The CopyKat

There is yet another copyright lawsuit against the appropriation artist Richard Prince, after Dennis Morris LLC, the London-based photographer’s corporation, filed a complaint on the 3rd June in a Californian federal court seeking unspecified damages and any profits the artist and his dealer Gagosian Gallery made from Prince’s alleged use of three photographs of the 1970s punk rock band the Sex Pistols. According to the complaint, Prince used the images in work included in the 2011 exhibition Untitled (Covering Pollock) at Guild Hall in East Hampton. The claim says that Prince made "derivative works” and accuses the defendants of “producing and distributing large scale reproductions incorporating those derivative works” based on Morris’s photos of Sex Pistols bass player Sid Vicious. Morris is seeking a jury trial and demanding, among other damages, all of Prince and Gagosian’s profits from sales of the disputed works. The complaint also alleges that Prince used Instagram to promote the work for sale and includes a screenshot of a post (since deleted but pictured, left) on Prince’s Instagram account, featuring one of Morris’s best known photos of Vicious who died in 1979 from a drugs overdose.

Arts Technica reports that the lawyers behind the Prenda Law "copyright trolling" enterprise have lost their key appeal and will have to pay more than $230,000 in sanctions. The US Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit issued a 12-page ruling upholding the sanction order that began Prenda's downfall, issued by US District Judge Otis Wright in 2013. The ruling wholly supports Wright's sanction and dismisses John Steele and Paul Hansmeier claims that due process rights were violated: "These consolidated cases began as minor copyright infringement suits, until courts nationwide started catching on to the plaintiffs' real business of copyright trolling," the ruling states. "Prenda Principals were found contradicting themselves, evading questioning, and possibly committing identity theft and fraud on the courts" and "The Prenda Principals have engaged in abusive litigation, fraud on courts across the country, and willful violation of court orders," the opinion states. "They have lied to other courts about their ability to pay sanctions. They also failed to pay their own attorney’s fees in this case." The third appellant, Paul Duffy, died last year.

All three major record labels, along with 50 other rights owners and platforms, including Spotify, Pandora, SACEM and YouTube, have committed to creating a new system to “dramatically simplify the way that music creators and rights owners are identified and compensated”. The new initiative will hopefully replace and surpass the stalled Global Repertoire Database - and provide a 'one stop' centre for users who want to use songs and sound recordings. The Open Music Initiative (OMI) has been founded by Berklee College of Music’s Institute for Creative Entrepreneurship (BerkleeICE), and has been publicly backed by Universal, Sony, Warner and many more – although as MBW points out - despite Google's YouTube being on board, Apple’s name is conspicuous by its absence.

The European Commission's public consultation on "neighbouring rights" for publishers  - otherwise known as the 'Google tax on snippets' CLOSES TODAY.  The right could potentially allow publishers to demand payment from search engines and content aggregators where they include short snippets that link to the original text. You must use the questionnaire on the EU website to respond. 

And the latest battle in what the difference is between 'inspiration' and what is 'appropriation' has kicked off in Los Angeles, where Led Zeppelin stand accused of copying of a song called “Taurus,” written by Randy Wolfe and performed with his band Spirit, into their epic "Stairway to Heaven". Those who have listened to recordings of each of the songs might think there is a strong similarity, but the legal team attorney for Zeppelin’s front man, Robert Plant, and lead guitarist, Jimmy Page, said any similarities were because the two songs both relied on “basic musical devices that are completely commonplace” and found in songs dating back centuries.  "Taurus" was released three years before “Stairway to Heaven” surfaced on Zeppelin’s untitled fourth album, commonly referred to as “Led Zeppelin IV.” In the wake of the jury decision in the "Blurred Lines" case, its unsurprising Plant and Page cancelled sows to attend the trial.   

And finally and this time from Canada, a federal court has ruled that that a number of companies must temporarily stop selling TV boxes that allow consumers to access content via streaming sites as they face a court battle over alleged copyright infringement. The plaintiffs, who include Bell and Groupe TVA, allege the TV boxes come with pre-loaded software that allows consumers to view copyrighted programming from illegal streaming sites . MTLFreeTV, one of the defendants, argued the boxes are similar to a tablet or computer, and the company does not develop, produce, service or maintain the software that comes with the boxes. Justice Danièle Tremblay-Lamer ruled that the companies must stop selling pre-loaded products until a the result of a trail in the matter.

