Court awards first-ever damages for false copyright infringement takedown notice (Steptoe, 12 March 2015) – The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, in Automattic Inc. v. Nick Steiner , has awarded total damages of $25,084 to a blogger and the operator of blogging platform WordPress.com for “lost work and time” spent responding to a fraudulent takedown notice for copyright infringement. This appears to be the first time a court has awarded such damages under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, given the difficulty of demonstrating that such false claims are knowingly made.

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Image courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net/StuartMiles

Germany’s top publisher bows to Google in news licensing row (Re/Code, 5 Nov 2014) – Germany’s biggest news publisher, Axel Springer, has scrapped a bid to block Google from running snippets of articles from its newspapers, saying that the experiment had caused traffic to its sites to plunge. Springer said a two-week-old experiment to restrict access by Google to its news headlines had caused Web traffic to its publications to plunge, leading it to row back and let Google once again showcase Springer news stories in its search results. Chief Executive Mathias Doepfner said on Wednesday that his company would have “shot ourselves out of the market” if it had continued with its demands for the U.S. firm to pay licensing fees. Springer, which publishes Europe’s top-selling daily newspaper, Bild, said Google’s grip over online audiences was too great to resist, a double-edged compliment meant to ram home the publisher’s criticism of what it calls Google’s monopoly powers. Publishers in countries from Germany and France to Spain have pushed to pass new national copyright laws that force Google and other web aggregators to pay licensing fees – dubbed the Google Tax – when it publishes snippets of their news articles. Under German legislation that came into effect last year, publishers can prohibit search engines and similar services from using their news articles beyond headlines. Last week, Spain’s upper house passed a similar law giving publishers an “inalienable” right to levy such licensing fees on Google.

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Image courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net/KROMKRATHOG

Google settles with photographers over book scanning lawsuit (TNW, 5 Sept 2014) – Google has announced a settlement with a coalition of photographers over use of their work in its Google Books scanning project. The photographers first filed suit against Google in 2010. Terms of the deal have not been disclosed, but all parties are said to be “pleased” with the agreement, which includes funding for the PLUS Coalition for better image licensing. Google Books has caused a world of legal trouble for the company. In 2012, Google settled an extended disagreement with book publishers over the project. Last year, it emerged victorious over the Authors Guild, which filed an appeal earlier this year.

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Image courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net/adamr

Disney decides to ‘Let It Go’ when it comes to copyright infringement (InsideCounsel, 23 May 2014) – If you have kids – or a pair of ears, I suppose – you have likely heard the infectious song “Let It Go” from the mega-hit movie “Frozen.” The animated movie, based on the Hans Christian Andersen tale “The Snow Queen,” has won Academy Awards, raked in hundreds of billions of dollars worldwide, and sent toes-a-tappin’ with an Oscar-winning song. These days, though, whenever something in popular culture is well known, it becomes fuel for the content creation fire. People from all over the world have taken copyrighted content from “Frozen,” like the hit song, and posted images and videos that infringe on Disney’s intellectual property. On YouTube, one can find versions of “Let It Go” that are sing-alongs, mashups, covers and parodies. Some of these videos have racked up millions of pageviews. So, why isn’t the Mouse House apoplectic over the clear infringement of its intellectual property ? There was a time when Disney’s leadership viewed YouTube as an opportunity for fans to engage in mass piracy. Disney’s own efforts to establish an online presence have been lukewarm until recently. In March of this year, it purchased Maker Studios, a company that produces YouTube videos, tapping into amateur creators to provide content. This acceptance of the popularity of fan-created content as a way to expand the brand and engage fans does not mean that Disney’s position on copyright infringement has softened completely. The company has fought to extend the copyright of its most iconic creation, Mickey Mouse, lobbying Congress to extend the copyright protection period another 20 years.

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Image courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net/Stuart Miles.