Jonathan Bailey's List: Episode 98

• word from the Hill is that a "network management" amendment proposed by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) will not be included in the final bill.
• He warns, though, that the "network management" language seems to have been left out largely because of the rush to reach agreement, and may return as a separate proposal at some later point.

• The only problem is that, as anyone familiar with copyright should know, you can't copyright facts—including live events. While PRCA can own copyrights in its own specific recordings of rodeos, the events themselves aren't copyrightable—which means recordings produced by SHARK members are owned by their creators. When SHARK's attorneys pointed this out, YouTube promptly reinstated the group's account.
• The cowboys apparently weren't in the mood for a showdown: pursuant to a settlement agreement (PDF) reached last week, the PRCA will fork over $25,000 to SHARK in exchange for their dropping the suit. They've also agreed that in the future, they'll take any copyright claims directly to a contact at SHARK rather than asking service providers like YouTube to pull down content—and in cases of disagreement, get their own attorneys to sign off on any DMCA action.

• SVT will broadcast live audio from the entire trial. Additional video would’ve been nice too, but under Swedish law this is not allowed. However, to complement the audio, SVT will have a reporter in the court room adding extra information to the stream and this will be complemented by additional images uploaded to the site.

• Two months ago, 75 sites involved in this franchise were already pulled offline, and this week the remaining 19 followed. All the sites were allegedly operated by the same person, a 45 year old Dutch man. BREIN, who previously said that the man was involved in an organized piracy ring, will report the man to the FIOD-ECD - the Fiscal Investigation Unit of the Dutch Police.

• The team in Birmingham recently installed new CSO equipment and before it was fully functional, the engineers had to test the cameras and screens and therefore needed an example image to use as a background.

   

  An internet search for images of the Birmingham skyline brought up a photo of the city centre (via a website not connected with your Flikr page) and this was then loaded into the system just as an example backdrop to internally test and calibrate the new equipment.
• Nevertheless, we recognise that your image was used on air and would like to offer you a payment of £75 by way of a usage fee on the understanding that this represents final settlement of the matter. If you are agreeable, I would also ask that your image entitled “bbc news 24″ on Flikr at www.flickr.com/photos/23993287@N00/3120642216 be removed along with the comment “why is the BBC using this copyrighted photo of mine on news items” attached to the “Birmingham Skyline” image at www.flickr.com/photos/23993287@N00/2649168967.
• Since publishing the story yesterday, we’re pleased to report our coverage of Mike’s story forced the BBC into a re-think on the matter of copyright. A spokesperson has contacted Mike and offered an undisclosed amount, which he has accepted:

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• Fox, on the other hand, will emerge with an upfront cash payment that sources pegged between $5 million and $10 million, covering reimbursement of $1.4 million the studio invested in development fees, and also millions of dollars in legal fees incurred during the case.

  More importantly, Fox will get a gross participation in "Watchmen" that scales between 5% and 8.5%, depending on the film’s worldwide revenues. Fox also participates as a gross player in any sequels and spinoffs, sources said.
• Though it was denied by both studios, sources said that in recent weeks that WB and Fox discussed several intriguing horse-trading scenarios after WB choked on Fox’s initial ask of 10% gross and distribution in some overseas territories.

• Eventually, though, a consensus emerged: Each post takedown occurred on a blog hosted by the Google-owned Blogger platform, the publishing system used by the majority of mp3 sites, particularly those founded prior to 2007, when the open-source WordPress software became the vogue. Google, the bloggers believe, has quietly changed the methods by which it enforces its user agreement. Whereas in the past, a blog owner would receive a warning before a post’s removal, Google is now simply hitting the delete button. In Spaulding’s case, this means that posts written over the past year or more on Wilco, the Annuals, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Matisyahu and Earth, Wind & Fire are gone.
• Indeed, nowhere in the fine print of the DMCA does it state that any agency is required to notify bloggers prior to the deletion of their posts. Meaning that in the five years since purchasing Blogger’s parent company, Pyra Labs, Google has been extending warnings as a common courtesy. Now, it just sends an obituary notice. Which raises the question: Did Google finally get fed up dealing with unruly bloggers? Was there some sort of back-office conversation with the RIAA? Does it just really hate MGMT?

• Facebook fought fiercely to keep the details of its market value and the ConnectU settlement under wraps. Before last June's hearing, Facebook lawyers persuaded Ware to remove reporters from a San Jose courtroom so the final details could be hashed out in private.

   

  Large portions of that hearing are redacted in a transcript of the June hearing, but The Associated Press was able to read the blacked-out portions by copying from an electronic version of the document and pasting the results into another document.

   

  Under their settlement, Facebook agreed to pay ConnectU $20 million in cash and 1,253,326 shares of common stock. The stock was worth $45 million, based on the Microsoft valuation, but only $11 million under Facebook's own appraisal.