Yeah, that's the other parties' fees, I think. And the docket turns out to have a lot of activity for a case that only had one side chugging along. There's an "infringement report" (which seems to put this place over at least some of the caps for the statutory exemption). It looks like a banquet hall that hosts events, etc.
There's a lot of correspondence (including what seems to be a BMI license application from the restaurant proprietor in which he allegedly underrepresented the restaurant's max capacity by a factor of 9 or 10).
The law is, I and others have pointed out, weird here -- lots of rules that no one would guess.
The court didn't actually weigh the case, since the restaurant never answered the complaint. That's too bad, as most restaurants *don't* owe fees thanks to the Fairness in Music Licensing Act, the result of the NRA (National Restaurant Association) beating the music licensig lobby. It says that you don't have to pay fees:
(ii) in the case of a food service or drinking establishment, either the establishment in which the communication occurs has less than 3,750 gross square feet of space (excluding space used for customer parking and for no other purpose), or the establishment in which the communication occurs has 3,750 gross square feet of space or more (excluding space used for customer parking and for no other purpose) and--
(I) if the performance is by audio means only, the performance is communicated by means of a total of not more than 6 loudspeakers, of which not more than 4 loudspeakers are located in any 1 room or adjoining outdoor space;
So most establishments have a defense. Maybe this one did. But the judge heard from only one side since the restaurant never showed up to court. Too bad.
Twitter's implementation of localized censorship is leaky by design. Users can specify in their settings what country they're in -- and that overrides any guess that Twitter might make about location from, say, IP address. So any Russian who wants to see what's missing -- after conveniently being alerted by Twitter that a given tweet is not accessible in that country -- can just switch to another country. Seems a pretty pragmatic move to prevent Twitter engineers from being arrested or money from being seized in a local jurisdiction while making tweets trivially available worldwide.
The letter from the lawyer posted at http://www.olga.net/ is very clever. Note that it is not a DMCA takedown notice. Instead, pages 1 and 2 are a letter that insists that OLGA and its members are infringing copyright, and that if they don't take down all infringing material they will... be sent a takedown notice. The "unsent" takedown notice is then posted as pages 5 and 6 of the first letter.
Why do this? I think for three reasons. First, I think it's because the lawyers want the whole site taken down, and the DMCA takedown process limits them to identifying each piece of copyrighted material that they say is infringing.
Second, the DMCA notification process allows a counter-notification from the person who put the material on the site to begin with. If OLGA gets a counter-notification, it can leave the material up pending a real court order, and even then only risk being told to take it down by the court.
Third, sending a DMCA notice requires the sender to swear in good faith that copyright is being infringed. Note that the "unsent" takedown notice doesn't say that the web site is infringing -- only the cover letter does. As Diebold found out, sending notices when the material isn't infringing opens oneself up to damages. This appears to be a clever way to avoid that trap....JZ
This might be covered elsewhere in this massive thread, but a failure to comply with 512(c) just means the intermediary can't be guaranteed a "safe harbor" immunity from liability -- whether or not it's liable without the immunity was untouched by the DMCA, and it may well not be.
Here, since pricing information isn't copyrightable in the first place (I see someone has already cited to the Feist case), the DMCA has nothing to do with anything.
It'd be helpful to see an actual copy of the threat letter(s) to see just what the lawyers are claiming....JZ
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Yeah, that's the other parties' fees, I think. And the docket turns out to have a lot of activity for a case that only had one side chugging along. There's an "infringement report" (which seems to put this place over at least some of the caps for the statutory exemption). It looks like a banquet hall that hosts events, etc. There's a lot of correspondence (including what seems to be a BMI license application from the restaurant proprietor in which he allegedly underrepresented the restaurant's max capacity by a factor of 9 or 10). The law is, I and others have pointed out, weird here -- lots of rules that no one would guess.
So most establishments have a defense. Maybe this one did. But the judge heard from only one side since the restaurant never showed up to court. Too bad.
Twitter's implementation of localized censorship is leaky by design. Users can specify in their settings what country they're in -- and that overrides any guess that Twitter might make about location from, say, IP address. So any Russian who wants to see what's missing -- after conveniently being alerted by Twitter that a given tweet is not accessible in that country -- can just switch to another country. Seems a pretty pragmatic move to prevent Twitter engineers from being arrested or money from being seized in a local jurisdiction while making tweets trivially available worldwide.
It has chapters -- I trust the submitted can assign a subset, especially since it's a modular book.
How about Lessig's Code 2.0? It's cyberlaw's pathbreaking book, and it's written in a very accessible way. It's free online at http://www.codev2.cc/.
Why do this? I think for three reasons. First, I think it's because the lawyers want the whole site taken down, and the DMCA takedown process limits them to identifying each piece of copyrighted material that they say is infringing.
Second, the DMCA notification process allows a counter-notification from the person who put the material on the site to begin with. If OLGA gets a counter-notification, it can leave the material up pending a real court order, and even then only risk being told to take it down by the court.
Third, sending a DMCA notice requires the sender to swear in good faith that copyright is being infringed. Note that the "unsent" takedown notice doesn't say that the web site is infringing -- only the cover letter does. As Diebold found out, sending notices when the material isn't infringing opens oneself up to damages. This appears to be a clever way to avoid that trap. ...JZ
This might be covered elsewhere in this massive thread, but a failure to comply with 512(c) just means the intermediary can't be guaranteed a "safe harbor" immunity from liability -- whether or not it's liable without the immunity was untouched by the DMCA, and it may well not be. Here, since pricing information isn't copyrightable in the first place (I see someone has already cited to the Feist case), the DMCA has nothing to do with anything. It'd be helpful to see an actual copy of the threat letter(s) to see just what the lawyers are claiming. ...JZ