Weekly IP Buzz for the week ending November 30, 2018
Here’s a summary of interesting developments in intellectual property, technology, social media, and Internet law for the week ending November 30, 2018.
Music Publishers Target PokerNews Podcast For Copyright Infringement
Even as Congress works to pass new legislation that would address digital music licensing and streaming, record labels and music publishers are still filing mass amounts of copyright infringement lawsuits and takedown requests with the latest target being podcasts. The PokerNews podcast is currently one of the more high-profile copyright infringement cases involving a poker podcast allegedly using unlicensed music recordings.
In the latest lawsuit, the music companies and publishing labels have sued the PokerNews podcast over the broadcast of several unlicensed recordings, requesting damages in the millions of dollars range. While music companies generally argue that content creators, podcasts, streamers, etc., simply need to pay licensing fees to use popular music in their broadcasts, new content creators often fail to secure the proper licensing agreements either out of ignorance or a lack of funds.
Read the full article here.
Music Industry Battles Internet Service Provider (ISP) Over Copyright Infringement
A Texas internet service provider (“ISP”) has taken to federal court to complain about the increased pressure from the music industry to monitor copyright infringement. In a federal filing, Texas ISP Grande Communications (“Grande”) has complained to federal court that record companies from the music industry have attempted to increasingly shift the burden of policing copyright infringement of their copyrighted works by abusing the use of legal takedown notices under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (“DMCA”).
Grande, a high-speed Internet provider, has claimed that, as the main provider of internet to several university campuses in Texas, it has come increasingly under fire and pressure from at least eighteen different music companies since April 2017. Litigants against Grande include, among others, Universal, Capitol, Warner, and Song; who have all accused Grande of allowing users to “engage in more than one million infringements of copyrighted works” due to alleged abuse by students through the use of bit-torrent services.
Read more here.
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Darin M. Klemchuk is founder of Klemchuk LLP, a litigation, intellectual property, and business law firm located in Dallas, Texas. He also co-founded Project K, a charitable movement devoted to changing the world one random act of kindness at a time, and publishes Thriving Attorney, a blog dedicated to exploring the business of the practice of law, productivity and performance for attorneys, and other topics such as law firm leadership and management, law firm culture, and business development for attorneys.
Click to learn more about Darin M. Klemchuk's law practice as an intellectual property lawyer.