It looks like Apple won't be closing the iTunes store because of a dispute with music publishers over royalties on downloaded songs.
Congress has cleared the way for a potential agreement intended to save the emerging Internet radio market from a crippling hike in copyright royalty rates
For five years, Apple's iTunes Music Store has been the Internet's most successful music store. But as music publishers have sought a higher share of its proceeds, Apple has threatened to shutter iTunes.
In a crucial win for the free software movement, a federal appeals court has ruled that even software developers who give away the programming code for their works can sue for copyright infringement if someone misappropriates that material
The maker of the classic word-based board game Scrabble has sued the makers of the wildly popular online knockoff, Scrabulous
Google says that a lawsuit challenging YouTube's ability to keep copyrighted material off its popular video-sharing site threatens how millions of people exchange information on the Internet
It's a battle worthy of Harry Potter himself.
Dear FSB: Can you patent or copyright an idea for a website?
Dear FSB: Do I have to patent greeting cards?
YouTube, which has had to pull copyrighted videos off its site after legal attacks by some big media franchises, has enjoyed a surge in U.S. audience share that leaves it far larger than the next 64 video-sharing sites combined, a survey found.
It looks like Apple won't be closing the iTunes store because of a dispute with music publishers over royalties on downloaded songs.
Congress has cleared the way for a potential agreement intended to save the emerging Internet radio market from a crippling hike in copyright royalty rates
For five years, Apple's iTunes Music Store has been the Internet's most successful music store. But as music publishers have sought a higher share of its proceeds, Apple has threatened to shutter iTunes.
In a crucial win for the free software movement, a federal appeals court has ruled that even software developers who give away the programming code for their works can sue for copyright infringement if someone misappropriates that material
The maker of the classic word-based board game Scrabble has sued the makers of the wildly popular online knockoff, Scrabulous
Google says that a lawsuit challenging YouTube's ability to keep copyrighted material off its popular video-sharing site threatens how millions of people exchange information on the Internet
It's a battle worthy of Harry Potter himself.
Dear FSB: Can you patent or copyright an idea for a website?
Dear FSB: Do I have to patent greeting cards?
YouTube, which has had to pull copyrighted videos off its site after legal attacks by some big media franchises, has enjoyed a surge in U.S. audience share that leaves it far larger than the next 64 video-sharing sites combined, a survey found.
The popular user-generated video sharing site YouTube will begin testing video recognition technology in conjunction with partners Time Warner Inc. and The Walt Disney Co
Free software is great, and corporate America loves it. It's often high-quality stuff that can be downloaded free off the Internet and then copied at will. It's versatile - it can be customized to ...
Digg.com, one of the most popular sites on the Web, is bracing for a possible legal battle over refusing to remove stories containing a single 32-digit code that lets people crack HD-DVD copyright protection.
EMI Group PLC. announced a deal Monday with Apple Inc.'s iTunes to sell its music catalog without the anti-piracy protection known as DRM restrictions.
The National Music Publishers' Association (NMPA) filed a lawsuit against XM Satellite Radio Holdings Inc on Thursday for providing radios that allegedly let users reproduce and distribute copyrighted music without paying appropriate royalties.
In the epic philosophical and financial battle between West Coast and East Coast, between software and old media, the East this week fired perhaps its biggest gun so far. Viacom filed a $1 billion-plus lawsuit against Google's YouTube, asserting "massive copyright infringement" as a result of YouTube airing hundreds of thousands of video clips taken from Viacom television programs like The Daily Show and South Park.
Judging by the e-books listed on Matt LaClear's website, he seems to be both a real estate expert and a prolific writer. He's cranked out four titles in the past eight months, including his first a...
Viacom, with its lawsuit seeking more than $1 billion in damages from Google and YouTube, has shown that it's serious about copyright infringement.
Viacom sued Google and its online video subsidiary YouTube for $1 billion Tuesday, the first big lawsuit against the online video site and its parent for copyright infringement.
Senior executives at Yahoo! have probably become big fans of the rock group Van Halen lately.
The last place that any baseball fan ever wants to be is between team owners and a dollar bill. It's like stepping between Pete Rose and Ray Fosse, circa 1970. Or between Jose Canseco and his syringe sometime in the '90s. If it takes bowling over fans to get to that buck -- or giving them a nice, quick shot in the butt to get them out of the way -- that's exactly what baseball owners are going to do. It's not even a contest.
YouTube might just be the best thing that ever happened to old media.
A key tenet of life in Silicon Valley is that the technology industry is different from other businesses.
Google may face more lawsuits once its acquisition of video sharing site YouTube closes, the company said in its latest quarterly report.
Oh my God, they purged Kenny!
Up until very recently, John Hall was in his 18th year of teaching management at the University of Florida. Then he wound up on YouTube.
Growing up in a small town in southern Norway, Jon Lech Johansen loved to take things apart to figure out how they worked. Unlike most kids, though, he'd put them back together better than they wer...
