US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is pushing Congress to enact a sweeping new intellectual property bill, the Intellectual Property Protection Act of 2007, that would increase criminal penalties for copyright infringement, including “attempts” to commit piracy where no actual copyright infringement occurs. “To meet the global challenges of IP crime, our criminal laws must be […]

Media Rights Technologies and BlueBeat.com, developers of digital rights management software, have issued cease and desist letters to Microsoft, Adobe, Real Networks and Apple for failing to implement the companies’ DRM technology in Windows Vista, Adobe’s Flash Player, Real Player and Apple’s iTunes and iPod. The companies are using an unusual interpretation of the Digital […]

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed suit Tuesday against Uri Geller, a “paranormalist” best known for bending spoons, for bending the law to silence his critics. EFF’s client, Brian Sapient, belongs to a group called the “Rational Response Squad,” which is dedicated to debunking what it calls irrational beliefs. As part of their mission, Sapient […]

UK’s Football Association Premier League Limited and indie music publisher Bourne Co. filed a class action lawsuit in federal court in New York Friday to stop the unauthorized use of their works, and those of all other similarly situated copyright holders, on YouTube. The lawsuit names as defendants two YouTube affiliates (YouTube, Inc. and YouTube […]

Presidential candidate Barack Obama on Thursday called on Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean to make video from any Democratic presidential debates available “for free and without restriction.” Obama supports a call from Creative Commons founder Lawrence Lessig to share the debate videos and eliminate unnecessary regulation of political speech. “Technology has exploded the opportunity […]

A federal court ruled yesterday that music performance and royalty fees don’t apply to music downloads and movie downloads that feature music. The U.S. District Court in the Southern District of New York affirmed a lower court ruling that found that digital music and media downloads aren‚Äôt public performances. Because they aren’t public performances, they […]

Nearly 30 years after it aired on television, episodes of WKRP, a television show about the antics of a Cincinatti radio station, are being made available on DVD. Unfortunately for fans, the series, which prominently featured Dr. Johnny Fever (played by Howard Hesseman) playing popular music of the day, has been “butchered”, removing the music […]

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is fighting to protect the free speech rights of MoveOn.org Civic Action and Brave New Films after their parody of The Colbert Report was removed from YouTube because of a copyright complaint from media giant Viacom. Viacom recently asked YouTube to remove 100,000 video clips from Viacom-owned properties, including MTV […]

March 20 was the final day of the first European Corporate Podcasting Summit. Following on the format of the previous day, the second day kept up the same very brisk pace. Presenters and panels were each given a scant thirty minutes in which to give their talks — meaning a lot of ideas and information […]

Chinese authorities are considering new rules to regulate blogging and podcasting in China. Long Xinmin, director of China’s General Administration of Press and Publications (GAPP), said March 12 that his administration, together with several other departments, is working on new rules on Internet publishing activities. Long said the rules will help guarantee freedom of speech […]