Copyright Norgen Style

It appears that this Napster decision was very strong in line with the usual central server decisions on secondary copyright infringement. However, it appears that a different angle was taken on determining liability.
Links were provided to popular music with well-known artists, and Bruvikmust have known that the music was uploaded without the right-holders` consent. Thus,Bruvik is liable and must pay compensation for damages primarily due to the fact thatsome of the users of the website otherwise would have bought CDs. There is causalitybetween his acts and (TONO`s) loss. In addition, the Supreme Court states that liability isnot incompatible with the freedom of speech. (paragraph 67 to 70)
In reality this gets us no closer to understanding Grokster or Kazaa because Bruvik (the guilty party) was the uploader. I guess the information was held on his (or an associated) server.
But I do like S 55 Copyright Act where it state the secondary infringement standard
If the right of anauthor or a performing artist has been infringed willfully or by gross negligence,the court may also award him a sum of money as redress for damage of a noneconomicnature
Would peer to peer represent a wilful infringement or gross negligence by not creating some architecture in the software that required the uploader to provide a licence?
I guess it would when you consider author rights as held by the court the exclusive right to make the copyright available to the publiccovers the making available in any way by any mean (paragraph 42).
But still doesnt address file sharing software - the court obviously came close to considering lack of communication of licences as infringement Thirteenth, the Supreme Court refers to what the parties contend as the consequences iflinking is considered as the “making available to the public” being that linking to legallyand illegally published copyright protected material require authorization from the rightholder.The party appealing the case contend that making available implies authorization.The Supreme Court states that such an understanding of the law could probably solve alot, but could lead to difficult question as to delimitation of such an authorization, whichin turn cold lead to doubt and initiate and increase the number of court proceedings.
Thats probably a really good remark on the next round of techno IP debates.
Still it was a solid judgement despite the fact we all read this sort of thing in the last few years.
I did note this one thing that raised an eyebrow though:-
Links were provided to popular music with well-known artists, and Bruvikmust have known that the music was uploaded without the right-holders` consent. Thus,Bruvik is liable and must pay compensation for damages primarily due to the fact thatsome of the users of the website otherwise would have bought CDs. There is causalitybetween his acts and (TONO`s) loss. In addition, the Supreme Court states that liability isnot incompatible with the freedom of speech. (paragraph 67 to 70)
Junichiro Ito must be annoyed.

Fair Use

By the way, the fair use discussion paper is out.



Cheers again IPwar

Deep (Linking) Thought

HHGtTG Reference:-

I have recently had the pleasure of reading an essay by Ivan which is available here.

It notes the practice of deep linking.

As you may be aware from reading my blog I am deeply conservative and orthodox in my views of copyright infringment and deep linking has presented a problem.

The concept of deep linking is using a hyper text link to send the user to a page behind the web pages main page.

Ivan argues that deep linking is not illegal if it is an outlink - that is the link takes the browser to the web page directly and does not display any additional information.

Inlinking however, that is where a frame or header from the original site is displayed over the linked information is illegal on the basis that it imports copyright data into the infringers web site.

However, all of this works on the basic assumption that each individual page is a work. It may, in the future, be arguable that the total website and all individual pages represent a single work. In this case, it would appear that by deep linking, even outlinking, you would be communicating a work to the public and therefore infringing copyright. THERE ARE MAJOR PROBLEMS WITH THIS ARGUMENT BUT I THINK IT MIGHT BE RAISED - especially in the context of site owners who derive revenue from site advertising that appears on thier home page. By deep linking and avoiding the advertising the site owner cannot charge the same amount of fees.

Something to think about in the future.