Artistes call for major reforms of take down policies and the 'largely useless' DMCA

Some 400 recording artists, songwriters and groups including the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) are calling on Congress to reform existing US copyright law saying that the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) is obsolete, dysfunctional and harmful,  and calling for stronger measures against the ongoing piracy troubles they face. The DCMA was signed into law by President Bill Clinton in 1998 and aimed to ready copyright law for the digital age. Christina Aguilera, Katy Perry, Steve Tyler, Lionel Richie and Garth Brooks are just some of music’s biggest names want to make it harder to pirate music online. The musicians are asking lawmakers to make “drastic reforms” to the Act.

"Artists spanning a variety of genres and generations are submitting comments to the federal government’s U.S. Copyright Office .... demanding reforms to the antiquated DMCA which forces creators to police the entire Internet for instances of theft, placing an undue burden on these artists and unfairly favoring technology companies and rogue pirate sites," says a statement issued by the Recording Industry Association of America: Recording artistes including deadmau5, Tony Bennett, Pearl Jam and Bette Midler have filed petitions to the U.S. Copyright Office detailing their struggles with the “antiquated policies” and demanding reform to better “protect the future of the music industry, recording artists and songwriters,” according to a statement from the RIAA.

The filings include three letters — one from music managers, one from creators, and one from artists and songwriters — that ”detail how the out-dated DMCA and its faulty notice-and-takedown system allows some tech companies such as Google, YouTube, Tumblr, just to name a few, to build multi-billion dollar businesses off their content without compensation and drag down the value of their hard work into fractional digital pennies",

In September 2015 Cary Sherman, the chairman and CEO of the Recording Industry Association of America, has some choice words about the current state of US copyright law. He said that the provisions of the Act were 'largely useless' to combat music piracy and  that under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, rightsholders had to play a game of whack-a-mole with Internet companies to get them to remove infringing content. But that "never-ending game" has allowed piracy to run amok and has cheapened the legal demand for music. Sure, many Internet companies remove links under the DMCA's "notice-and-takedown" regime. But the DMCA grants these companies, such as Google, a so-called "safe harbor"—meaning companies only have to remove infringing content upon notice from rightsholders.

Across the pond over the Easter weekend, the UK’s BPI issued its 200 millionth take down request to Google – every one, it says, targeting a searchable link which infringed on an owned copyright. As a result, BPI CEO Geoff Taylor publicly called on Google to change its infringement policy to ‘notice and stay down’; effectively ensuring that any infringing link removed from Google’s search results doesn’t then creep its way back online.

Google responded by telling MBW that it had already tweaked its algorithm to demote infringing sites, and that it had actually reviewed more than 80m links to pirated content in the past month alone. Google then added  “Search is not the primary problem – all traffic from major search engines accounts for less than 16% of traffic to sites like The Pirate Bay” prompting a clearly frustrated BPI to respond “It is disappointing that Google continues to downplay the role its search engine plays in guiding millions of consumers to illegal sites" and the BPI (and other music rights-holders) clearly now want the UK Government to take further action against Google if it continues to refuse to take more steps to help with their search takedown headache.

And an interesting take on the DMCA - and Google's lobbying - on The Register here:

"Copyright owners (it's hard to believe today) were once enormously powerful, while internet companies were fledglings. The balance struck allowed the ordinary Joe to remove material from intermediaries without having to consult a lawyer; a one-click, five-minute procedure.

Back then, there were no content ID robots to help automate the business of identifying material, and the burden of checking every envelope and package passing through the postal system would have been so onerous, nobody would have ever wanted to start a better post office.

But power has shifted radically over 20 years. The power now lies with the vast Silicon Valley plantation owners, who have aggregated wealth by ensuring you don't have any control over your own digital goods.


