copyright

Motherboard reports that some scammers are using YouTube's "three strikes" takedown policy to extort money from legitimate YouTube channels. While the larger profile of popular channels might offer some protection, smaller channels seem to be particularly exposed. The ~8000-subscriber...

YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki has written a blog post discussing the impact that the Article 13 legislation that recently passed the EU Parliament would have on creator content found on platforms such as YouTube. She says that the law could block content creators from uploading content to the...

The original writer of the Witcher Novels, Andrzej Sapkowski, is demanding "at least" sixty million Polish Zlotys (equivalent to about $16.2 million USD) from Witcher game developer and publisher CD Projekt. The author and his lawyers claim Sapkowski's compensation is too low relative to the...

As part of the changes Alphabet is making to its various services, Google is now showing creator and copyright metadata in Google Images results. Every image will have an "image credit" button that users can click to see where it came from. This follows a recent EU crackdown on search providers...

A group of movie companies, including Bodyguard Productions, Cobbler Nevada, Criminal Productions, Dallas Buyers Club, and Venice PI, hit Cloudflare with a DMCA subpoena in a Hawaiian federal court. The companies tried to keep the request quiet, but Torrentfreak managed to obtain a copy of the...

Today, Copytrack announced a big deal with Wenn Media Group, a European media company. Copytrack specializes in copyright enforcement via reverse image searching, and monitors the "international online use of images." The company says its services allow publishers, photographers, news agencies...

The European Parliament passed a controversial bill featuring a "link tax" and an "upload filter." The article was approved in June, struck down by the parliament in July, and further delayed before finally passing another vote today with 438 votes for and 226 against. The bill is supposed to...

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals was presented with a case about open WiFi and the responsibility of the owner of the network when someone commits copyright infringement on the IP address. Thomas Gonzalez was sued by the makers of the Adam Sandler movie, The Cobbler. He had won his initial...

Cox Communications has been hit with an over $1 billion lawsuit after multiple record labels sued the ISP for allegedly ignoring copyright infringement by customers. Under US law an ISP must take certain steps when sent a DMCA take down notice. Cox is accused of limiting the amount of notices...

YouTube has released a new tool called Copyright Match that checks uploads to verify whether they are re-uploads by others on a different channel. It's important that you are the first to upload the content because the time of upload determines who should be shown matches. Once a match is found...

The EU Legal Affairs Committee has voted to push further its tougher copyright laws in order to get a hold of companies like Google, Facebook, and MySpace. OK, maybe not MySpace. The big clenchers here are Article 11 and Article "We hate political memes" 13. Article 11 could hold companies...

Mac's Bar in Lansing, Michigan received 500 DMCA notices last week The bar's talent buyer tweeted the news on the 22nd, showing the 500 pages of DMCA notices. Each of the violations occurred between 9:40 and 10:30 on the day that the bar was hosting a juggalo Valentine's Day hip-hop show...

In a surprise move a federal judge in California has denied Disney's injunction request against Redbox to stop them from selling download codes of their movies. To further salt the wound the judge has also found that Disney has engaged in copyright misuse. Ouch! It sounds like a dude named...

The U.S Copyright Office is currently considering whether to loosen DMCA's provisions for abandoned online games. Currently there are preservation exemptions to keep abandoned games accessible, however the current exemptions do not cover online games. TorrentFreak is reporting that the...

In a report on Torrentfreak, Justin Goldman filed a lawsuit after a photo of Tom Brady went viral and ended up being used on several news outlets. A New York federal court has ruled people can be held liable for copyright infringement if they embed a tweet hosted by a third party. News outlets...

Google has entered an agreement with Getty Images that calls for them to remove the view image button from all of Google's photo search pages. In turn Getty is dropping all complaints against Google for anticompetitive behavior. Google image searches just won't be the same anymore and you'll...

Eric Lundgren, a dedicated recycler of e-waste, has been sentenced to 15 months in the pen for infringing on a Microsoft copyright. The rest of the story is Mr. Lundgren processes more than 41M pounds of e-waste each year and he hated what he saw as planned obsolescence and wanted to extend the...

After 2 years since the case was filed, TorrentFreak is reporting that a jury in California has awarded Grumpy Cat $710,001 for copyright and trademark infringement, with a symbolic $1 in nominal damages for contract breach. The Grenade Beverage had licensed the copyright and trademarks to...

A 72 year old man from Hawaii has received a letter from an attorney claiming he has illegally downloaded a movie, and over 1000 other downloads. He received a letter offering an easy $3,900 settlement, which would increase to $4,900 if he failed to respond before August 7th. These "illegal...