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Posts Tagged ‘Federal Judge’

Indian Authors, Publishers Unhappy with Google Books Plan to Scan

A group of 15 authors and publishers and two organizations in India have filed a formal objection to the Google Books Settlement.

The Indian Reprographic Rights Organisation and the Federation of Indian Publishers and these 15 individuals join a panoply of international entities who have objected to Google’s ambitious and controversial plan to scan as many books as possible throughout the world. Though the search and web app giant’s scheme would create a vast online library, it may also infringe on the rights of content creators and has involved a lengthy international legal battle.

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The coalition of Indian publishing entities claims that Google’s proposed settlement is a violation of copyright laws, both internationally and in India, because it allows for Google’s scanning, redistributing and selling books online. Content creators who don’t want their work online must opt out of the plan themselves; if an author does not explicitly opt out, his or her silence is deemed implicit consent.

In the past, Google’s book-scanning project has come under the scrutiny of the U.S. Department of Justice as well as the governments of Germany and France. Federal judge Danny Chin is currently presiding over the case, which involves a class-action lawsuit and a settlement of more than $100 million for copyright holders whose works had been reproduced without their consent.

The Indian authors and publishers have submitted their objections to the settlement to Chin, who has decided to hold a final hearing on February 18, 2010 to determine whether the Google Books Settlement is fair, adequate and reasonable.

Check out ReadWriteWeb’s archive of articles on the Google Books Settlement for more information.

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RIAA needs more time to ponder bad choices

The federal judge overseeing the Jammie Thomas-Rasset P2P case gave the recording industry a week to decide if it would accept his decision to slash Thomas-Rasset’s damages from $80,000 to $2,250 per song. But the labels haven’t decided yet, and they have just asked the judge for more time. In the meantime, they’re telling her that she can wipe her hands clean of the whole situation for $25,000.

The “Unopposed Motion for Extension of Time to Notify Court Regarding Plaintiffs’ Position on Remittitur” asks Judge Michael Davis to give the labels another 10 days to ponder the matter. The defense attorneys have already agreed to the request, which will likely be approved.

At the same time, the RIAA has given Thomas-Rasset a final settlement offer of $25,000, the totality of which would go to a musician’s charity. Otherwise, the RIAA will go ahead with the appeal. Thomas-Rasset has already chosen to challenge the damage award and one of her attorneys told CNET that she is going to decline the settlement offer.

So it appears that the case is far from over. Even if the recording industry were to accept the $54,000 in total damages; it made a point in its new filing of talking about its appeals court shot clock, reminding us that it might well accept remittitur (thus ending the trial phase of the case) but then appeal Judge Davis’ actions. Given the precedent-setting nature of the case, this would be expensive, exhausting, but not at all surprising.

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Psystar gets permanent injunction, legal warning from judge

Psystar’s quixotic quest to “open” Mac OS X from the clutches of Apple has been stifled by a permanent injunction from a federal judge. The order bars the company from distributing computers with modified copies of Mac OS X, or in any way aiding or abetting anyone else to do so. Despite Psystar’s attempt to have Snow Leopard and its Rebel EFI software left out of any injunction, Judge Alsup included all future versions of Mac OS X as covered by the injunction, and warned Psystar that if it continues to sell Rebel EFI, it does so at its “own peril.”

After Apple made the switch to x86-based architecture, Psystar made waves by becoming the first company to purport to offer Mac OS X-compatible clones. After a surprisingly long four-month wait, Apple filed a lawsuit against Psystar for copyright, DCMA, trademark, and other violations. Though Psystar attempted a number of stall tactics and brazenly suggested that it was the champion of “choice” in “Mac OS X-capable hardware,” summary judgment was awarded in Apple’s favor on the copyright and DCMA issues. Psystar and Apple agreed to settle for $2.7 million and call it quits on the remaining issues, while Apple moved for a permanent injunction against Psystar on the question of copyright infringement.

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AT&T loses first round in battle over Verizon ads

Filed under: Odds and ends, iPhone

The Associated Press is reporting that an Atlanta Federal judge has denied an AT&T request to pull the Verizon ‘there’s a map for that‘ ads.

The judge has set a December 16th hearing to give AT&T another chance to make a case.

AT&T filed suit earlier this month looking for a temporary restraining order to stop the ads, and wanted a permanent injunction to halt them. The ads say that the AT&T network is not up to the quality or range of the Verizon network, and shows two coverage maps to make the point. AT&T claims the maps are misleading, and injures the company reputation.

Verizon has said the commercials are truthful and accurate.

The case pits the two communication giants against each other as they fight for increasing shares of the mobile market. AT&T has an exclusive on the iPhone, and that has brought AT&T an increasingly growing share of mobile customers.

Verizon was reportedly offered an exclusive on the iPhone more than 2 years ago but turned it down. There have been sporadic reports that Verizon would like to get the iPhone back when the AT&T contract expires, but with some Verizon ads targeting the iPhone as well as AT&T that looks to be increasingly unlikely.

TUAWAT&T loses first round in battle over Verizon ads originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 18 Nov 2009 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Ignoring RIAA lawsuits cheaper than going to trial

Jammie Thomas-Rasset and Joel Tenenbaum captured the nation’s attention they were defendants in the RIAA’s first two trials against accused online infringers. But here’s the mind-warping reality: both defendants would have been far better off monetarily if they had simply ignored the complaint altogether and failed to show up in court.