It's not surprising that this super-elite don't want to hand anything resembling "ownership" back to us. Their fortunes have come from monetizing an individual's work – amateur and professional – and selling ads against it. Whether it's Instagram "monetizing" your photos, or Google "monetizing" music on YouTube, it's a business that has worked at scale, and with the minimum of effort and engagement from Google or Facebook."

And ..... "Google's strategy more closely resembles that vintage "business model": the protection racket."

- http://m.theregister.co.uk/2016/04/02/googlefunded_dmca_study/

And see

http://www.billboard.com/articles/business/7318658/music-industry-stars-congress-reform-copyright-act

http://arstechnica.co.uk/tech-policy/2015/09/riaa-chief-says-dmca-is-largely-useless-to-combat-music-piracy/

The CopyKat

A U.S. District Court judge has again looked at a case brought by three publishers against Georgia State University's e-reserve and ruled that, in 41 of 48 cases, no copyright infringement took place. The 220 page ruling applies the four-part fair-use test that the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeal directed Judge Evans to use to each on each of the 48 cases - and in particular to look at (i) the purpose and character of the use — which will favour fair use when that purpose is non-profit and educational, and (iv) the potential impact of the use on the market for or value of the original. But the case is seen by copyright experts as a complicated decision that won't be of much help to universities in determining fair use. Excellent comment by Kevin Smith JD on the Duke Universities Library blog here. 

In China the National Anti-pornography and Anti-illegal Publications Office, the National Copyright Administrative of China (NCAC) and several other government ministries have announced a special enforcement campaign against small photocopying shops that operate on and around university campuses. Many copy shops are suspected of illegally reprinting textbooks and other written works. The campaign – given the operation name “Autumn Wind” – will run from February to September and cover 40 cities. More here (in Chinese).

Also in China the UK's ever useful IPO China IP newsletter tells us that Deputy Chief Judge of the Supreme People’s Court Tao Kaiyuan has called for the establishment of one single, specialist IP appeals court to hear cases from across the country. Currently appeals are heard in provincial-level High People’s Courts. And Shanghai Vice-Mayor Zhao Wen  has again called for the unification of patents, designs, trade marks and copyright into one Ministry-level department.

Three American copyright scholars have released a study into the impact of copyright takedowns on free expression in America: Notice and Takedown in Everyday Practice, by Jennifer Urban (UC Berkeley), Joe Karaganis (Columbia), and Brianna L. Schofiel (UC Berkeley) uses detailed surveys and interviews and a random sample from over 100,000,000 takedown notices to analyze the proportion of fraudulent, malformed or otherwise incorrect acts of censorship undertaken in copyright's name, using the Digital Millennium Copyright Act's takedown procedure. The findings suggest that whether notice and takedown “works” is highly dependent on who is using it and how it is practiced, though all respondents agreed that the Section 512 safe harbors remain fundamental to the online ecosystem. Perhaps surprisingly in light of large-scale online infringement, a large portion of OSPs still receive relatively few notices and process them by hand. For some major players, however, the scale of online infringement has led to automated, “bot”-based systems that leave little room for human review or discretion, and in a few cases notice and takedown has been abandoned in favor of techniques such as content filtering. The second and third studies revealed surprisingly high percentages of notices of questionable validity, with mistakes made by both "bots" and humans. TechDirts take is somewhat evident from the headline DMCA's Notice And Takedown Procedure Is A Total Mess, And It's Mainly Because Of Bogus Automated Takedowns. 

Canadian-based Cirque du Soleil is suing American pop superstar Justin Timberlake, alleging that his hit song "Don't Hold the Wall" illegally borrows from one of the troupe's original musical compositions. A 10-page complaint filed in New York alleges that Timberlake illegally used parts of the song "Steel Dream," taken from Cirque du Soleil's 1997 album "Quidam." More here.

TorrentFreak reports that anti-piracy outfit Rightscorp says that it's working on a new method to "extract cash settlements from suspected Internet pirates". The company says new technology will lock users' browsers and prevent Internet access until they pay a fine. To encourage ISPs to play along, TorrentFreak rather sarcastically points out that Rightscorp says the system could help to limit liability for copyright infringement.

