WebProNews

EU Wants To Extend Copyrights For Musicians

The European Union's internal market commissioner Charlie McCreevy has proposed extending the copyright protection for music performers from 50 years to 95 years. "It is the performer who gives life to the composition and while most of us have no idea who wrote our favorite song - we can usually name the performer, " McCreevy said. If the copyright protection is not extended thousands of European performers who recorded in the late fifties and sixties will lose all of their royalties over the next ten years.

Microsoft Canada Slapped Over Copyright Op-Ed

Noted Internet law expert Michael Geist criticized an opinion piece appearing in a Canadian newspaper as "astonishingly misleading and factually incorrect."

Fox Nabs Santa Pug From Flickr

Television networks and sports leagues are pretty vigilant about protecting their content, and have gotten fairly nasty about it lately, especially in relation to the Internet. That righteous indignation doesn't always go both ways, though, as these same entities can be lax when it comes to use of other people's content.

Careful, That C&D Letter Might Be Copyrighted

Here's a case that'll likely leave you with an icky feeling. A lawyer for a large company in Idaho copyrighted a cease-and-desist letter, and when an anonymous blogger posted the letter on his blog, the company subpoenaed the blog hosting company for the blogger's identity in order to pursue copyright infringement claims.

Copyright Law and Common Sense

Jeremy Toeman asks for common sense in copyright laws and warns his congresscritter against the PRO IP act: “Common sense tells me that the maximum penalty for transmitting an MP3 file should not be over 1000-fold the maximum penalty of shoplifting a CD from a store.” We aren’t going to have common sense in this, sorry. The political system is jiggered by those who have money and can pay for lobbyists, etc.

Experts Say ACAP Specs Not Up To Snuff

Publishers have come together to develop the Automated Content Access Protocol (ACAP), a technical standard intended to dictate to search engines what they can index and what they can't. One problem, though, as more technical minds have noted, is that the standard isn't quite technical enough.

Nielsen To Launch Copyright Protection Service

The Nielsen Company has created a product that would enable media companies to track the distribution of their video content on sites like YouTube and MySpace.

Downloading Penalties Violate First Amendment

People who have believed downloading copyrighted content did not pose any kind of legal problem have faced plenty of legal troubles, but the real trouble comes as enforcement against illegal downloading makes people fear legal downloading.

Google Not Part of Copyright Pact

A group of major media and Internet companies on Thursday announced that they are setting up guidelines to deal with protecting copyrighted material.

Is Google's YouTube Antipiracy Tool Enough?

Google has finally unveiled their copyright protection system for YouTube. The reactions have been mixed.