The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit reversed an injunction against Google that prohibited it from facilitating access to images via thumbnails. The plaintiff in the case, Perfect 10, Inc., an owner and publisher of adult images, sued Google and Amazon.com for copyright infringement in November 2004.

In the summer of 2005, Perfect 10 asked a federal district court to levy a preliminary injunction against Google to keep the search engine provider from “copying, reproducing, distributing, publicly displaying, adapting or otherwise infringing, or contributing to the infringement of Perfect 10’s photographs …” The district court granted Perfect 10’s injunction request against both Google and Amazon. Both Google and Amazon appealed, leading to the Circuit Court’s decision.

The case is Perfect 10 vs Amazon.com, and Google, Inc., CV-06-55405. (.pdf)

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Guest editor Kim Hagedorn helms another edition of Copycense Clippings.

Clippings

• ArsTechnica. Library Coalition Comes Down Hard on National Security Letters. May 3, 2007. As part of National Library Legislative Day, library representative organizations discussed prospective changes to the Patriot Act with regard to national security letters, support of the Internet Freedom Preservation Act, and support of DMCA exceptions to protect fair use. Categories: DMCA; Events; Libraries & Information Science.
• Boing Boing. Obama Wants Creative Commons Licensed Presidential Debates. May 3, 2007. Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama sent a letter to the Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean asking that the debates be placed in the public domain or licensed using a Creative Commons license. Obama feels that allowing the debates to be publicly available, it will increase the political participation of the youth in this country. Categories: Film; Politics & Government.
• Jeremy Kirk. Google Rejects Viacom’s Copyright Claims. MacWorld. May 3, 2007. Among Google’s defenses to Viacom’s multiple count copyright infringement lawsuit against YouTube is a safe harbor claim pursuant to Section 512 of the Copyright Act. Categories: Cases & Litigation; DMCA; Web & Online.
• EFF Deep Links. Virtual Classes on Cyberlaw. May 3, 2007. State of Play Academy, a virtual law and technology academy, offers free courses on such topics as “The Viacom-YouTube Lawsuit” and “Every Move You Make: Location Tracking and the Law.” Three tracks — paper workshops, issue conversations, and How-to’s — are available. The Spring 2007 sessions runs from April 23 - June 8, 2007 and new classes are added during the course of the semester. The Spring 2007 catalog is available online. Categories: Education.
• Caroline McCarthy. Digg in Tough Spot With DMCA Debacle. News.com. May 2, 2007. Digg CEO Jay Adelson announces that he will continue to let customers post code that cracks HD-DVD copy protection. Adelson’s decision to allow customers to post the code likely violates Section 1201(a)(2)(A) of the Copyright Act, which includes a prohibition on “offer[ing] to the public … or otherwise traffic[king] in any technology, product, service, device, component, or part thereof, that is primarily designed or produced for the purpose of circumventing a technological measure that effectively controls access to a [protected] work.” Categories: DMCA.
• Derek Hill. Over-Enforcement Could Stifle Growth. Law Times. April 30, 2007. The article discusses the Viacom v. YouTube lawsuit and how Canada should learn from this case. The author advises the Canadian policy-makers that “less is more” in that more stringent laws regarding copyright infringement might, in the long-run, hinder the development of new technology. Categories: Infringement; International; Law, Legislation & Regulation.
• Economist.com. Criminalising The Consumer. April 27, 2007. The Economist, or all publications, writes an editorial chastising the use of digital rights management and copy protection. The editors claim copy protection measures just make “life difficult for paying customers” without preventing piracy, and propose that the entertainment industries stop treating customers like criminals and come up with better solutions to combat infringement. Categories: DRM; Film; File Sharing, P2P & Downloads; Music.
• Robert Townsend. Google Books: What’s Not to Like? AHA Today. April 30, 2007. An article published by the American Historical Association faults the Google Book Search project for poor scan quality, faulty metadata, and the company’s “peculiar views on copyright.” Jill Hurst-Wahl at Digitization 101 has been writing regularly about the first two for some time now. Categories: Books; Digitization; Libraries & Information Centers; Web & Online.
• Anne Broache. Supreme Court Sides with Microsoft in Patent Spat. News.com. April 30, 2007. Categories: The Supreme Court rules (.pdf) Microsoft cannot be held liable for patent infringement that may occur when it makes and installs Windows on computers outside the United States. AT&T claimed Microsoft’s practice of shipping master discs containing proprietary software code was a blueprint of an AT&T invention, not a component of that invention. Categories: Cases & Litigation; Patent.

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