Sweden’s supreme Court has held Wikimedia  guilty of violating copyright laws by providing free access to its database of photographs of artwork - without the artists’ consent. Wikimedia, part of the not-for-profit foundation which oversees Wikipedia, had a database of royalty-free photographs that could be used by the public, for educational purposes or the tourism industry. The Visual Copyright Society in Sweden (BUS), which represents painters, photographers, illustrators and designers among others, too legal action against Wikimedia Sweden for making photographs of their artwork displayed in public places available in its database, without their consent. The photographs were actually portraits of works of art. Whilst the court acknowledged that members of the public were permitted to photograph artwork on display in public spaces, it was “an entirely different matter” to make the photographs available in a database for free and unlimited use: “Such a database can be assumed to have a commercial value that is not insignificant. The court finds that the artists are entitled to that value” and said "It is not relevant whether or not Wikimedia has a commercial aim.”  Damages will be set at a later date. More on the Local here. Image of 'Poundland Jubilee Flag Maker' (2012) by Banksy by Duncan Hull. 

And finally, and again from TorrentFreak - an interesting look at the activities of a London company called Hatton and Berkeley - whose website you can see here and which features a picture of Robert Croucher (Hatton & Berkeley, described as "Managing Director of Hatton & Berkeley, Pro-Copyright advocate, Executive Producer and Film Financier") with  Patrick Achache, "the talented young tech entrepreneur who turned his hand to developing software that tackles digital piracy for the film and TV industries". The UK's Intellectual Property Office has now issued guidance on how copyright trolls operate and how people should handle them.  More here.

The Full Montis

At the end of last month the CJEU heard an interesting case which has been little reported to date. The case is C-169/15 Montis Design and was referred to the CJEU by the Benelux Gerechtshof.

Like all good referrals, the background to the case is complicated, as is the law which the CJEU has been asked to consider. I am grateful to the EU Law Radar website for their analysis of the case.

There are a number of 'pivot' points in the case, not least of which is the relationship between copyright and design right. For that reason, this article is rather more about the world of designs rights than is normally the case with the 1709 blog. But there is a stripe of copyright running through the centre.

The Montis Design case concerns a dining chair named Chaplin which was created by the Dutch designer Gerard van den Berg some time in the late 1980s, and the design was registered using the system set up by the Uniform Benelux Law on Designs and Models. Mr van den Berg then sold his rights to a Dutch furniture manufacturer, Montis Design, who made chairs to the Van den Berg design. However they failed to renew the registration when it became due in 1993, thus apparently leaving it open to other companies to manufacture chairs to the van den Berg design, which duly happened.

Montis then sued for infringement and the matter went as far as the Dutch Supreme Court which ruled, somewhat bizarrely, that the formalities set out in the Benelux Law on Designs were contrary to Article 5(2) of the Berne Convention on copyright. However the Supreme Court's finding did not mean that the Montis design right was re-activated. Montis Design returned to the fray in 2013, this time in the Benelux Gerechtshof, using the argument that since Article 17 of the EU Designs Directive 98/71/EC [1998] stated that a registered design "shall also be eligible for protection under the law of copyright", the Chaplin design was being infringed as a matter of copyright law. Article 17 is qualified by saying "The extent to which, and the conditions under which, such a protection is conferred, including the level of originality required, shall be determined by each Member State". However the Chaplin design had been created and registered before the Designs Directive came into force, and so it was argued, this provision did not have the effect of either reviving the lapsed design right or of retrospectively affording copyright protection to the design, because neither Dutch domestic law nor the Benelux Design Law implemented Article 17 retroactively.

