Somin]
“Why The State Attorneys General’s Assault On Internet Immunity Is A Terrible Idea” [Eric Goldman, Forbes]
Connecticut: “Supreme Court Upholds $2.9 Million Award For Injured Bicyclist” [Courant]
The ABA’s annual Blawg 100 nominations are now open, in case, you know, (nudge)

Tags: attorneys general, Connecticut, Florida, Martin-Zimmerman case, Nancy Grace, online speech, police, prosecutorial abuse, RIAA and file sharing

July 18 roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Copyright and D.C. lobbying: that was fast

Walter Olson — Mon, 19 Nov 2012 12:46:15 +0000

The House Republican Study Committee calls for reconsideration of over-restrictive copyright law, then un-calls for it a day later [TechDirt, rueful update; Alex Tabarrok]

P.S. And check out this upcoming Dec. 6 Cato discussion of the newly published Copyright Unbalanced: From Incentive To Excess (Mercatus Center; Jerry Brito, ed.)

Tags: copyright, RIAA and file sharing, U.S. House of Representatives, wayward Republicans

Great moments in damages calculation? Nope

Walter Olson — Sun, 27 May 2012 14:01:44 +0000

Update: That’s what we get for posting hastily on a holiday weekend. We — and a great many other sites from CBS News to Business Insider to The Onion — took the below report seriously, but per Mike Masnick at TechDirt, it’s both outdated — Judge Kimba Wood rebuked RIAA’s damage demand as excessive, and the LimeWire case settled for a far lower amount — and more broadly questionable (while the original demands might have reached trillions, and were justly subject to ridicule on that account, the jump to $72 trillion seems to be at best someone’s subjective extrapolation).

Masnick’s story is here. What follows is the original post.

“It’s no secret that LimeWire was once a hotbed of peer-to-peer music piracy, but the RIAA has now attempted to sue it for $72 trillion – more money than exists in the world today. LimeWire was shut down in October 2010, but litigation continues from music bodies around the world…” [Ultimate Guitar]

Tags: damages, music and musicians, RIAA and file sharing

Great moments in damages calculation? Nope is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Spanish professor says recording industry group violates antitrust law

Walter Olson — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 12:39:55 +0000

And the next thing you know, they sue him [Josh Wright, Mike Masnick] The blog post by Enrique Dans, who is professor of information systems at IE Business School, is here.

Tags: antitrust, bloggers and the law, copyright, RIAA and file sharing, Spain

Spanish professor says recording industry group violates antitrust law is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

The gang that couldn’t shake down straight

Walter Olson — Fri, 30 Mar 2012 12:19:48 +0000

Scam pretend-lawyers pose as real Hollywood lawyers firing off nastygrams to shake cash out of illicit downloaders. [Above the Law]

Tags: copyright, fraud, nastygrams, RIAA and file sharing

The gang that couldn’t shake down straight is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

O lawmakers, heed not the mob’s wrath

Walter Olson — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 15:53:10 +0000

They understand not the wisdom of SOPA [Julian Sanchez, Cato at Liberty]

Tags: RIAA and file sharing

O lawmakers, heed not the mob’s wrath is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

After SOPA protest day

Walter Olson — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 17:54:57 +0000

What did the protests accomplish? [Image of one-day change in Hill opposition courtesy TechCrunch, PC World, Timothy Lee/Ars Technica]
Some of the best protests [Ad Age, earlier on Flickr’s clever entry and others]
Going-dark site “strike” was a bit like Atlas Shrugged without the monologues [Greve] “So, nothing like #AS” [@nickgillespie] “…and fewer pirates” [@JohnPMcGuinness] “That’s a shame. I want to see Francisco’s money speech in binary code.” [@BenK84]
Speaking of Citizens United… [John Samples/Cato, Popehat, @joshgreenman]
Chris Dodd: we could turn off flow of Hollywood politibux if we don’t get this law [Politico] “Win/win!” [James Poulos]
Where next? [Julian Sanchez, Cato, Kotaku (“PIPA not as bad as SOPA” claims), roll call via Pro Publica]

Tags: campaign regulation, copyright, RIAA and file sharing, rogue site legislation

After SOPA protest day is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system