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Just saw this mentioned in Wired - a federal court judge in San Jose issued a ruling in the Lenz vs. Universal case, where Universal issued a DMCA takedown notice for content posted on Youtube, and the recipient of that notice is now suing Universal for damages:

In the nation’s first such ruling, a federal judge on Wednesday said copyright owners must consider ‘fair use’ of their works before sending takedown notices to online video-sharing sites.

The 10-page decision (.pdf) came a month after Universal Music told a San Jose, California federal judge that copyright owners need not consider the “fair use” doctrine before issuing takedown notices requiring online video-sharing sites to remove content.

Other than pointing out that the term “consider” presents a considerable amount of wiggle room, this seems to be a positive step in the right direction. In fact, part of Universal’s argument was that it was impossible to determine whether content met any fair use standard. It will be interesting to see if this precedent stands.

Read the full Wired article

Tags: News

This was an article published on LWN, written by Lisa Hoover. A very nice compendium of who we are and what we’re about:

Link to article.

Fundable.org page

Tags: News

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Do We Really Like the Taste of Apple's Remote-Kill KoolAid?

Today’s Wall Street Journal has a story about Apple’s App Store for the iPhone. Clearly, having an easy way for mobile users to download apps is a good way to spur development and make money. According to Apple, over the past month the App Store has sold $30 million in iPhone and iPod touch apps. Of those sales, Apple should take in about $9 million, as it keeps about 30% of each app sold. While some application developers have complained about the revenue split, when one considers the costs associated with hosting the applications, cost of money changing hands, and general maintenance of the store, 30% is not unreasonable. What is increasingly unreasonable is the way Apple is controlling the App Store, both to the detriment of developers and consumers. read more

In my post from Monday, I laid out a very brief outline of some of the conclusions reached by the Second Circuit in its Cablevision decision on remote DVRs. Today, I want to take a step back and discuss why it was so important for the development of digital media and technology. Two theories espoused by the TV networks in the case were extraordinarily dangerous for copyright law. The first was that fleeting, transitory copies like buffer copies could make someone liable for copyright infringement. read more

Tonight at 6pm at LinuxWorld, GeekPAC will host a Birds-of-a-feather on “Hacking the Election.” If you’re at LinuxWorld, it’s in room 310 at 6pm. See you there! Tags: News

PAC to support copyright reform, DMCA reform, net neutrality, and other technology issues

GeekPAC (http://www.geek-pac.org/), a group of concerned citizens formerly known as BytesFree.org, has relaunched under a new name to reflect its new focus. GeekPAC will form a political action committee with the goal of building grassroots political support for copyright reform, DMCA reform, net neutrality, patent reform, and other hot-button political issues. Additionally, GeekPAC has launched its first fundraiser at Fundable.org ( https://www.fundable.com/groupactions/groupaction.2008-07-22.8448851451 ) to cover the initial startup costs.

GeekPAC will be a grassroots, member-driven organization with an emphasis on educating the public at large on how these issues affect daily life. Said John Mark Walker, GeekPAC Founder, “Many of us in the technology community have done a poor job of communicating to the general public why they should care about these issues. With GeekPAC, we hope to change that by driving thought leadership in this area and building a critical mass of concerned citizens who will be able to get the attention of their local politicians.”

GeekPAC’s first action under its new name will be a birds-of-a-feather (BOF) session at LinuxWorld Conference and Expo (http://www.linuxworldexpo.com/) under the topic “Hacking the Election.” The session will take place at 6pm PDT on Wednesday, August 6 in room 301 at Moscone Center in San Francisco and will be open to all LinuxWorld Expo attendees.

Another work in progress is a voter information project, designed to gather data for every member of Congress pertaining to their voting records on relevant bills. The voter information project can be found at http://deki.geek-pac.org/Voter_Information_Project

**To contribute to GeekPAC see http://www.fundable.com/groupactions/groupaction.2008-07-22.8448851451

(GeekPAC is not yet incorporated and donations are not tax deductible.)

**Visit http://www.geek-pac.org/

William Patry has shuttered his blog, The Patry Copyright Blog. The archives are gone too. He tells why in a final post. It's a tragedy, nothing less. No, no one at Google made him do it. He did it for a couple of reasons, both of which resonate with me, and I think they are important to highlight. I must warn you, it's a bit depressing. Here are the reasons:

1. The Inability or Refusal to Accept the Blog for What it is: A Personal Blog 2. The Current State of Copyright Law is too depressing

But it's in the details that the story is told. Read more at Groklaw

As if there weren't enough already, including skyrocketing gas prices and pollution, now we can add "might get shot" to the list.

See this latest incident in San Francisco. It's getting *scary* out there.