The Gerechtshof examined this argument in the light of the CJEU's earlier decision in Flos. Flos (Jeremy posted a piece on this case here) had involved some similarity in that it concerned the design of a piece of furniture (a lamp) which had apparently entered the public domain (although in the Flos case the design had never been registered) under Italiy's Intellectual Property Code. The Second Chamber of the CJEU in that case had to consider whether the margin of appreciation afforded to member states by the sentence quoted above, would allow a country not provide the element of copyright protection at all. In other words does 'shall be eligible for' mean 'shall be given' or 'may be given'? The CJEU ruled that a member state could not exclude a registered design from also enjoying copyright protection. However being the CJEU, they had to say so in the most convoluted way possible:

1. Article 17 of Directive 98/71/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 13 October 1998 on the legal protection of designs must be interpreted as precluding legislation of a Member State which excludes from copyright protection in that Member State designs which were protected by a design right registered in or in respect of a Member State and which entered the public domain before the date of entry into force of that legislation, although they meet all the requirements to be eligible for copyright protection.

Despite the Flos ruling the Gerechtshof were still concerned about the retroactive aspect of Montis's argument invoking Article 17 of the Design Directive. For reasons that are not clear from the commentaries, the court felt it was necessary to seek clarification on whether Article 10 of the Copyright Term Directive 93/98/EEC meant that copyright might be revived in this case. This appears to arise because without the Article 17 provision, in some member states copyright will only subsist in a design if it meets some aesthetic criterion. I can find no mention in either of the Montis cases of it being argued that Mr van den Berg's design also met the originality criteria for copyright per se. A further clue to this lies in the wording of the second question of the referral shown below, which speaks about copyright in a work of applied art. From this I have to assume that perhaps Dutch copyright law (like the not-yet-repealed Section 52 of the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988) provides such works with a much shorter term than to other artistic works. Perhaps one of our readers can confirm this. The court's train of reasoning may have been: Art 17 only confers copyright protection on designs which have registered, but in the Montis case that registration had lapsed before Art 17 came into force therefore since it was not registered at the time, the design could not enjoy copyright protection.

Anyway the upshot was that in April 2015 the Benelux Gerechtshof referred the following questions to the CJEU:

1. Is the term of protection referred to in Article 10, in conjunction with Article 13(1), of Directive 93/98/EEC (the Term of Protection Directive) […] applicable to rights of copyright that were originally protected by national copyright law but which lapsed before 1 July 1995 on the ground that a formal condition had not been satisfied (in due time), more specifically because a maintenance declaration, as referred to in Article 21(3) of the Uniform Benelux Law on Designs and Models (old version), had not been filed (in due time)?

2. If the answer to Question 1 is in the affirmative:
Must the Term of Protection Directive be construed as precluding a rule of national legislation under which the copyright in a work of applied art that lapsed before 1 July 1995 on the ground that a formal condition had not been satisfied is deemed to have lapsed permanently?

If the answer to Question 2 is in the affirmative:
3. If, under national legislation, the copyright in question is to be considered to revive or to be revived at a certain time, from what date does such revival occur?

So far the Curia website does not indicate when we might expect to see the CJEU's decision.

The CopyKat

The animal right organisation People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) has filed an appeal against a lower court's decision in January this year that declined to give the macaque monkey Naruto the right to his famous selfie taken in Indonesia in 2011. The appeal brief was filed at the Northern District of California.

Malibu Media — the online erotic film producer and alleged copyright troll — has been told that when filing against anonymous “John Doe” defendants whose identities are just an IP addresses for their Internet service, they cannot use geolocation tools to more precisely identify these alleged infringers. Malibu had argued that it had used “proven IP address geolocation technology which has consistently worked in similar cases to ensure that the Defendant’s acts of copyright infringement occurred using an [IP address] traced to a physical address located within this District.” The District Court was having none of that writing that “The allegation that the IP address at issue likely resolves to a physical address in this District is not supported in any of the declarations filed in connection with the instant motion.” and a second District Court said “Plaintiff fails to offer any evidence to support its allegation that the infringing IP address was actually traced to a location within this judicial district" and “Nothing in the declarations Plaintiff submitted with its Ex Parte Motion explains what steps Plaintiff took to trace the IP address to a physical point of origin within this Court’s jurisdiction.”

