Category: News

Michael Geist | thestar.com | Dec 4, 2011

Geist speaks to four cases scheduled at the Supreme Court this week dealing with copyright: Entertainment Software Association of Canada (ESAC), Canadian Recording Industry Association, Apple, Bell Canada, Rogers Communications, and leading copyright collectives such as SOCAN and Access Copyright among the litigants.

Each of these cases originate with the Copyright Board of Canada – where the Board was “… asked to establish tariffs for the communication of music or the copying of materials in schools …”

For more information see: http://www.thestar.com/business/article/1096736–copyright-hangs-in-the-balance-at-supreme-court

October 25, 2011 | Reuters | Grant McCool

“NEW YORK (Reuters) – Action movie star Sylvester Stallone is accused in a lawsuit of copying another writer’s screenplay to make “The Expendables,” a movie about mercenaries hired to defeat a military dictator.

The lawsuit was filed in Manhattan federal court on Tuesday by writer Marcus Webb, who said the screenplay for “The Expendables” is “strikingly similar and in some places identical” to his work entitled “The Cordoba Caper.”

For more on the story see: http://ca.reuters.com/article/entertainmentNews/idCATRE79O5Y220111025

October 27, 2011 | Tony Wong | Toronto Star

“Three prominent Canadian authors launched a $6 million lawsuit Wednesday against Penguin Canada, the publisher of Gold Mountain Blues, for copyright infringement.

Wayson Choy, Paul Yee and Sky Lee are suing Pearson Canada Inc., the parent company of Penguin, along with Toronto author Zhang Ling and U.K.-based translator Nicky Harman for blatant disregard … in deliberately calculating to generate profit and gain at the expense of the authors.

Zhang is also accused of purposely copying multiple elements of their stories.”

For more on the story see: http://www.thestar.com/news/books/article/1076662–canadian-authors-file-copyright-suit-over-gold-mountain-blues?bn=1

Internet links not libel, top court rules | Megan Fitzpatrick | CBC | Oct 19, 2011

“Hyperlinking to defamatory material on the internet does not constitute publishing the defamatory material itself, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled Wednesday.

…
In its unanimous decision to dismiss the case, the court said a hyperlink, by itself, should never be considered “publication” of the content to which it refers. But that doesn’t mean internet users shouldn’t be careful about how they present links. The court says that if someone presents content from the hyperlinked material in a way that repeats the defamatory content, they can be considered publishers and are therefore at risk of being sued for defamation.

The court agreed with the arguments that applying the definition of publisher to someone who hyperlinks could have a chilling effect on internet use.”

For more on the story see: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/story/2011/10/19/pol-scoc-hyperlink.html

Also see: Michael Geist column in the Toronto Star

Marc Parry | Wired Campus, The Chronicle of Higher Education | Oct. 4, 2011

A judge dismissed a lawsuit on Monday that had accused the University of California at Los Angeles of copyright infringement for streaming videos online. One copyright expert thinks the UCLA decision increases the chance that the HathiTrust digital-library consortium will prevail in its effort to fight off a separate copyright lawsuit brought by the Authors Guild over the digitization of books from university libraries.

The lawsuit against UCLA was filed by the Association for Information Media and Equipment (AIME) and Ambrose Video Publishing Inc. in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California. Those plaintiffs claimed that UCLA had violated copyright and breached its contract by copying DVD &s of Shakespeare plays acquired from Ambrose and streaming them online for faculty and students to use in courses.

For more see: http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/judge-dismisses-lawsuit-against-ucla-over-use-of-streaming-video/33513?sid=pm&utm_source=pm&utm_medium=en

‘Orphan’ book scans from Google unauthorized, suit claims
The Associated Press Posted: Sep 13, 2011

“Authors and authors’ groups in the United States, Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom sued the University of Michigan and four other universities Monday, seeking to stop the creation of online libraries made up of as many as seven million copyright-protected books they say were scanned without authorization.

The Authors Guild, the Australian Society of Authors and the Union Des Ecrivaines et des Ecrivains Quebecois, or UNEQ, joined eight individual authors to file the copyright infringement lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Manhattan against Michigan, the University of California, the University of Wisconsin, Indiana University and Cornell University.”

For more see: http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/story/2011/09/13/technology-lawsuit-universities-books-google.html

Septemebr 5, 2011 | Stabroek Editor

“(Barbados Nation) The University of the West Indies (UWI) Cave Hill Campus is being accused of major copyright infringement that could land the country &s highest institution of learning in court.

The legal action being considered by the Barbados Copyright Agency (B-Copy), and backed by an international organization, will have serious consequences for students who begin classes today, as they could be blocked from the photocopying of course texts.”

For more see:http://www.stabroeknews.com/2011/news/breaking-news/09/05/uwi-cave-hill-accused-of-copyright-infringement/