Jonathan Bailey's List: Episode 57

One of the pillars of the RIAA's legal campaign has been its assertion that making a file available for download equates to copyright infringement under the copyright act. There have only been a couple of decisions addressing the question so far. One that came down today in Atlantic v. Howell is the biggest rejection yet to the RIAA's "making available equals infringement" argument, as a federal judge has denied the labels' motion for summary judgment, setting the stage for a trial later this year.

As expected, the U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee unanimously approved a copyright holder-backed enforcement proposal known as the Prioritizing Resources and Organization for Intellectual Property, or Pro-IP, Act, which is chiefly sponsored by the committee's chairman, Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.).

Late last week, the US named and shamed its list of the worst offenders when it comes to protecting intellectual property; China, Russia, Argentina, Chile, India, Israel, Pakistan, Thailand, and Venezuela topped the "Special 301 Report" and earned the dubious distinction of being placed on a Priority Watch List (The Pirate Bay was also singled out for special mention). Together with the countries on the regular Watch List, the report called out a grand total of 46 countries, and the reaction has been fast and furious.

It was a pivotal moment for the music industry which many thought sounded the death knell for recorded music sales, but Radiohead won’t be repeating its initiative to let fans pay what they want for their downloads, The English rock band’s frontman said Tuesday.

In the last 10 days, universities around the country have seen more than a 20-fold increase in the number of filesharing takedown notices from the recording industry, in an unexplained spike that seems focused on colleges in the Midwest.

Nine major record labels filed suit against an online music provider on Monday, accusing Project Playlist Inc of a "massive infringement" of their copyrights to the songs of artists such as U2 and Gwen Stefani.

World Wide Video LLC, a Lawrence, Mass.-based company, claims it owns the 10 hours of raw footage, shot in 1970 by Tony Cox, Yoko’s husband before she married John, but Yoko claims she is the rightful owner. World Wide Video has filed a federal lawsuit against Ono, claiming Ono’s attempts to stop the company from publicly showing the footage is a copyright infringement. Further arguments in the case are scheduled for May 21.

In 2005, DVDr-core was the first BitTorrent site that was targeted by the MPAA outside the US. A classic story: Man runs site, man gets sued over site, nothing more is ever heard. Whilst in most cases, this means that the defendant bowed to pressure, paid an out of court settlement, and promised not to do it again, that is not the case here.

If you still like to see Madonna perform live in concert, then you’ll appreciate MSN’s streaming of the ageless singer’s upcoming Hard Candy concert. The concert will be shown live on MSN in its entirety, at no cost to viewers, here. Another step in the right direction for Madonna.

After nearly a year of watching Chris Bores steal, plagiarize, and rip off James Rolfe, I finally had the camera, editing software, and computer necessary to portray the untalented dolt for who he truly is. This is a hilarious (according to my viewers, not me-I'm not THAT cocky) non-copyright-infringing parody of YouTube's IrateGamer.

Despite the clear licensing agreement and the associated warnings, this package still ended up being traded freely in underground forums shortly after it was released. It just goes to show you just can’t trust anyone in the underground these days.