Can the unauthorised reproduction and making available of clips of cricket matches lasting up to 8 seconds amount to an infringement of copyright in works lasting several days hours minutes about this exciting and fast-paced sport? As Elonora tell us over on the IPKat, the answer is unsurprisingly yes -  and the use is not protected by the doctrine of fair use nor by 'safe harbour' - confirmed by Arnold J in his 174-paragraph judgment in England And Wales Cricket Board Ltd & Another v Tixdaq Ltd & Another [2016] EWHC 575 (Ch).

The German head of digital-economy policy at the European Commission, Günther Oettinger, is considering rolling out  German and Spanish “Google tax” on the wider EU stage. Oettinger’s department published a consultation on Wednesday that covers this “neighboring rights” issue (more commonly referred to as “ancillary copyright”). The consultation will run until June 15. This, and a review of the "freedom of panorama" too! Eleonora explains all on the IPkat, and of course John tells us more on the 1709 Blog here and more on the World IP Review here

UK record label association the BPI has said that its members have now issued more than 200m takedown requests to Google for removal of copyright-infringing links. The trade association, which represents the three major recorded music labels, Universal, Sony and Warner as well as many independent labels, sent its first takedown request to Google in July 2011. In 2015 the BPI sent 65m takedown requests and they are now, perhaps understandably, calling for a more permanent solution – so when an offending link has been removed following a takedown request, it stays down, permanently. For a leading technology company, Google seem rather less than innovative in finding a way of achieving this.  In a press release, the BPI say: ‘This high-volume take-down helps to limit the amount of illegal content being promoted, giving legal music services such as Amazon, Apple, Spotify and Deezer a better chance of appearing at the top of search results when fans are looking for music online" but add “While this approach has contributed to some improved visibility of legal services, illegal results that are taken down by Google are frequently replaced by other illegal links, which means that legal services continue to be overshadowed by infringing sites in the very top search results" and “This damaging situation can only be remedied by Google themselves changing strategy and pro-actively pursuing a “notice and stay down” approach, so that once a piece of content has been notified for removal by the BPI, it isn’t indexed again for the same site and stays removed.” The BPI are also asking Google to hep promote websites with legal content, and ensure court decisions to block sites are respected. CEO Geoff Taylor said "“We are calling on Google and Bing to show their undiluted commitment to artists and the creative process by implementing a more pro-active solution to illegal sites appearing in search results. This will avoid the cost for both of us in dealing with hundreds of repeated notices for the same content on the same illegal sites”.

Donald Trump’s presidential campaign is being sued by award-winning wildlife photographers who say Trump is using their copyright-protected image of an American bald eagle without permission. Attorneys for Wendy Shattil and Robert Rozinski filed the civil complaint in federal court this week after watching a Trump presidential rally on television and noticing that an attendee was holding a campaign sign that incorporated one of their photographs of the national bird.

And finally, the software behind the epic Princess Mononoke,  Spirited Away and Howl's Moving Castle anime films, created by Studio Ghibli founder Hayao Miyazaki and called Toonz, is about to be made available as an open-sourced edition which will be available for download starting March 26th. Those aiming to up its power can opt for a paid, premium version - helping Toonz cement a place as the world standard in animation. More on the Creators Project here.

More Consultations

Just in case we didn't think that there had been enough copyright consultations, along come another two today, one from Brussels and one from the UK IPO.

The Brussels offering is a consultation on two things, the role of the publisher and the "panorama" right.  You can read all about it here.

Following on from the introduction of specific publisher rights in Germany and Spain, this information gathering exercise is the first intervention from the EU on this topic.  The Commission says "It will serve to gather views in particular on the impact that granting an EU neighbouring right to publishers could have on the publishing sector, on citizens and creative industries and as to whether the need (or not) for intervention is different in the press as compared to other publishing sectors."