Some traditional recording companies have taken a small stake in video-sharing site YouTube that could net them millions from the Web site's recent $1.65 billion sale to Google, according to a published report.
Reports of the death of the DVD have been greatly exaggerated.
Spending $1.65 billion to buy a Web site that specializes in wacky user-generated videos may seem like a steep price.
It was a typical lunchtime at Michael's, the Manhattan restaurant and Big Media salon - a well-groomed scrum of editors, publishers, moguls, and TV stars.
Allan Keiter awoke one recent morning to the scary news that his Atlanta company's website was nearly impossible to find on a Google search. MyRatePlan.com helps consumers compare cellular calling ...
Francisco Mingorance was on vacation in Spain last winter when he logged on to an Internet webcast and heard French politicians debating how to require Apple Computer to disclose its secret underlying code for iTunes software - a move that would allow millions of music lovers to play downloaded music and video on any device they chose.
U.S. cable operator Cablevision Systems Corp. on Wednesday said its planned network-based digital video recorder is protected by "fair use" legal precedents established in the famous Sony Betamax video case.
Last fall, Google sales chief Omid Kordestani speculated on the possibility of putting Google's lucrative contextual ads on television. Now the company is moving to make Google TV a reality by listing a job opening for a product manager to oversee the effort. The company is also hiring engineers in Mountain View, Calif. and London for the project. One feature we hope they'll add: Google search that finds your remote control when it gets lost between the sofa cushions.
NBC put out a serious fire this weekend, but critics aren't so sure they should have.
The most successful Internet companies have grown rich by exploiting other people's content -- without paying for it.
The World Economic Forum, a gathering of leaders from the business world, media, academics, and assorted hollywood stars and do-gooders, is taking place this week. Fortune Magazine's journalists will keep you apprised of developments.
Author and blogger John Battelle knows about as much as any outsider about what happens at Google and its search site. So when a reader of his blog pointed out to Battelle something he hadn't notic...
Google will resume its plans to scan copyrighted library books into its search engine after a self-imposed hiatus, according to a published report that says the effort could set the stage for a legal fight affecting both the future of the Internet and the publishing industry.
Swiss drugmaker Roche said Wednesday that third-quarter sales rose 20%, boosted by sales of cancer medicines and Roche's exclusive rights to influenza treatment Tamiflu.
Warner Music Group said it will launch a digital-only record label that will be a boon to new artists, amid industry struggles with copyright infringement created by file sharing.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Monday that software companies can be held liable for copyright infringement when individuals use their technology to download songs and movies illegally.
Michael Jackson's future turned a lot brighter Monday when a California jury found him not guilty of child molestation. But the embattled entertainer has a long way to go to reclaim his financial freedom.
Guilty or not guilty, Michael Jackson appears to be sinking deeper and deeper into a financial hole that may cost him his lucrative stake in the Beatles music catalog as well as the rights to his own platinum-selling songs.
IN THE WARM AND FROTHY bubble bath that is American spirituality today, it's hard to think of anything quite as familiar and comforting as the mini-homily known as "Footprints in the Sand." For any...
Michael Jackson, the legendary pop star facing child molestation charges, could lose his stake in the lucrative Beatles music catalog as well as the rights to his own platinum-selling songs.
Should technology companies be held liable when consumers use their products to violate copyrights? No, the Supreme Court said in 1984, when it ruled that the Sony Betamax videocassette recorder ha...
High-tech reached the nation's high court Tuesday as Supreme Court justices questioned whether online file-sharing networks could be held accountable for copyright infringement.
On March 29, the Supreme Court will hear arguments in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. v. Grokster, Ltd., a closely-watched case involving peer-to-peer file sharing - a process in which people send or receive music or movies over the Internet.
New Power Generation—the name of your band, your website, your record label—is particularly fitting. How have you managed to gain so much power over the record industry where other stars have faile...
Since 2003, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has been suing peer-to-peer (P2P) file swappers and downloaders. The RIAA alleges, in its suits, that P2P file swapping and downloading, when it involves pirated files, violates copyright law -- and, at times, also the Digital Music Copyright Act (DMCA).
An unlikely feud is seeing the film empire that built its name on cartoons for children -- the giant Disney corporation -- at odds with Britain's most famous hospital for sick children.
As Congress got back to work this week after a summer break, legislative proposals to ban gay marriage and to revamp the nation's security appartus dominated headlines.
Goodbye CD, we barely knew you.
I was deeply troubled a few weeks ago when the Senate Judiciary Committee listened to testimony about a proposed bill called the Inducing Infringement of Copyrights Act (S. 2560) introduced by Sens. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, and Patrick Leahy, D-Vermont.
Apple Computer accused RealNetworks Thursday of adopting the tactics of a hacker and breaking into the technology behind its popular iPod music player.
With something as fun as a cartoon Bush and Kerry hurling musical epithets at one another, you knew lawyers would have to get involved.
