WASHINGTON, October 14, 2010 - BroadbandBreakfast.com on Wednesday released the video, for free, of the October Intellectual Property Breakfast Club event on the issue of "Finding Solutions to the Problem of Copyright Infringement." Keep Reading
WASHINGTON, October 12, 2010 - The Intellectual Property Breakfast Club on Tuesday, focusing on "Finding Solutions to the Problems of Copyright Infringement," may well focus on S. 3804, the “Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act” (COICA), introduced late last month by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy and Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah. Keep Reading
SAN FRANCISCO, October 5, 2010 -- Global trade negotiators on Tuesday released what they're calling the final draft of a anti-counterfeiting trade agreement that also addresses enforcement measures against intellectual property violations in the digital environment. Keep Reading
American and European trade representatives said Monday that they've successfully concluded talks concerning a global anti-counterfeiting trade agreement, and they're ready to release the draft sometime this week, but a report in the Wall Street Journal says that the negotiators still can't agree on the terms concerning enforcement of intellectual property rights in the digital environment. Keep Reading
San Francisco, September 29, 2010 -- A legislative proposal to allow the US' top cop to seize the web addresses of sites that authorities deem are dedicated to pirating intellectual property bears a remarkable resemblance to a crackdown currently underway in China against online pirates. A bipartisan group of 10 U.S. senators last week introduced legislation that would enable the U.S. Justice Department to render inaccessible Web sites judged to be dedicated to intellectual property infringement. Keep Reading
SAN FRANCISCO, September 28, 2010 -- A U.S. rate-setting court's formula for establishing the fees that Yahoo! and RealNetworks must pay the nation's dominant music licensing group is fundamentally flawed because it uses inconsistent data sets and because the benchmarks it uses aren't relevant or comparable, said a U.S. appeals court Tuesday. "The district court… Keep Reading
SAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 21, 2010 -- A bipartisan group of 10 US senators on Monday introduced legislation that would enable the US Justice Department to render inaccessible Web sites judged to be dedicated to intellectual property infringement. The legislation would enable Justice to seek a preliminary injunction against domain name registrars, which would have to suspend access to the domains hosting infringing material, or that are trafficking in infringing material. The legislation would require the US attorney general to notify the federal intellectual property enforcement co-coordinator of the injunctions, and the coordinator would in turn be required to post the names of the suspended sites on a public web site. Keep Reading
Righthaven LLC, a law firm in Las Vegas that has become known for its frequent filing of lawsuits against individuals for re-posting copyrighted newspaper articles online without permission, has filed 15 such lawsuits as of Tuesday. That brings the total number of copyright infringement suits its brought to 129 this year. Keep Reading
SAN FRANCISCO, September 13, 2010 — The U.S. top policy chief in charge of steering and influencing the nation's positions on copyright issues is to retire by the end of the year, the copyright office announced Monday. Marybeth Peters became Register in 1994, which the copyright office said is the second-longest term served by anyone other than the first Register ever Thorvald Solberg. Keep Reading
SAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 13, 2010 -- Microsoft on Monday reacted swiftly to a New York Times report that law enforcement authorities are abusing the company's anti-piracy campaign to squelch dissent by unilaterally issuing free licenses to non-profits operating around the world. Keep Reading
Russian police are using anti-piracy raids on behalf of Microsoft to suppress dissent, according to a Saturday report in the New York Times. The paper reports that police in January raided the offices of an environmental group in Irkutsk, near Lake Baikal, and confiscated the group's computers claiming that the group had been using pirated software. Keep Reading
SAN FRANCISCO, September 13, 2010 - Back in 2000, Public Enemy's Chuck D proclaimed on Charlie Rose that file-sharing heralded a new era in the music business. "The power is going back to the people," he said. Chuck D was debating Metallica's drummer Lars Ullrich, whose band had filed a lawsuit against Napster. Ullrich told Rose that his main concern was one of control. Fans can't just loot music online, he argued, and besides, file-sharing is wrong because it enriches everyone involved except for the artists themselves. Metallica ultimately settled. But a decade later, Chuck D and Public Enemy are still struggling to build a viable business model out of the "power to the people" motto. Keep Reading
