The state of New York is set to begin collecting tax from some online retailers who do business in the state. And by some online retailers, we mean the law is targeted pretty firmly at Amazon, and may also affect some others. Not surprisingly, Amazon is none to thrilled, and the New York Times reports that the company has responded with a lawsuit against the state of New York.
Now, here's the interesting bit. Nobody's disputing that New York residents are supposed to be paying state sales taxes for items purchased from out of state retailers and shipped to New York. Even before the law was passed, people living in New York and many other states were supposed to keep track of such purchases on their own and send a check to the state. Of course, nobody actually does this, but it's the law. No, the issue is whether Amazon should be required to collect taxes
Typically you only need to collect state taxes if you have an office or other presence in the state. For example, if Amazon had a New York warehouse or distribution center. And then you need to collect taxes on everything sold to state residents, whether it went through that office, warehouse, or distribution center or not. But the law claims that because New York residents can sign up to be Amazon "affiliates," which means the post links to Amazon products on their web pages and make a commission, Amazon does maintain a presence in the state. Which sounds kind of weak if you ask us. But that's the crux of the law, and it's also the crux of the lawsuit.
Facebook may be synonymous with social networking these days. But just a few years ago, wunderkind Mark Zuckerberg was a student at Harvard, where the founders of ConnectU say he stole their idea for a web site where students could connect with one another. The two companies have been fighting things ou tin the courts for a while now, and today the New York Times reports that Facebook is "finalizing a settlement with the founders of ConnectU."
Neither Facebook nor ConnectU have issued statements regarding the rumored settlement, and it's not clear what the terms of the settlement are. But Facebook has apparently dropped its countersuit against ConnectU.
We're fairly confident that Facebook with its pockets (and swimming pools) lined with money and its corporate lawyers could have crushed ConnectU in court. But the settlement helps keep the ordeal out of the public eye and could help protect Mark Zuckerberg's ego. Parts of his diary have already been published as a result of the legal action.
A couple is accusing Google of diminishing the value of their property and causing them "mental" suffering" for including their recluse home in the Google Maps Street View project. The road leading up to their house is apparently labeled "private", something the Street View operator must've missed. We checked the Street View footage up to the house and didn't notice any clear "private" signs, but don't take our scientific analysis as fact.
They didn't like that Google invaded their "privacy". Some of the court papers are available online, and if you check them out, you'll notice mainly boring gibberish but also the address of the home. Suing Google has already done more damage to their "privacy" than the pictures on their own.
Aaron and Christine Boring want at least $25,000 and the 360 degree pictures destroyed, but something tells us the case doesn't stand a chance against Google's well paid, state-of-the-art, corporate lawyers, which come from the best lawyer factories in the nation.
A federal judge in New york has ruled that the RIAA cannot sue people for simply making copyrighted music available for download. Rather, the recording industry needs to demonstrate that someone has actually downloaded the file. Otherwise, it's not clear that a crime actually took place.
It's much trickier to demonstrate that someone actually downloaded the files you made available. And when we say you, we mean the figurative you. We're quite confident that no Download Squad readers are actually violating the law. This particular case isn't over yet, since the RIAA feels it can demonstrate that the defendent actually distributed copyrighted files, and didn't just make them available.
The judge in the case also found that while making files available might not be enough to justify a lawsuit, an "offer to distribute" copyrighted works is. What's the difference? If you don't password protect your WiFi router, your neighbors might be able to download files from your computer, which you've "made available." But if you designate a folder on your PC that has files you're willing to share with other Limewire users, that might be construed as an "offer to distribute."
Due to another company trademarking "G-Mail" in Germany, similar to Google's "Gmail" in the US, the search engine giant lost an appeal to use "Gmail" in the European Union. G-Mail stands for "Giersch Mail" in Germany, where Daniel Giersch runs an electronic postal delivery service -- if that's not email, we couldn't say what it is.
As a result, Gmail is now known as Google Mail in Europe. Google's email service is also known as Google Mail in the UK, where another company trademarked "Gmail" shortly after Google launched the service.
And the moral of the story is: The next time you launch any product or service, make sure to trademark the name before. As for Google, the company "got caught slippin" -- as we say in the hip hop world -- so too bad, so sad.