That counterintuitive logic played out again this week in Massachusetts, where federal judge Nancy Gertner issued four default judgments against accused P2P file-swappers who never bothered to respond to the charges against them. Their failure to appear meant an automatic loss, and though the judge does have some discretion in setting penalties, judges often pick the minimum awards in such cases.

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Village Voice Wishes McMaster Would Hate Them, Too

And you thought the South Carolina v. Craigslist story was dead.

If anything sucks more than being the target of an ambitious but delusional gubernatorial candidate who has suddenly developed a bit of a fetish for prostitution, it’s being ignored by that candidate. As far as Village Voice sees the world, Craigslist just got a bunch of free press. And they want their share.

When Craigslist management was facing a criminal investigation for listings on the site they did the smart thing. They talked about the law, and they pointed out that the real smut was on other sites that were being ignored by the South Carolina Attorney General. If you really want hard core porn and prostitution, Craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster pointed out, check out Village Voice’s BackPage.com.

That’s all body fluids under the bridge now, of course, since a federal judge smacked down McMaster and forbid him from stalking Craigslist management.

But Village Voice is still smarting from those Buckmaster links in that blog post. Yesterday they issued a very official press release titled “Village Voice Media to Craigslist CEO Buckmaster: Calm Down, Back Off; There is Nothing Wrong With a Little Competition.”

In an email, Village Voice’s PR firm accuses Buckmaster of “leveraging the legal bind he’s in to damage Craigslist’s competition.”

The real reason for the press release and press outreach, of course, is to get a little bit of the spotlight pointed to backpages, too. Because their official story doesn’t make sense.

Backpages has adult ads, lots and lots of them, and they’re proud of it: “We will continue to exercise our right to accept legal adult postings,” they say. All Buckmaster did was link to a whole bunch of them. And since backpages desperately needs the traffic, what they really should be doing is thanking Craigslist, not attacking them.

What we learned today: If you really want to pay for sex, backpages is the place to go.

Full press release is below:

Village Voice Media to Craigslist CEO Buckmaster: Calm Down, Back Off; There is Nothing Wrong With a Little Competition

PHOENIX, May 29 /PRNewswire/ — Last Friday, Jim Buckmaster, CEO of Craigslist, fired a deliberate, unnecessary and wholly inaccurate shot across the bow of Village Voice Media and backpage.com, our online classified advertising property. Given the serious nature of what Buckmaster inferred in his post about Village Voice Media newspapers and backpage.com, we can’t sit on our hands and be silent.

In the original blog post, which was later “submarine” edited to reword and soften some of the attacks towards Village Voice Media, Buckmaster complained that politicians are attacking Craigslist but not Village Voice Media and other media outlets because they have a “need for positive stories and campaign endorsements from those very same newspapers.

“Is it possible that writing stories critical of Craigslist’s (relatively tame) ‘adult service’ section is more career-friendly than attacking their own employer (or journalistic media brethren) for operating a (far more graphic) ‘adult service’ section of their own?”

Buckmaster and Craigslist are in a tough, and in many ways, frightening situation – they have a number of moralistic state Attorneys General threatening them over their adult ads, and a raft of bad press following the terrible tragedy in Boston that the company is admittedly in no way responsible for. But, the manner in which Buckmaster is responding to this pressure – by disingenuously lashing out at competitors and caving to political pressure – is inexcusable, and displays a remarkable lack of sound judgment.

In 2002, Village Voice Media recognized the forces that were changing the classified advertising market and created backpage.com to answer that challenge. We’ve put a lot of work into making it the No. 2 free classifieds site in U.S. We’re fine with being No. 2, proud in fact. Buckmaster, apparently, is not. Instead of working with his competitors to find a way to solve, or at least mitigate issues surrounding adult ads – the shortcomings of automatic content filters is something we are all trying to fix – Buckmaster simply attempted to take the competition down with him. And, his methods leave much to be desired.

First off, our newspapers don’t endorse politicians and rarely have anything nice to say about them, so to say that politicians aren’t going after Village Voice Media because they need our endorsement isn’t viable. Secondly, Buckmaster is only complaining because a competitor is challenging his economic advantage in the free classified arena – which he built in part on adult ads – and has made him a very wealthy man. His talk of building community and serving his users rings hollow. It now appears that, as is so often the case with New Age entrepreneurs, it’s all about the money.

We will continue to exercise our right to accept legal adult postings from our users and concentrate on growing backpage.com. We are aggressively building additional technical solutions as well as increasing our manual site inspections to improve efficiency of removing content that is illegal or otherwise violates our Terms of Use.

About Village Voice Media

Village Voice Media is a collection of 15 weekly newspapers and daily Web sites, including New York’s Village Voice, the LA Weekly, Denver’s Westword and the Phoenix New Times. Online, in print, and on mobile devices, VVM’s products combine music, food and events coverage with gritty, hard-hitting journalism to create the most powerful city guides in each market. While the focus of the brand is local, its free classifieds site backpage.com, partnership with social recommendation engine LikeMe.net and national sales force, Voice Media Group, extend its reach on a national level.

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