On Wednesday, a Canadian judge ruled, in effect, that file-sharing was legal under Canadian copyright law.
And all this copying is completely legal, because copyright law doesn't cover apparel design.
This anti-innovation provision stems from legislative action begun in the 1960s when few people fully understood the copyright legal system and its implications.
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"While legal issues involving copyright law are always complex, we believe the project is wholly consistent with the core principle of copyright law, " says James Hilton, the head librarian at the University of Michigan.
Thanks in part to her conversations with legal experts about the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, she concluded that her potential legal liability would be small.
The development of MacMame could open the door to legal distribution, should copyright-holders choose to release them.
Von Lohmann concurs with Google's argument that YouTube is fulfilling its legal obligations and that copyright protection is the responsibility of content owners.
The first-sale doctrine, which the Court upheld in its decision, is a principle that the legal purchaser of a copyright-protected item may dispose of that property anyway he or she sees fit.
And the legal owner of the copyright has to have somehow assigned that right to someone -- either directly to OnlineLearning or indirectly via the university -- in order for OnlineLearning to have that right.
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He says the biggest barriers to building the kind of virtual world Chuah envisions are legal, involving things like copyright, and can be resolved.
In the same case, the Supreme Court said that recording free over-the-air television is perfectly legal and does not violate copyright law.
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"When you have files exchanged between complete strangers, that is an expansive view of personal use, " says Neil Rosini, a copyright attorney and legal counsel for MyPlay.com.
And Google has already faced legal threats in Europe over copyright law, including a class-action lawsuit brought by England's Football Association Premier League and supported by the Switzerland-based Association of Professional Football Leagues and France's tennis and soccer leagues.
Pinterest is facing some legal trouble due to concerns about copyright infringement and photos being shared illegally.
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"As a responsible ISP, Virgin Media complies with court orders but we strongly believe that tackling the issue of copyright infringement needs compelling legal alternatives, giving consumers access to great content at the right price, to help change consumer behaviour, " it said.
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Sure they have lawsuits to deal with for copyright disputes, but those legal fees are a drop in the bucket for this company.
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But its flouting of copyright is likely to face legal challenges.
"As a responsible ISP, Virgin Media complies with court orders addressed to the company, but strongly believes that changing consumer behaviour to tackle copyright infringement also needs compelling legal alternatives to give consumers access to great content at the right price, " the firm said in a statement.
But digital watermarks may find a legal role that has nothing to do with copyright.
And software is already covered under copyright law, which offers extensive legal protections against wholesale copying.
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Thus it would seem that the industry has a strong moral and legal justification to ask the government to enforce copyright law more effectively.
The Fair Use Doctrine, copied and pasted below from the US Copyright Office stipulates that it is legal and permissible to use copyrighted material under the fair use doctrine for purposes of parody.
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In September 2011, the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) teamed up with the ISPs to launch the Center for Copyright Information, a body dedicated to deterring copyright infringement and advising consumers on legal file sharing options.
However, national copyright legislations generally do not include a legal definition.
Google is also promising that it will stop copying content from other websites to use in its summaries, even though the company had insisted the practice was legal under the fair-use provisions of US copyright law.
Both the Aereo and Dish technologies rely on the 1984 Supreme Court holding in the Betamax case, which made it clear that consumer recording technology, in that case the VCR, is legal if it has uses that do not infringe copyright law.
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The industry's most powerful legal weapon in the United States is the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
The lawsuit, which is still ongoing, has cost Google millions in legal bills and pushed it to adopt its own proactive copyright protections.
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But its users could be exposed to copyright suits by pinning content without a license, legal experts say.
The European Commission has announced that it intends to create a legal framework to allow pan-European licensing, rather than copyright being dealt with on a country-by-country basis.
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