After filing for Chapter 11 protection in September, The SCO Group has been delisted from the Nasdaq trading index. The companies ticker symbol, formerly SCOX is kaput, although the non-indexed SCOX.PK (PK stands for "pink sheet") remains.Groklaw has brilliantly juxtaposed today's press release with the 2003 release stating SCO's intent to sue IBM.
For the uninitiated, SCO, formerly known as Caldera Systems, was at one time one of the largest Linux distributors for the business environment. In 2003, the newly named SCO systems sued IBM for $1 billion dollars, claiming that IBM's Linux products used parts of UNIX (which SCO claimed to own the rights to), thus devaluing the SCO brand. The story is extremely sordid and complicated, this Wikipedia page has a pretty good assessment of the various controversies and Groklaw has covered the various lawsuits involving SCO since 2003.
In short, SCO tried to claim intellectual property ownership of various parts of source code they claimed to be part of the open-source Linux kernel (one of the more insane claims, that SCO owned UNIX was legally dismissed in August 2007, and the actual owner of the UNIX and UNIXWare code, Novell, was awarded damages). SCO then sued manufacturers of competing Linux distributions for various claims ranging from the usage of SCO owned source code, trade secret violations and anti-competitive practices. And this from a company who's most successful product was actually called, "OpenLinux."
Objectivity aside - we can't wait for these guys to finally be out of business for good.
YouTube may or may not have become the phenomenon that it is without illegally uploaded clips of copyrighted content like music videos and clips from movies and TV shows. But the truth of the matter is that an awful lot of the videos on YouTube are copyrighted. And they've been uploaded without the copyright holder's permission.
Today Google announced the launch of their much anticipated content identification system. This is supposed to appease the lawsuit-happy content publishers who want to make sure that teenagers aren't uploading Saturday Night Live clips.
But here's the thing. Google's new system kind of passes the buck onto the content publishers. In order to work, the owner of the copyrighted video will have to upload a copy to YouTube, and then Google's machines go to work analyzing that file and making sure that nobody else has uploaded an exact duplicate. There's a few problems with this:
Content owners want Google to take preemptive action, not reactive
As far as we can tell, there's no way to prevent modified versions of the video from being uploaded, since the data analysis will be different. And some content owners have complained about things like music being played in the background of an amateur video. Google's new tools would be useless in identifying such videos.
In other words:
Users will probably continue to upload copyrighted videos without permission
Copyright holders will complain that the burden shouldn't be on them to check for illegal videos
Google will shrug
The world will move on and either Google will continue fielding lawsuits or content owners will find ways to make their content available online so that users don't feel the need to upload illegal copies.
What do you think? Did Google pass the buck? Or is this the appropriate way to design a content identification system?
RIAA defendant number THX1139 Jammie Thomas has been handed a verdict in a federal jury trial which could see her coughing up $220,000 in cash for sharing a grand total of 24 songs.
The verdict rests on the RIAA claim that "making available", the simple-to-prove act of creating search-able filenames on a filesharing network, is in itself proof of piracy. So, does this mean that the RIAA's longstanding battle to solidify its "making available" claims is valid, and other cases with similar arguments are a done deal? Not necessarily says attorney Ray Beckerman, "There is no basis in the law for the theory; sooner or later -- when appeals finally start filtering through the system -- the courts will put the kabash on it."
Ms. Thomas' case isn't a unique one. In recent years the RIAA has sued over 20,000 people in the United States, one of the few places in the world which allows recording industry lawyers to pierce the veil of privacy without the substantial burden of evidence proving wrongdoing.
The court awarded the RIAA over $9000 per song shared in compensation for losses, a stiff penalty by any measure, but far below the statutory maximum of $150,000 per song. "A verdict of $222,000.00, for infringement of 24 song files worth a total of $23.76?" says Beckerman, adding, "All the business people who make a living from the vibrancy, democracy, and freedom of expression which is the internet, need to get behind the RIAA's victims; if they do not, the world in which they hope to thrive and prosper will disappear rapidly."
It's no secret that a lot of consumer electronics devices are built using Linux and other open source software. That includes well known products like TiVo, and somewhat lesser known items like Monsoon Multimedia's Hava place-shifting device (it's a lot like a Slingbox, but there's a wireless model).
Open source software is often powerful, stable, and most importantly, available. The open source community has developed a wealth of code that developers can draw from in order to build robust consumer oriented products.
