Viacom’s billion dollar lawsuit against Google is getting ugly. The federal court hearing the case has ordered (pdf) Google to provide Viacom with “all data from the Logging database concerning each time a YouTube video has been viewed on the YouTube website or through embedding on a third-party website”. The ruling brings a new twist […]

It’s starting to look like members of the Screen Actors Guild may be heading for a strike like the recent Writers’ strike. Studios have suspended talks with the Screen Actors Guild after three weeks of negotiations. One of the main reasons for the breakdown in talks is that actors balked at a studio proposal that […]

Following two class-action lawsuits, Apple Canada is offering $45 credits to Canadian residents who purchased first-, second- or third-generation iPods before June 24, 2004. The proposed settlement is the result of two iPod owners suing because rechargeable batteries in the second year of use conked out after just three hours, contrary to the advertised claim […]

The United States District Court for the Southern District of New York today made public a decision in the proceeding to determine reasonable license fees to be paid to the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) by AOL, RealNetworks and Yahoo! for their online performance of musical works. Total payments to be made […]

Amazon.com has announced plans for an international rollout of Amazon MP3, a DRM-free MP3 digital music store, in 2008. Amazon MP3 is currently the only retailer that the four major labels are allowing to offer customers DRM-free MP3s. As a result, it can offer over 3.3 million songs from more than 270,000 artists in DRM-free […]

The Citizen Media Law Project (CMLP) has published an excellent primer on fair use and copyright in the context of new media. These are topics that podcasters, indie video publishers and bloggers continually struggle with. A recent example is the controversy over the Richter Scales unauthorized use of Lane Hartwell’s photos in a video for […]

The IFPI, an organization that represents the mainstream music industry worldwide, has released its take on the state of digital music 2008. According to the report, digital music is booming and the music industry is further along in the transition to digital than other industries. The industry appears to be more focused on P2P file […]

Writer’s Guild of America members plan to launch Strike TV, an Internet fund-raiser to help members affected by the strike. Set to launch in February, the online channel will feature original video shows created by working professionals in the TV and Film industry. “Strike TV videos will not be about the strike,” according to the […]

Apple’s had to deal with a lot of stupid lawsuits over the years, but this one takes the prize. An antitrust lawsuit filed against Apple on Dec. 31 charges the company with maintaining an illegal monopoly on the digital music market – because iPods don’t support Microsoft’s WMA format. “Apple’s iPod is alone among mass-market […]

The controversy over the Richter Scales’ Here Comes Another Bubble appears to be drawing to a close. The video was taken down from YouTube after photographer Lane Hartwell objected to the unauthorized use of one of her photos in the video. This has led to a great deal of debate over the role of copyright […]