The CopyKat - with nets cast wide, the Kat pulls in the Great British Bake Off, the 2020 Olympics, trolls and porn amongst other titbits

The U.S. Department of Justice's recent proposal to amend the consent decrees to allow music publishers to partially withdraw digital rights from collection societies ASCAP and BMI's blanket licenses may be undermined by another change the DoJ is contemplating. Reports say the DoJ has sent letters to the two performance rights societies telling them that on "split works" songs - works which are co-written and therefore co-owned songs where multiple publishers and, often in the US, multiple PROs are involved, new rules might be applied The new proposal is that any writer or any rights holder would be able to issue a license for 100 percent of the song. In other words, the long-established industry practice of each rights owner 'green lighting' their particular portion of a song in order to establish a license - also known as fractional licensing - may no longer be allowed. So even if Sony/ATV or Universal pulled their digital rights from BMI and ASCAP, any songs in their catalogues co-owned with another publisher who was still using the two collection societies for digital would still be available for digital services to stream under their BMI and ASCAP blanket licences. More on Billboard here.

(Image: Mark Bourdillon/Love Productions/BBC)

An advert produced to promote the BBC's amazingly successful televised baking competition 'The Great British Bake Off' has been pulled after a complaint from the publishers of the song: 'The Hills are Alive with the Sound of Music' - which featured in the advert had newly adapted lyrics for the tune originally sung by Julie Andrews in the Sound of Music – including ‘The hills are alive with the smell of baking, with cakes that we baked for a thousand years.’ and other adapted lines include ‘the hills fill my heart with a love of baking’ and co-presenter Paul Hollywood 'sang': ‘I just want to taste every cake that I baked.’ "The advert campaign utilising The Sound of Music is neither authorised nor approved,’ said Bert Fink, senior vice-president (Europe) for Rodgers & Hammerstein."

Quartz tells us that in keeping with its ambition to become the world’s most open institution of its kind, the British Library has released over a million public domain illustrations and other images to the public through Flickr for anyone to reuse, remix or repurpose. So far, these images, which range from Restoration-era cartoons to colonial explorers’ early photographs, have been used on rugs, album covers, gift tags, a mapping project, and an art installation at the Burning Man festival in Nevada, among other things.

The International Olympic Committee has denied claims that one of the the official emblems for the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games, designed by Kenjiro Sano,  infringes the copyright of a Belgian theatre's logo. Belgian designer Olivier Debie has said that the design is similar to one he created for the Theatre De Liege. And yes, this is a copyrihgt claim as the theatre's logo has not been registered as a trademark.  Reports say that the IOC vice-president John Coates told a meeting of the Olympic management: "The IOC and Tokyo have checked all the copyright registers prior to this launch and that logo in Belgium isn't protected. Hmmmmmmm - from a UK perspective that wouldn't quite work Mr Coates ..... since it wouldn't need to be registered to attract copyright protection if it qualified as an original work. 

Techdirt reports that it now appears that a judge has begun to get a little more curious about "copyright troll" Malibu Media and how it goes about finding "infringers" to "shakedown with settlement agreements". Techdirt says that in the past, evidence showed that other similar copyright trolls like Prenda, were engaged in seeding their own content, which would make the file authorized, and thus the shakedown letters a form of "copyright misuse." There have long been rumours that Malibu Media, perhaps in association with the infamous "international men of mystery" running the behind-the-scenes operation out of Germany, may be seeding their own files as well.  Food for thought!

And finally more on Malibu ....  the company behind the X-Art adult movies that has filed more than 3,500 lawsuits against alleged illegal online sharers of its adult content in the USA has been back to court to seek an order to say that labels such as "porn" and “copyright troll” (which the Kat just used!) can't be used against it in court. Whilst a self admitted maker of 'beautiful erotica', Malibu recently filed a motion asking a federal court to block the defendant from using terms that it believes “would be unfairly prejudicial” saying  that as a Plaintiff, Malibu has been referred to in many different negatively connoted ways, including: ‘copyright troll,’ ‘pornographer,’ ‘porn purveyor,’ and ‘extortionist,’” and the  motion reads: “Referring to Plaintiff at trial by any title except ‘Plaintiff’ or ‘Malibu Media’ would be unfairly prejudicial and would only serve to impede the impartial administration of justice.” One commentator added that Malibu may also be protecting it's copyright claims against arguments that pornography cannot be protected by copyright laws in the U.S, not least as some argue that pornography does not promote the progression of useful arts,  More on tne protection of copyright by copyright  here and Eleonora posted an article on this very matter back in 2012 - 'How Porn Friendly is Copyright?' so have a look at this and the coments - which are very relevant here.

Has anyone noticed how much cake has featured on this Blog recently?