But while the software is often free, meaning you can use it without paying, it's also free as in speech. In other words, once you incorporate code that has been published under the General Public License, you have to allow others to see the source code for your device. And that's not something a lot of companies like to do. You know, trade secrets and all.
So when the folks that developed the open source BusyBox software, which is used in the Hava, asked Monsoon Multimedia for a peek at the company's source code and Monsoon failed to comply, two open source developers filed suit against the company.
This is apparently the first time anyone has filed a copyright infringement suit in the US involving an alleged violation of the General Public License. It should be interesting to see if the case goes to court where it could set precedent, or if Monsoon Multimedia decides to settle out of court.
Google is no stranger to lawsuits. Everyone from Viacom to the country of Thailand has taken legal action against the internet behemoth. Heck, we're betting at least half our readers have tried to file a suit against Google at one time or another.
But we've now found the incontrovertible best lawsuit ever filed against Google. And by best, we mean funniest. And kind of the saddest. This handwritten lawsuit claims that if you take the plaintiff's social security number and turn it upside down, and then scramble the numbers you get a code which spells Google. So obviously Google was trying to violate the plaintiff's civil liberties by adopting his social security number as their company name.
Seriously. That's what he's claiming. We're not kidding. Check out the suit yourself after the jump.
OK, so the names sound similar. But what exactly is Lulu alleging in its suit?
Trademark infringement
Unfair and deceptive trade practics
federal cyberpiracy
No, seriously. That's all in the first line of the press release. Lulu claims that the Hulu name was chosen because Fox and News Corp "have intentionally attempted to create confusion in the marketplace." Because there's a pretty good chance that people will confuse a site that lets you watch TV shows online with a site that lets you publish your own books.
OK, well, Lulu does claim that in addition to online vieo, Hulu plans to offer products and services that are similar to those provided by Lulu. But the way we figure it, that means Hulu will be selling Heroes mugs and T-shirts.
Seems like the big guys could be getting in a little trouble for violating patents. Among them, AOL, Amazon, Borders, Google, IAC (ASK), and Yahoo have all been accused.
The charges from this IP-related company that stem from a patent infringement make notes about the violating parties implementing systems that 'comprise interpreting electronic messages with rule base and case base knowledge engines'. Whatever that means. The claim does outlay the method as well as steps involved for receiving an electronic message and interpreting the electronic message. We all know this is most likely an effort by said plaintiff to get a little green in their pockets the filthy lawyer way. Especially when the company involved, as well as a slew of other IP-related companies, are associated with the same attorney. And it also just so happens that the same company suing the above companies, has also filed patent lawsuits with Oracle and Sirius Satellite Radio. Some people have guesstimated the settlement amount to be in upwards up six and seven figures.
Google gets brought to court again in this classic case of trademark infringement for sponsored ads. This time American Airlines is in the high flying plaintiff's seat.
American Airlines have dropped a trademark case on Google's doorstep because Google allowed the purchasing and bidding on their trademarked name, which just happens to be two generic names butted together. What will the outcome be? Maybe just a little bad PR for AA.
Video sharing sites like Youtube and Veoh have become easy targets for lawsuits from content owners. But when Universal Music threatened to file a suit against Veoh, CEO Steve Mitgang he didn't want to wait for Universal to follow through on that threat. Instead, Veoh filed a preemptive suit against Universal.
Basically, Mitgang's position is that Veoh is protected by the DMCA's safe harbor provision. In other words, the company can't be held responsible for every users who uploads copyright infringing content to the site -- as long as Veoh agrees to take action if alerted to illegal material.
Veoh is asking the court to issue an injunction that would prevent Universal from suing Veoh. If this works, we could see a lot of other companies following suit. But as much as they'd like to, we can't exactly see Daily Motion, Metacafe, and others filing preemptive suits against every content owner in the world. Our guess is they'll need a reasonable basis for their suits (like threats from Universal Music) if they don't want to be laughed out of court.
It always seems to happen once a company gets as big as Facebook, people sue.
Facebook's creator Mark Zuckerberg first saw a lawsuit alleging that the idea for the 30 million user social network was stolen from a few College friends. Now the team has been hit with a patent lawsuit claiming that the system for creating a community for users with common interests was issued a patent in 2003.
What are the new plaintiffs requesting? Royalties of course, it's always about the money.