SAN FRANCISCO, September 10, 2010 -- A federal appeals court ruling on Friday could eventually end the huge secondary market that has bloomed online in used books, software, and other forms of media both physical and digital when it said a software company can use its licenses to control the re-sale of their products. The panel of three judges for the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously decided that Autodesk's software license trumped the "first sale" doctrine encapsulated in federal law. This appears to give companies more leeway to license more of their products rather than simply selling them and giving up control. Keep Reading
SAN FRANCISCO, September 10, 2010 - Bollywood film studios are using a software consultancy in Bangalore to launch denial-of-service attacks against web sites with links to pirated entertainment, according to a recent report in the Sydney Morning Herald. Keep Reading
SAN FRANCISCO, September 9, 2010 -- The European Union might drop out of a global intellectual property enforcement agreement between the United States, Japan and other countries because of too many compromises in the two most recent rounds of negotiations, said the European Union's Trade Commissioner Karel de Gucht. Keep Reading
WASHINGTON, September 8, 2010 – The internet and intellectual property news service BroadbandBreakfast.com is offering free tickets to the first event in its Fall Intellectual Property Breakfast Club series, “Will the Obama Administration's IP Czar Crush Internet Piracy?” The event, on Tuesday, September 14, will feature top officials from the Entertainment Software Association, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Public Knowledge and the Future of Music Coalition. Register for Free. Keep Reading
SAN FRANCISCO, September 7, 2010 - U2's band manager Paul McGuinness has once again lit up the debate over who and what's responsible for the decline of the music industry. In the August edition of British GQ, McGuinness declares: "I am convinced that ISPs are not going to help the music and film industry voluntarily. Some things have got to come with the force of legislation." Keep Reading
SAN FRANCISCO, September 7, 2010 - International trade negotiators have dropped a controversial secondary liability provision regarding online copyright infringement, but still appear to be haggling over the anti-circumvention provisions, a leaked copy of an August version of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement shows. Keep Reading
SAN FRANCISCO, September 3, 2010 -- A widely-circulated report about fake online copyright infringement e-mail notifications from French authorities demanding the payment of fines looks as if it is actually part of an underground misinformation campaign designed to sow confusion, says a US security researcher who looked into the issue for Broadbandbreakfast.com. The "news" about the French phishing scam appears to have originated from an audience member's question in a recent web chat at French financial newspaper site La Tribune with Eric Walter, the general secretary of the French online copyright enforcement agency HADOPI. Keep Reading
SAN FRANCISCO, September 2, 2010 - U.S. trade negotiators participating in talks with their European, Japanese and other other global counterparts blocked the online publication of the latest draft of a controversial anti-counterfeiting and piracy agreement after the latest round of meetings this August, according to a report from a European Union policy foundation. Keep Reading
WASHINGTON, August 3, 2010 – The Senate has passed a bill based on recommendations from the Copyright Office that will make it easier to transition to digital recordkeeping. Keep Reading
By all accounts, online piracy of software, movies, and music is on the upswing and becoming ever more sophisticated, but that doesn’t daunt Steven Tepp. Tepp has just joined the US Chamber of Commerce in Washington DC as its first senior director for internet piracy and counterfeiting. His job will be to lead the Chamber’s efforts to battle the phenomena on behalf of its members. Keep Reading
SAN FRANCISCO, July 26, 2010 - iPhone owners can now add applications not approved by Apple, but whether Apple will support jailbroken iPhones is another story. Keep Reading
SAN FRANCISCO, July 26, 2010 - The US Copyright Office on Monday addressed many of the longstanding criticisms of a digital-era copyright law when it granted all of the exemptions to the law (under certain circumstances) requested by a flagship digital rights group. Keep Reading
WASHINGTON, July 14, 2010 - Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for Intellectual Property Stanford McCoy defended the process and goals of the controversial Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement at the Intellectual Property Breakfast Club on Tuesday. BroadbandBreakfast.com on Wednesday released, for FREE, the full-length video of the Intellectual Property Breakfast Club event on Tuesday, which included discussion between McCoy at a range of industry officials representing copyright holders, technology companies, telecommunications providers and academics.
