copyright

The Authors Guild is ready to take on Google Books after its book-scanning lawsuit "cleared a major hurdle," Authors Guild President Scott Turow wrote in a blog post published today.

"We're one big step closer to justice being done for U.S. authors," Turow wrote.

U.S. District Court Judge Denny Chin yesterday gave the guild the green light to sue Google as a class of authors, allowing the organization to represent in the suit other writers and their heirs with a copyright interest in books that were scanned by Google as part of their … Read more

NEW YORK--Wave goodbye to watching the Super Bowl for free if Aereo is allowed to operate, lawyers for the nation's largest broadcasters told a federal court yesterday.

Aereo's attorneys scoffed at that notion. They said that Aereo's Internet video service will only make it easier for users to access freely available over-the-air broadcasts, which they have every right to do. The two sides generated plenty of drama in a Manhattan federal district court as two days of arguments were wrapped up. The judge now must decide whether to shut down Aereo.

The parties were in court as … Read more

The structure, sequence, and organization of the 37 Java APIs at question in the Oracle v. Google case are not copyrightable, Judge William Alsup of the U.S. District Court of Northern California said in a ruling today.

However, it's a narrow ruling that only covers the APIs at question in the copyright phase of this case.

Oracle had sued Google over copyright infringement related to the use of 37 Java APIs used on the Android mobile operating system. Google argued they were free to use because the Java programming language is free to use, and the APIs are … Read more

MegaUpload's attorneys have asked a federal court to toss out the criminal copyright charges brought against the company, arguing that the United States simply has no jurisdiction over the Hong Kong-based cloud-storage service.

"Megaupload does not have an office in the United States, nor has it had one previously," MegaUpload's lawyers wrote in their motion to dismiss. "Service of a criminal summons on Megaupload is therefore impossible."

MegaUpload filed its motion today with the District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, the court overseeing the U.S. government's case against the company, … Read more

NEW YORK -- A group of television broadcasters this morning tried to show a federal court that Aereo, the fledgling Internet-video service, is much more like Netflix and Hulu than an antenna-rental service -- and that it therefore has to pay to use their programs.

Aereo maintains that the company's business model immunizes it from paying for programming the way Netflix does. The broadcasters say this is nonsense, and this morning asked the District Court for the Southern District of New York for a preliminary injunction that would require Aereo to cease operations.

To grant that, the court must … Read more

Reversing the trend of recent court upsets for the Web giant, Google had a notable success in French Court today. Siding with Google in its battle against French broadcaster TF1, the court ruled that the Internet company is not liable for filtering out pirated content on YouTube, according to Reuters.

The French media company brought the case against Google alleging that copyrighted sports and movies were easily accessible on YouTube, according to Reuters.

In this case, TF1 sought more than $176 million (141 million euros) in damages, but the French court ended up ordering the broadcaster to instead pay Google'… Read more

A New Zealand judge wants to see the evidence against MegaUpload's managers.

Judge David Harvey has given New Zealand law enforcement officials three weeks to provide documentary evidence against managers of the cloud-storage service accused of encouraging massive copyright infringement.

Harvey was responding to a request made by MegaUpload's lawyers to require New Zealand, which is pressing the case on behalf of the United States, to fully disclose the evidence against company managers. The U.S. government in January indicted MegaUpload's founder Kim DotCom and five others connected to the company on criminal copyright charges.

As part … Read more

The patience of Kyle Goodwin, a former MegaUpload user, has apparently run out.

The videographer, who stored clips of high school sports action at MegaUpload, filed a three-page motion today that asks a federal court in Virginia to figure out a way to return his clips to him.

Goodwin has waited for the company, the U.S. government, Hollywood film studios, and other interested parties to determine what to do with the data on MegaUpload's servers, which were seized by the United States in January. The district court overseeing the case told everyone with a stake in MegaUpload's … Read more

Google is removing URLs from its search function, but before anyone cries foul, it's letting people know about it.

The tech giant released a new edition of its Transparency Report today, which shows who is requesting URLs be taken down, the copyright owners, and all the targeted domains since July 2011. Everything that's being deleted is allegedly copyrighted or pirated material -- mostly from software and entertainment companies.

Google has been releasing the Transparency Report for the last two years, but before today the only available information was government requests to remove content and disruptions in the search … Read more