copyright

Cablevision to Aereo: Don't compare your case to ours

Cablevision, a cable company that might have been a natural ally to Aereo, has instead come out against the fledgling Internet TV service.

Cablevision, the country's eighth largest cable provider, filed an amicus brief with the U.S. District Court in New York on Friday and told the court that the landmark legal ruling it won in 2008 shouldn't protect Aereo from the charges of copyright violation brought against it by a group of some of the nation's biggest TV broadcasters.

Aereo is the Barry Diller-backed Web video service that uses dime-size TV antennas to capture over-the-air … Read more

Thomas-Rasset to take $222K copyright case to the Supremes

Lawyers for Jammie Thomas-Rasset confirmed what many people who have followed her case likely expected.

The Minnesota woman found liable for sharing 24 copyrighted songs via the Web will try and take her case to the U.S. Supreme Court, Kiwi Camara, her attorney, told CNET today. It must be noted that there's no guarantee that the court will hear her case.

Earlier today, the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals found largely in favor of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), the trade group representing the four largest music-recording companies. The appellate court granted an RIAA request to … Read more

Pirate Bay's Warg, back in Sweden, busted on hacking charges

Swedish police arrested Gottfried Svartholm Warg today as soon as he stepped off the plane from Cambodia.

Warg, one of the founders of The Pirate Bay, one of the best known file-sharing services on the Web, is accused of hacking into the servers of a company that supplies IT services for some of Sweden's tax services and making off with records belonging to thousands of people, according to Swedish news publication Aftonbladet.

Up until late last week, it was believed that Warg had been detained by police in Cambodia because of his conviction in Sweden on copyright charges. In … Read more

Google wipes Pirate Bay from Autocomplete searches

It seems like Google is finally complying with the Recording Industry Association of America's wishes by not showing alleged copyright infringing Web sites in its Instant and Autocomplete search features.

According to TorrentFreak, the search giant just added the Pirate Bay to its censorship list.

Now, when users type "thepiratebay.org" or any of the site's other domain names into their search box, nothing relating to the Pirate Bay's Web site pops up. However, the file-sharing site is still indexed in Google's overall search function.

The RIAA has been working hard over the past … Read more

Pirate Bay co-founder Warg faces new charges

The circumstances surrounding the arrest of Pirate Bay cofounder Gottfried Svartholm Warg become more mysterious each day.

The latest report from Swedish publication DN.se, is that Warg's arrest in Cambodia nearly two weeks ago had nothing to do with his conviction on copyright violations but is linked to an alleged hacking of Logica, a Swedish company that provides IT services to that country's tax offices.

News that Warg was arrested didn't come as much of a surprise. Warg appeared to flee Sweden shortly after he and three other Pirate Bay founders were sentenced to a year … Read more

New lawsuit adds to Grooveshark's troubles

Just when Grooveshark appeared to be putting its legal troubles behind it, the music service is sued once again by one of the major record labels.

In a lawsuit filed on Thursday in a Manhattan federal court, recording company EMI accuses Grooveshark of breach of contract and copyright infringement. The gist of EMI's complaint is that after entering into a licensing agreement with the label in September 2009, Grooveshark fell behind in its monthly payments and also failed to provide sales records.

EMI needed the sales data to accurately know what to charge the service. EMI said because of … Read more

Oracle wants more than the $306 million promised in SAP lawsuit

Oracle is due to receive a hefty amount in legal damages from SAP, but the database giant wants more.

In early August, SAP agreed to pay Oracle $306 million following a trial that found SAP guilty of copyright infringement. The jury verdict reached in 2010 determined that Oracle should receive $1.3 billion in damages.

But last September, U.S. District Judge Phyllis Hamilton deemed that amount excessive and gave Oracle a choice of accepting $272 million in damages or requesting a new trial.

The amount ballooned to the$306 million agreed upon last month. At the time, Oracle general … Read more

Homeland Security's domain seizures worries Congress

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security is seizing domains and taking down URLs in the name of copyright infringement, but its tactics are worrying certain members of Congress.

In a letter (pdf) sent last week to Attorney General Eric Holder and Secretary Janet Napolitano, three members of the House Judiciary Committee aired their unease.

"We are concerned about your Departments' seizure of domain names under Operation In Our Sites, launched in November 2010," the letter said. "Our concern centers on your Department's methods, and the process given, when seizing the domain names of websites whose … Read more