CRA-ADC

Litigation

in cra-briefings30 · October 15, 2005

UNIVERSAL MUSIC AUSTRALIA Pty Ltd. v. SHARMAN LICENSE HOLDINGS Ltd [2005] F.C.A. 1242 (Australia)

On September 5, 2005 The Federal Court in Australia dealt what could be the knock out blow to the on-line file sharing service KAZAA. Judge Murray Wilcox found Sharman Networks, owner of KAZAA, liable for copyright infringement occurring over the KAZAA network despite the fact that warnings were posted on the web page discouraging users from engaging in infringing activities. The Judge found that Sharman did nothing to stop users from deliberately and knowingly stealing copyright protected materials. In what could be a financially damaging case for KAZAA , the court ordered that Sharman pay 90% of the music industry’s costs and that the program be altered to exclude copyright protected material from that which can be traded over their networks. Sharman has vowed to appeal the decision. For more information on this recent verdict please see www.news.com.com or for the text of the decision please see www.austlii.edu.au

HUNSTMAN v. SODERBERG UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT, COLORADO

The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and a number of prominent film directors have commenced a law suit against Family Flicks Inc. and Play it Clean Video for copyright infringement. This action comes from the Family Flicks and Play it Clean’s practice of removing the violent and sexual content from videos and making them available in new versions. The MPAA asserts that this is infringement of the copyright in the original version of the films. The EFF has filed an amicus (friend of the court) brief in support of the Family Flicks and Play it Clean Video asserting that this use is fair use of the copyrighted material. Though this case is only in the early stages, more information can be obtained from www.eff.org

AUTHORS TAKE GOOGLE TO COURT

The Authors Guild representing, 8,000 writers in the US, has filed suit in US District Court in Manhattan against Google for its Print Library program, the just-announced effort to digitize the world’s libraries – the mission being “to organize the world’s information making it more universally accessible and useful”. [See CRA Briefings #29] The lawsuit seeks class action status, damages and an injunction to halt further infringement. Goggle stands accused of “massive copyright infringement at the expense of the rights of individual writers”. According to the suit, five libraries have agreements with Google to scan their holdings and make them available on-line without contacting any authors. Nick Taylor president of the Authors Guild, calls the library scheme a “plain and brazen violation of copyright law&hellipt is not up to Google or anyone other than the authors, the rightful owners of these copyrights, to decide whether and how their works will be copied.”

Google’s has not admitted that anything in its program constitutes infringement of copyright. Despite this it has an opt-out provision stating that the wish of authors who do not want to be involved will be respected provided they advise Google Print directly.

For more information see: www.copyrightclassaction.com and www.authorsguild.org.