COPYCENSE

“Sloth can be a deadly sin, or at least a potentially litigious one, and the rise of blogging on the Internet has peaked concern about this pitfall.

“The issue arises because bloggers, many or most of them amateurs, often overdose on cut-and-paste editing, which can result in copyright violations, explained a New York attorney.”

John P. Mello Jr. Bloggers Cautioned About Being Copy Cats. E-Commerce Times. Aug. 4, 2005.

“Sloth can be a deadly sin, or at least a potentially litigious one, and the rise of blogging on the Internet has peaked concern about this pitfall.

“The issue arises because bloggers, many or most of them amateurs, often overdose on cut-and-paste editing, which can result in copyright violations, explained a New York attorney.”

John P. Mello Jr. Bloggers Cautioned About Being Copy Cats. E-Commerce Times. Aug. 4, 2005.

“The Internet is a bargain hunter’s paradise. Ebay is an easy example, but there are many places for deals on used goods, including Amazon.com.

“While Amazon is best known for selling new products, an estimated 23 percent of its sales are from used goods, many of them secondhand books. In 2002, the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers sent an open letter to Jeff Bezos, the chief executive of Amazon.com, which has a market for used books in addition to selling new copies. “If your aggressive promotion of used book sales becomes popular among Amazon’s customers,” the letter said, “this service will cut significantly into sales of new titles, directly harming authors and publishers.

“But does it?”

Hal R. Varian. Reading Between the Lines of Used Book Sales. The New York Times. July 28, 2005.

See also:

Anindya Ghose, et al. Internet Exchanges for Used Books: An Empirical Analysis of Product Cannibalization and Welfare Impact. SSRN. August 1, 2005.

“It took almost two years but major record labels in Australia have finally won a legal battle against a Queensland man and his Internet Service Provider for alleged music piracy. Stephen Cooper, operator of the mp3s4free Web site, was found guilty of copyright infringement by Federal Court Justice Brian Tamberlin.

“Although Cooper didn’t host pirated recordings per se, the court found he breached the law by creating hyperlinks to sites that had infringing sound recordings.”

Steven Deare. Judge: MP3 Site, ISP Breached Copyright. ZDNet Australia. July 14, 2005.

“A Philadelphia health-care advocacy company is suing operators of the Wayback Machine in a case experts described as one of the first legal challenges to Internet archiving.

“Healthcare Advocates contends the Internet Archive, a San Francisco nonprofit that runs the Wayback Machine, botched Healthcare’s request to block access to archived materials from its Web site during a trade secrets dispute in 2003.”

Kevin Coughlin. Philadelphia Health Care Advocacy Firm Sues Search-engine Operators. NJ.com. July 12, 2005.

See also:

Tom Zeller Jr. Web Archive Sued Over Use in Another Suit. News.com. July 12, 2005.

The Patry Copyright Blog. The Way Back Machine and Robots.txt. July 12, 2005.

Corante. Opening Up the Wayback Can of Worms. July 12, 2005.

United States District Court. Healthcare Advocates, Inc. v. Harding, Early, Follmer & Frailey, et al. (.pdf) July 8, 2005.

Adult magazine Perfect 10 filed a copyright lawsuit against Amazon’s A9.com search engine, but a search marketing expert is questioning the case’s validity.

In the complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles late last month, Perfect 10, Beverly Hills, CA, has asked for a preliminary injunction to stop A9 from displaying Perfect 10’s copyrighted images, including photos of nude women.

However, an SEO expert noted that Perfect 10 can simply opt out of having its images included in the search results.

Christine Blank. Porn Copyright Suit Questioned. DM News. July 7, 2005.