I was perusing one of my favorite entertainment industry
websites, hollywoodreporter.com and happened to migrate over to the Esquire tab
for some up-to-the minute legal issues that may be interesting. Another reason
I look there is because their blogs are always informative, relevant, and
entertaining. The first article that caught my eye is the latest in the ongoing
litigation involving LimeWire.com and end user file sharing. After reaching an
over one hundred million dollar settlement with the RIAA, several Hollywood film
studio conglomerates seized the opportunity of an earlier judgment and the
recent RIAA settlement and filed a new round of law suits against LimeWire for
copyright infringement.
Although industry analysts believed that with the
overwhelming evidence and their past losses, LimeWire would seek a settlement
rather than go through another costly trial but LimeWire appears to be drawing
a line in the sand. According to the article, LimeWire is asking the court to
force the film conglomerates to prove LimeWire facilitated infringement.
Although this case and many others have proven that the RIAA and others can win
lawsuits and recover some of the losses file sharing has caused but, when all
the suing is complete and settlements made...file sharing may go down in
history as the technical achievement that destroyed the recorded music industry.
The second article I thought was very interesting was regarding
litigation between (William) Faulkner Literary Rights, LLC and Sony over the
use of a quote from one of Faulkner’s books, Requiem for a Nun. The suit
alleges that the quote, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past,” was used
in the Sony production of Woody Allen’s film “Midnight in Paris” and spoken by
actor Owen Wilson. Faulkner
Literary Rights, LLC claims that neither Sony nor Woody Allen sought or
received permission to use that quote and therefore, Faulkner Literary Rights,
LLC, incurred damages. In their response, Sony claims that since William
Faulkner used the quote in a public speech, that it is classified as fair use
and receiving permission was not required.
This is an excellent example of how complicated the details
of copyright laws are and in this age of advanced technology and the ability to
record everything almost all the time. Staking a claim on ownership rights is
only going to get more complex in the future.
One final article I thought was really interesting was about
a recent finding by the U.S. Copyright Office on exempting certain activities
from being deemed illegal under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act's (DMCA)
anti-circumvention protections. The jest of the article was that under a recent
ruling the U.S. Copyright Office that it is no longer illegal to take a certain
part of a DVD and "make use of short portions...for the purpose of
criticism or comment" according to the article this includes use in
“noncommercial videos such as remix or mash-up videos, documentary films, multimedia
ebooks offering film analysis, and for educational purposes such as a film
studies classroom.” Of course prior to this ruling media critics were becoming
concerned that copyright owners would be able to prevent them from being able
to use examples of works in negatively reviewing copyrighted material. With
this ruling, educational facilities, both for profit and not for profit, will
be able to use portions of protected works in educational surroundings without
receiving prior permission.
This was a very interesting week with the legal happenings
in the entertainment industry and these articles prove again that this industry,
at least the legal side of it, is forever changing.
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