More Good News from the Obama Administration

By Sandra Aistars
Copyright Alliance | Article Link

The Obama Administration yesterday issued an Executive Order establishing two Advisory Committees on Intellectual Property Enforcement.

The new committees will assist the Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator in implementing the Joint Strategic Plan for Intellectual Property Enforcement, and will ensure that all of the Administration Agencies and Departments affected by intellectual property infringement are represented and involved in addressing these issues. The Committees will include the heads or deputies of the Departments of Justice, State, Treasury, Agriculture, Commerce, Health and Human Services, Homeland Security, the Office of Management and Budget and the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative.

Top 10 Legal Disclaimers in Hollywood History

By Eriq Gardner
THR, Esq. | Article Link

In honor of Friday's post about The King's Speech being threatened over use of the "No Animals Harmed" disclaimer, we thought it'd be interesting to take a look at creative uses of legal warranties & disclaimers in movies. By now, most cinephiles are familiar with the standard "Any resemblance to actual persons —living or dead— is purely coincidental." Turns out that filmmakers have turned cursory legalese into an art form, offering up their own disclaimers. Here's our list of the best:

1. "Any resemblance between Hynkel the dictator and the Jewish barber is purely co-incidental" — The Great Dictator


2. "It is the stated position of the United States Air Force that their safeguards would prevent the occurrence of such events as are depicted in this film" — Dr. Strangelove

More than 100,000 People Have Been Sued for Sharing Movies in Past Year

By Eriq Gardner
THR, Esq. | Article Link

Suing file-sharers has gone viral.

Since we first broke the news about a new Washington D.C. enterprise using an innovative legal tactic to pursue movie torrent downloaders, U.S. courts have seen an explosion of activity on the file-sharing front.

In fact, according to data collected by TorrentFreak, more than 100,000 P2P users have been targeted in lawsuits in the past year alone. What started out as a handful of small film producers suing has grown to include indie studios like Voltage and Nu Image to a wide swath of the adult entertainment industry. 

Copyright and Censorship

By Terry Hart
Copyhype | Article Link

On January 19, 2011, members of New York City’s theater community and human rights supporters gathered to mark the one month anniversary of Belarus’ contested presidential election. The election was widely condemned as fraudulent, accompanied by the arrests of many peaceful protesters in Belarus with thousands more beaten.

100 Internet Users Responsible for Most Unlawful Copyright P2P File Sharing Content

By MarcJ
ISPreview | Article Link

A scientific study has estimated that just 100 internet users are ultimately responsible for publishing most (almost 67%) of all the "illegal" (unlawful) copyright content (music, tv shows, movies, games and applications) on public P2P (BitTorrent) file sharing networks. The primary motivation appears to be money and the study identifies several broadband ISPs, including one UK provider (Virgin Media), as unwittingly playing a big part.

The study, which set out to examine the behaviour of the users who are responsible for publishing over 55,000 files on the two main portals (Mininova and The Pirate Bay), was carried out by Spain's Carlos III University of Madrid (UC3M). The content they posted ultimately accounted for "75 percent of [all] the downloads" (i.e. by end-users).