The decision to consult on the so-called right of panorama is (in the author's view) regrettable, given the press reaction to the last time this issue bubbled up above the parapet - the Commission says "The consultation will also serve to collect input for the Commission's analysis of the current legislative framework of the 'panorama exception' - so at least they are not saying there is definitively a need to legislate (or at least not yet).

[The author sends his condolences to the survivors and to the families of the victims of yesterday's terrorist attacks and is reassured that the Commission is still undertaking business, rather than allowing terrorism to paralyse activities.]

From the IPO comes the more micro, but nevertheless important technical consultation on implementing the reform of section 72 - which you can read in full here under its full title of "Further consultation and technical review on changes to Section 72 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 (which permits the free public showing or playing of a film contained in a broadcast)."

The revised proposal appears much simpler than the previous one, which is to remove films entirely from the ambit of section 72.  However, the drafting (in this author's view) leaves something to be desired, as it appears to suggest that a broadcaster cannot control ANY communication to the public of a broadcast to a non-paying audience (so I can retransmit broadcasts without constraint, subject only to a claim from the underlying rights owners in any film or other copyright work incorporated into the broadcast).  The revised section 72(1) would read:

The showing or playing in public or the communication to the public of a broadcast to an audience who have not paid for admission to the place where the broadcast is to be seen or heard does not infringe any copyright in- (a) the broadcast; or (b) any sound recording (except in so far as it is an excepted sound recording) included in it.

Does that really meet the three-step test?

Movie Producers Score Significant Win in French Court

                                                                                   

                                                                Who pays the piper?  ISPs!

French movie producers recently scored a significant legal victory in their continung fight against online piracy.

By a ruling dated March 15th the Paris Court of Appeals not only upheld a lower court's decision that internet access providers and search engines (collectively, ISPs) were obliged to block access (in the case of access providers) and remove links (in the case of search engines) to pirate sites but reversed the trial court's decision that the rightsholders had to bear the costs associated with the implementaion of such measures.  In other words, the appellate court held that such costs were to be borne by the ISPs.

In reaching this conclusion, the Court of Appeals reasoned as follows:

Section L.336-2 IPC (the French transposition of Article 8, paragraph 3 of the Info Soc Directive), upon which the action against the ISPs was based, is not an action seeking reparation for harm suffered but rather a specific procedure to be used against intermediaries who are not (necessarily) liable for the infringement.  Consequently, a fault-based approach to the determination of the costs issue is not appropriate.

Referring to the CJUE's ruling in the UPC Telekabel case, the Court noted that while it was true that obliging the ISPs to bear the costs of the measures adversely affected their fredom to conduct business, this was not unreasonable given that they were free to determine the precise technological measures deployed based on their resources and capacity (as long as the desired results were achieved).

The Court also referred to the general principle in French law under which it is not for the party who is a victim of wrongdoing and who seeks redress in court to pay the costs associated therewith. The Court noted that the already precarious financial situation of the rights holders would be seriously jeopardized by imposing the costs on them whereas the ISPs "derive an economic profit from the access (in particular by way of advertising on their pages) and it is thus legitimate and proportional that they contribute financially" to implementing the measures.  (This particular finding has already been criticized by certain commentators as factually inaccurate.)

In response to the argument put forth by the access providers that the statutory provision in question did not expressly provide for them to bear the costs whereas certain other statutory provisions did, the Court noted that while this was true the latter existed in contexts where the blocking measures were sought by the State for reasons of public order (online gambling, national defense) and not in contexts of private rights enforcement.  Accordingly, the absence of express provisions imposing such costs on the access providers in Section L.336-2 IPC was not a bar to doing so.

The Court of Appeals' decision has been hailed by many (including the CNC) as an important step in fighting online piracy.  There has been some press speculation that the ISPs intend to appeal to the Cour de cassation.

