Wednesday, September 29, 2010

UH-OH! TROUBLE FOR SONG LYRICS ONLINE

Interesting story in the Hollywood Reporter about a suit against websites that publish downloadable lyrics online:

Fri Sep 17, 2010 @ 09:38AM PST

By Eriq Gardner

Read lyrics to your favorite songs online while you still can.

That's probably a little alarmist, but a federal court in California is being asked to order LiveUniverse, which maintains several websites that display song lyrics, to transfer ownership of the sites to music publishers.

In August 2009, PeerMusic, Warner/Chappell and Bug Music filed copyright infringement lawsuits against LiveUniverse, alleging infringement for the posting of lyrics. This May, a federal court issued an injunction, ordering LiveUniverse to remove unlicensed material from its website. The defendant didn't, leading to a contempt order.

Last month, the district court ordered LiveUniverse to disable the websites altogether. That still hasn't been enough to get LiveUniverse to do much.

So yesterday, attorneys for PeerMusic asked that a court grant them domain control over lyricsdownload.com, completetealbumlyrics.com and lyricsandsongs.com.

Earlier in the week, the judge ordered the defendants to pay fees and costs for repeated failures to complete discovery obligations.

The Hollywood Reporter law blog, THR, Esq., whose tagline is "the intersection of Hollywood and the law," has some great entertainment-oriented legal posts. Check them out!



Thursday, April 8, 2010

Google Gets Sued by Photographers

Photogs Sue Google For Book Digitization
by Wendy Davis, Daily Online Examiner

Google has been hit with another lawsuit stemming from its book digitization project, this time by the American Society of Media Photographers and other trade groups.

In a lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court in New York, they allege that Google's "reproduction, distribution, and public display of the visual works" contained in books and periodicals infringes copyright. The photographers seek monetary damages and an injunction banning Google from making any further copies.

FULL STORY HERE