Keep ReadingWASHINGTON, July 13, 2010 – Major U.S. technology companies are worrying over an international trade agreement currently under negotiations because they see it as putting them on shaky legal ground. At the third Intellectual Property Breakfast Club held by BroadbandBreakfast.com, panelists argued over the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement and its potential impact on the technology industry. Keep Reading
WASHINGTON, July 6, 2010 – A communications and technology lobbying group is gnashing its teeth over a pending international trade agreement governing intellectual property that it says could bind U.S. firms and give internet access providers too much authority. Keep Reading
WASHINGTON, July 2, 2010 - The founding chief of the United States' pioneering digital music royalties collection group SoundExchange will step down at the end of the year, the group announced earlier this week. Keep Reading
WASHINGTON, July 2, 2010 – The Digital Millennium Copyright Act that extended the reach of copyright when it became law in 1998 may have been created for the new millennium, just not this one, said an academic expert during a Thursday panel discussion. Keep Reading
SAN FRANCISCO, July 2, 2010 -- US trade representatives say they made progress this week in building consensus on key provisions of a new international intellectual property enforcement agreement -- but not enough to share with the rest of the world. “There was no consensus to release another text," said Nefeterius Akeli McPherson, a USTR spokeswoman in an e-mailed note about this week's discussions over the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement in Lucerne, Switzerland. "There was not sufficient progress at this round to make release of new text meaningful. The issues under discussion are still well reflected in the text that is public now. We hope to make more progress at the next round.” Keep Reading
SAN FRANCISCO, July 1, 2010 --The office of the United States Trade Representative said Thursday that its negotiators had "made progress in building consensus," over specific provisions in a controversial global intellectual property agreement -- but it's unlikely that whatever consensus they reached will be welcomed by all back at home. Keep Reading
WASHINGTON July 1, 2010- Speaking at the Department of Commerce today, an expert observed that consumers who view streaming video on pay-only sites are “unwittingly giving their credit card numbers to organized crime.” The speaker, Scott Martin of the Motion Picture Association of America, made the comment in the context of a panel entitled “Emerging Infringement Areas,” which was moderated by Deputy Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Communications and Information Anna Gomez. Keep Reading
WASHINGTON, July 1, 2010 – The state of the internet economy, and how to protect copyrighted works on the internet, are two major issues facing the economy of the 21st Century. Lawrence Strickling, assistant secretary of commerce for Communications and Information, spoke on this topic today to kick off the USPTO and NTIAs Symposium on copyright policy, creativity and innovation in the internet economy. Keep Reading
A copyright holder can't just randomly rummage around an internet service provider's logs of its customers' online activities in pursuit of those too cheap to pay for their entertainment a group of public interest lawyers are scheduled to argue Wednesday in a D.C. court. Keep Reading
SAN FRANCISCO, June 28, 2010 - The office of the United States Trade Representative is standing firm as its negotiators head into a set of week-long negotiations over the controversial Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement in Lucerne, Switzerland. Keep Reading
SAN FRANCISCO, June 23, 2010 — YouTube scored a major victory in a bitterly-fought, billion dollar copyright infringement lawsuit Wednesday brought by media giant Viacom when a federal district court judge in Manhattan said that a 1998 law shields YouTube from liability. Keep Reading
WASHINGTON, June 23, 2010 – An intellectual property expert from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce today on Capitol Hill commended the release of the first-ever government-wide national intellectual property enforcement strategy and urged congressional action to implement the plan. Keep Reading
SAN FRANCISCO, June, 23, 2010 - A White House official in charge of coordinating the US government's enforcement of intellectual property rights on Tuesday pledged openness in the face of mounting criticism that the Obama administration is engaging in a secretive negotiating process with some of its trading partners as they discuss ways to more strictly enforce those rights both online and at their borders. Keep Reading
WASHINGTON, June 11, 2010 - BroadbandBreakfast.com on Friday released, for FREE, the full-length video of the Intellectual Property Breakfast Club event on May 18, 2010: "New Transmission Consent Battles and Licensing Video Content." The event included key industry officials from the cable, broadcast and public interest communities, and was moderated by Sarah Lai Stirland, Assistant Managing Editor, BroadbandBreakfast.com. Keep Reading
WASHINGTON, June 4, 2010 - BroadbandBreakfast.com on Friday announced the addition of two new panelists – Toni Cook Bush of Skadden Arps and Matt Polka of the American Cable Association – to its FREE June 8th Intellectual Property Breakfast Club event. The panel, to be held at Clyde’s of Gallery Place at 707 7th Street NW, in Washington, is certain to be the “must attend” event on this increasingly hot topic of “New Retransmission Consent Battles and Licensing Video Content.” Register now! Keep Reading