Big Music is harshing hip, tech-savvy narcissists' mellows: Record label EMI is suing Vimeo for encouraging lip dubs, wherein flipcam-possessing twenty-somethings make video of themselves dancing around and lip-syncing to their iPods.
Now you have one less way to waste time at work and one less reason to get pissed off at your "friends." Scrabulous—the Scrabble rip-off available for online play at Facebook—has finally been shut down. So now you have to play real, Hasbro-owned Scrabble. Or just go here. This is perhaps not the best environment in which to launch our own exciting murder mystery online board game "Hint", is it. [NYT]
Recently, we met the Media Bloggers Association, supposedly a group that provides legal aid to bloggers and one that is currently negotiating with the Associated Press to establish guidlines for reposting tiny snippets of their copy. Our night editor asked who died and made them Internet Kings, and they responded with a bitchy email that said we didn't even email them or anything. Then a couple enterprising commenters did some more research (and not the "email them for comment" kind either-what is up with the internet?). And now we have reason to be suspicious of everything the MBA and their head troll Roger Cox have to say. They might just be a money-making scam!
As reported previously, the Associated Press is attempting to define "guidelines" to allow bloggers to quote its content, even though substantial quoting is already allowed under federal copyright law. The wire service will arrive at these guidelines after meeting with the Media Bloggers Association. And who are they? It's hard to say, even after reading the group's site and searching for more information elsewhere on the Web.
As we reported last week, the Associated Press sent a copyright complaint to a harmless little left-wing news aggregating site demanding they remove posts that featured "39 to 79 words" of their precious, precious copy. Over the weekend, after outrage from various blogs, they retreated. But they're not giving up! Blogs will bow to them! They will set standards, and blogs will naturally decide to follow these standards on their own accord, because that's how bloggers act!
This is troubling! The Associated Press has filed 7 Digital Millennium Copyright Act takedown requests against a site called Drudge Retort (unaffiliated with Matt Drudge). The site is a largely user-generated blog that features headlines, excerpts from news articles, links, and discussion. The AP says this practice is a violation of their intellectual property. Some call it blogging! The AP's lawyer is having none of that:
Why let your abandonment of this mortal coil prevent you from continuing to be a self-impressed techno-utopian schmuck? Now you can alert the world that you read BoingBoing ever after death with the "Public Domain Donor" sticker. Put it on your license today so that when you die your Twitter will revert to the Public Domain where fellow Twitterers may build upon it with further Twittering. [Public Domain Donor via Kottke]
Yuppie clothier Lacoste just got its French ass handed to it for a second time during a court battle to protect its trademark crocodile logo. Who dared impinge on its copyright? A pair of British dentists who hung the sign on the left here outside their offices. The court ruled against Lacoste and fined the company £1,450 for legal costs but resisted the impulse to fine them further for being petty colorblind jackasses. [Reuters]
CNET blogger and supposed open-source expert Matt Asay tragically misreads Google's terms of service for Google Apps. An admittedly scary patch of legalese suggests, to Asay, that Google will take all of your private data, take over its copyright, and make it public. But in fact, it just says that if you use Google to host, say, a word-processing document or spreadsheet, and you want said document to be publicly available on the Web, you must agree to let Google, you know, make it public. Why Asay is resorting to scare tactics over this is beyond me. Is he pursuing an anti-Google agenda? Or is he just sloppy? I'm voting for just sloppy.
Backed by Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft, the Computer & Communications Industry Association, a lobbying group, is targeting everyone from Hollywood to book publishers in its Defend Fair Use crusade. The CCIA is trying to drum up popular support for its allegations, submitted to the Federal Trade Commission earlier this month, that corporations are misleading consumers about copyright law. Copyright holders may not condone certain uses of its material, but that doesn't necessarily mean those uses are illegal. Fair use, an abstruse area of copyright law meant to encourage scholarship and journalism, is widely misunderstood. It's certainly a curious standard for CCIA's supporters to bear, since Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo all implement fair-use-defying digital-rights-management software, and comply with "takedown" requests from copyright holders without considering fair use.
Google wants to make you aware of its corporate trademark policy: Don't use it unless we tell you to — never mind the details of the actual law. Blogoscoped reader Frank Fuchs created a simple Web-based guide to getting businesses listed on search engines. For spot images, he pulled company logos. For his trouble, Google's ill-informed lawyers sent a legally questionable cease-and-desist notice, quoted after the jump.
Yesterday we were faxed a letter written by New Yorker writer (and sometime Gawker contributor) Ben Greenman. It's addressed to actor and "Knocked Up" schlub Seth Rogen. Turns out that Rogen's next film, coming out in August, is called "Superbad." That turns out to be the title of Greenman's 2001 McSweeney's book. We're torn—we respect that Greenman didn't go straight to the lawyers over his (uh, dubious) claim, but we also think the letters are a big pot of crazy. Judge for yourself!
PAUL BOUTIN — Burning Man, the Bay Area's annual alt.credibility event for geeks, has gone from "radical self-expression" to self-litigation. Founders Larry Harvey and Michael Mikel each want sole ownership of the name. Third founder John Law, who split a decade ago, has sued both to free the Burning Man name into the public domain. Law wants to "keep anyone from having an exclusive right to capitalize on these brands."
Anyone can report that YouTube deleted loads of clips from Comedy Central, including South Park and the Daily Show.
We loves us some YouTube as much as anybody, as demonstrated by any number of ganked clips run hereabouts. Occasionally, and shockingly, we even run hard-hitting original video, such as the men "dancing" at the Virgin Megastore clad only in socks over their manparts. Apparently that poignant masterpiece is now the property of YouTube, according to a change in their Terms & Conditions.