Hollywood Studios and the National Football League are going to battle with TiVo Inc., the maker of digital video recorders, alleging that its technology compromises the copyright of their shows, according to a published report Thursday
In the ascetic waiting room of the SCO Group's Lindon, Utah, headquarters, the only reading matter is a stack of beige, telephone-book-sized binders. They are volumes I, II, III, and IV of the comp...
As far as literary brands go--usually not very far--Ernest Hemingway is the Big Papa. You can buy a (Francis) Macomber chair from Thomasville Furniture or a Short Story cigar from Arturo Fuente; He...
Allan Vilhan is a musician who has yet to hit it big in the United States. In part, that's because Vilhan--who records under the name Cargo Cult--lives in Filakovo, a small town in Slovakia's Cerov...
A lot of writers I know are musicians. Maybe that's because music and writing share the concepts of phrasing, harmony, and tempo. Or maybe it's some desperate desire to communicate any which way th...
TiVo is under siege. From Hollywood to Madison Avenue, the word itself is almost a curse. And those who aren't muttering it are copying it. In the latter camp are most of the cable and satellite co...
It may not be a strategy that's tried, tested and true, but that hasn't stopped inmates across the nation from claiming copyright to their names and then demanding money from lawyers and judges who dare to utter them.
As part of a Los Angeles-based investigation into the bootlegging major motion pictures, an Illinois man was arrested on charges of copyright infringement and illegal interception of a satellite signal, according to the FBI.
Hollywood's bid to control how its movies are copied, stored and played is being tested by an unlikely source: a former French oil engineer in an out-of-the-way Paris suburb, Wednesday's Wall Street Journal reported.
Just when almost everybody else is trying to exit the music business, who's rushing in but Edgar Bronfman Jr., who recently joined a team of investors in a successful $2.6 billion bid for Time Warn...
In late February 2002, the users of an online file-sharing service called Morpheus found themselves suddenly cut off from their network. Their mass freezeout, it developed, had been engineered by a...
Alas, there is no morning-after pill for impulsive acts committed in a state of dot-com-bubbleheadedness.
Jack Valenti, the president and CEO of the Motion Picture Association of America, seems as much a permanent Washington fixture as the Lincoln Memorial, with hair that's as white and nearly as statu...
It's surprisingly easy to become a federal criminal these days. In my case I barely had to lift a finger. The finger was on a computer mouse, and with just a few clicks I made a perfect copy of a D...
It's the same old copyright song, copied over and over. Only now the volume is getting louder.
A self-satisfied federal judge, a self-righteous music industry, and a self-important Napster agree to disagree about how the embattled Internet service should comply with American copyright law. T...
After a federal judge in Manhattan ruled last month that MP3.com must pay Universal Music Group up to $250 million in damages for copyright violations, a lot of people's attention shifted to Napste...
It's the Fourth of July in San Francisco, and big John Hummer, co-founder of the venture capital firm Hummer Winblad, is holding court at the Dolphin Club. The club stands out amid the tony tourist...
Of all the people in all the world you'd expect to find engaged in a debate, one of the unlikeliest duos would have to be rap star Dr.Dre and Intel Chairman Andy Grove. Yet here they are, speaking ...
Early this year officials at Indiana University began noticing a curious thing: A rapidly rising percentage of the university's Internet bandwidth was being consumed by students using a new Web ser...
Last year I wrote a column wondering whether copyright protection has a future ("Copyright Protection Is for Dinosaurs," April 26, 1999). I've just had an experience that convinces me it doesn't. T...
Why do we need to protect intellectual property? Seriously, I'm beginning to wonder if we really need government protection of intellectual property in our new cyberworld.
In the waning days of the last election, President Clinton often disparaged the Republicans' "do nothing" Congress, pointing to its failure to pass anti-tobacco legislation or a plan to save Social...
All I wanted was a cool birthday cake for my kid. Stephen, zeroing in on age 9, had passed through phases of fascination with Thomas the Tank Engine, dinosaurs, dolphins, and killer whales. Now we ...
The digital people want your family room. Well, not the room actually. They want to take control of the room's audio and video equipment--and you'd be wise to let them have it. In exchange, you'll ...
GLOBAL
Is your company a criminal enterprise? The software industry estimates that 40% of software used by U.S. corporations is pirated. Companies, often unwittingly, break copyright laws by buying a new ...
TWO YEARS AGO in Milan, a squad of court officers and lawyers burst into the gloomy headquarters of Montedison, Italy's chemical giant. Sweeping through the building, they ordered employees at comp...
FORTUNES HAVE been made and lost over the ownership of ideas. The concept of intellectual property takes on special urgency in high-technology businesses because invention is the industry's stock i...
Amazing organ, the brain of a Congressman. All those billions of neurons responding frantically to sensory impulses emanating on the PR plane, all those nerve fibers in the outer cortex working tir...
AFTER ITS DEFEAT in World War II, Japan was content to take foreign inventions -- the transistor, the laser, the videotape player -- and convert them into products that it could market around the w...
Japanese companies don't like going to court, but last December NEC asked a federal judge in San Jose, California, to declare that its 16-bit V20 and V30 microprocessors don't infringe on the instr...
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