Link to ruling in French here

WE COME IN PEACE - PHASERS TO KILL

Our very own star ship : NCC 1709 USS Lexington 

At the beginning of this month Marie-Andree reported that Paramount Pictures and CBS Studios had sued Axanar Productions and its principal Alec Peters, claiming that its short movie Prelude to Axanar infringes their copyright in Star Trek, as it is an unauthorized derivative work. A forthcoming feature-length film called Axanar is planned after Axanar Productions was able to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars on both Kickstarter and Indiegogo.  On February 22, 2015, the Defendants filed a motion to dismiss the claim, arguing that the complaint did not contain sufficient factual matters to put Defendants on fair notice of the claims against them.

Peters had said that Axanar had professionals working in front and behind the camera, with a fully-professional crew — many of whom have worked on Star Trek itself — to ensure Axanar woud be of the same quality as an official Star Trek movie. Having in the past been quite tolerant of fan fiction and fan tribute films,  the film studios instead accused Peters of "unauthorized exploitation" of the Star Trek franchise: "The Axanar Works are intended to be professional quality productions that, by defendants' own admission, unabashedly take Paramount's and CBS's intellectual property and aim to 'look and feel like a true Star Trek movie" read the lawsuit, filed in federal district court in California on December 29th. 


Arts Technica now tell us that the Star Trek rights holders are back with an amended complaint dated the 11th March 2016 that lists many of the specific instances of infringement of what they say are copyrighted element in Star Trek, including the language and culture of alien races such as the Klingons and Vulcans, the cowl-neck uniform that Majel Barrett wore as the Enterprise’s first officer in the original series episode The Cage, and the concept of “Stardate."

The original series Star Trek crew

Axnae's defence seems to be that the project is non commercial saying "Axanar is an independent project that uses the intellectual property of CBS under the provision that Axanar is totally non-commercial” on its website. "That means we can never charge for anything featuring their marks or intellectual property and we will never sell the movie, DVD/Blu-ray copies, T-shirts, or anything which uses CBS owned marks or intellectual property."

That doesn't work for CBS and Paramount, which demanded injunctive relief barring Axanar Productions from distributing Prelude to Axanar and Axanar, and statutory damages (up to $150,000 for each separate infringed copyrighted work)

Some 57 instances of infringement are listed in the amended complaint. These similarities are divided into categories like characters (including Garth of Izar and Vulcan Ambassador Soval), races and species such as the Vulcans,Romulans abd Tellarites, costumes, settings like the planet Axanar and the Klingon planet Qo’noS, as well as spacedocks and the Starship Enterprise, logos like the Federation logo, and plot point similarities including the concept of dilithium crystals, phasers, and the Klingon Empire.

The complaint also points to copyrighted dialogue as infringement. Mentioning transporters and “beaming up,” warp drive, or speaking Klingon language are items listed in the amended complaint.

Finally, CBS and Paramount say that Axanar Productions infringed the copyrighted works’ “mood and theme”: "The mood and theme of Star Trek as a science fiction action adventure first appeared in The Original Series episode “The Cage” and has appeared in all subsequent episodes of The Original Series and other derivative Star Trek Copyrighted Works,” the complaint notes.

CBS and Paramount have requested a jury trial.

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/03/paramount-cbs-list-the-ways-star-trek-fanfic-axanar-infringes-copyright/

http://the1709blog.blogspot.co.uk/2016/01/the-copykat-starting-year-with-big-bang.html

And more here https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2016/03/24/to-boldly-go-where-no-copyright-suit-has-gone-before/

The CopyKat

The YouTube channel of the state-run Vietnam Television (VTV) has been suspended with the national broadcaster later admitting that the termination was due to copyright infringement regarding its content. The channel, titled VTV - Đài Truyền hình Việt Nam, remained inaccessible, with a message saying it has been terminated because YouTube had “received multiple third-party claims of copyright infringement regarding material the user posted.” More here. However it should be noted that YouTube has set up a new team dedicated to improving the quality of policy enforcement and subsequent erroneous takedowns, responding to community criticism.

