Author: Annemarie Bridy
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Cyberterrorism or Cybervandalism?
When hackers believed by the U.S. government to have been sponsored by the state of North Korea infiltrated Sony Pictures’ corporate network and leaked reams of sensitive documents, the act was quickly labeled an act of “cyberterrorism.” When hackers claiming to be affiliated with ISIS subsequently hijacked the YouTube and Twitter accounts of the U.S.…
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Four Fair Use Takeaways from Cambridge University Press v. Patton
The most important copyright and educational fair use case in recent memory (mine, at least) was decided by the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals last week. The case, Cambridge University Press v. Patton, challenged Georgia State University’s use of e-reserves in courses offered by the university. The copyrighted works at issue were scholarly books–i.e., a…
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Google Fights Genericide Claim (and Wins)
Google’s famous trademark in its name has just survived a challenger’s attempt to have it declared generic. In Elliott v. Google, a federal court in Arizona held last week that despite the public’s use of the word “googling” to mean “searching on the Internet,” the “Google” word mark still functions in the minds of consumers…
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Takedown 2.0: The Trouble with Broad TROs Targeting Non-Party Online Intermediaries
On August 14, a federal district court in Oregon issued an ex parte temporary restraining order (TRO) in a civil copyright infringement case, ABS-CBN v. Ashby. The defendants in the case are accused of operating several “pirate websites” that infringe the plaintiffs’ copyrights in broadcast television programs. In addition to ordering the defendants to stop…
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Criminal Copyright Sanctions as a U.S. Export
The copyright industries’ mantra that “digital is different” has driven an aggressive, global expansion in criminal sanctions for copyright infringement over the last two decades. Historically speaking, criminal penalties for copyright infringement under U.S. law date from the turn of the 20th century, which means that for over a hundred years (from 1790 to 1897),…
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Fair Use, Legal Databases, and Access to Litigation Inputs
In copyright-and-fair-use news, a significant case for the legal profession’s access to the inputs of judicial decision-making was decided last week in federal district court in New York. The case was brought against West Publishing Corp. (owner of the Westlaw database) and Reed Elsevier (owner of the LexisNexis database) by two lawyers who alleged that their…
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Google Spain and the “Right to Be Forgotten”
The European Court of Justice (CJEU) has decided the Google Spain case, which involves the “right to be forgotten” on the Internet. The case was brought by Mario Costeja González, a lawyer who, back in 1998, had unpaid debts that resulted in the attachment and public auction of his real estate. Notices of the auctions,…
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FOIA: When the Exemptions Swallow the Rule
I’ve been researching and writing over the last few years on privately ordered—what the government calls “non-regulatory”—approaches to online IP enforcement. The gist of this approach is that members of trade groups representing different types of online intermediaries (broadband providers, payment processors, ad networks, online pharmacies) agree in private contracts or less formal “voluntary best…
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Is There a Future for Net Neutrality after Verizon v. FCC?
In a decision that was widely predicted by those who have been following the case, the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit has invalidated the FCC’s Open Internet Rules (so-called net neutrality regulations), which imposed non-discrimination and anti-blocking requirements on broadband Internet access providers. The rules were challenged by Verizon as soon as they…
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A Good Day at the Googleplex
Judge Chin has issued his decision in the Google Book Search case, and it’s a win for Google. For those of you who have been following the litigation, it’s been a long trip through the arcana of class certification. Today’s decision, however, finally gets to the merits of Google’s fair use defense under the…