Indeed last month Google reported that it had received more than 75 million requests to remove from search results URLs that point to infringing content. That's more than double the number of requests it received in the same period last year, or around 34 million, according to the search giant's updated transparency report.

Controversial 'appropriation artist' Richard Prince has responded to a recently-filed copyright infringement lawsuit, claiming he should be shielded from infringement charges because his use of others’ copyright-protected images amounts to fair use. Prince has recently released a new series, entitled, New Portraits, which consists of blown-up photos from several Instagram accounts, including those of Pamela Anderson, Kate Moss, and Cara Stricker. Prince has added comments under the photos. For example, under one photo, Prince adds, “No Cure, No Pay” with an emoji. The case was brought by Los Angeles-based photographer Donald Graham against Prince, the Gagosian Gallery and Larry Gagosian, alleging that the defendants infringed the federally registered copyright in his photo, Rastafarian Smoking a Joint. Prince has asked the Southern District of New York court to dismiss the case as  attempt to ‘essentially re-litigate’ his controversial fair use victory against another photographer Patrick Cariou.

More than £200,000 has been spent by the Welsh government defending claims for copyright infringement over its use of photographs of Dylan Thomas, figures obtained by BBC Wales have shown. Over the last 18 months, £205,417 was spent defending claims brought by Pablo Star Media Ltd. The claims relate to two 1930s images of Thomas and his wife Caitlin. The Welsh government said it was seeking to recoup the costs. A judge in Dublin threw out one of the claims last month, but Pablo Star Media - which claims it owns the copyright - has launched an appeal.

The Hong Kong copyright amendment bill has failed to pass before the government-imposed deadline. The government plans to reshuffle the items on the agenda, meaning that the bill will not be discussed again in this legislature’s term. “We have decided to change the order of the bills to be discussed and move the copyright bill to the end of the agenda,” said the Secretary for Commerce and Economic Development Gregory So Kam-leung at a press conference.

The U.S. Supreme Court is staying out of a copyright dispute involving a Mark Towle, the California man who produced $90,000 replicas of the Batmobile for car-collecting fans of the caped crusader. SCOTUS has let stand the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that said the Batmobile's bat-like appearance and high-tech gadgets make it a character that can't be duplicated without permission from DC Comics, the copyright holder.

There's an interesting article from Tucker Arensberg on the JDSupra website that looks at the recent case, Dryer v. Nat’l Football League, No. 14-3428, 2016 WL 761178 (8th Cir. Feb. 26, 2016) - where former National Football League players sued the NFL over the use of their name, image, voice, and likeness in films and promotional videos released by NFL Films. The Players did not dispute the NFL’s right to record their performance in live sporting events, or the NFL’s valid copyright in the footage.  Rather, the Players challenged the NFL’s right to further use this footage by incorporating it into other films and promotional videos. The question before the Court was whether or not the district court erred in finding that the Copyright Act preempts the Players right-of-publicity claims.  The appellate court said no error - the Copyright Act prevails.

And finally - this one could be fun: Author Erick DeBanff, a self help guru who promotes living your life "to the max", has filed a lawsuit is against Google for copyright infringement, because it appears that Google (as TechDirt puts it) used a 'kind of trite message' in a commercial about making every moment matter - in the same way that Debanff subtitled his book. DeBanff's book is called "Vie Max" which also seems to be the name of the movement/fad/concept/something that he's selling. But the subtitle is "How to live the next 2 billion heartbeats of your life to the max." The claim says the wording in Google's ad "are essentially a direct copy of the words and philosophy in Mr. DeBanff's book and is a violation of the U.S. Copyright Act.". We shall see!

Farewell Sir George Martin. A wonderful and inspiring musician and producer - and a true gentleman.