Category: Lawsuits

Winnipeg folk group sues to block the latest Harry Potter film from being shown in Canada
A Winnipeg folk group is suing Warner Brothers, British rock groups Radiohead and Pulp for 40 million dollars and trying to block the latest Harry Potter movie from being shown in Canada.
The group called the Wyrd Sisters alleges the Harry Potter movie due out next month contains a fictional band called the Wyrd Sisters who are actually members of Radiohead and Pulp.
In their statement of claim the Winnipeg group says the movie infringes on their trademark rights and will damage their reputation. The allegations have not been proven in court.
Neither Warner Brothers nor the musicians involved have filed statements of defence. However, Radiohead fans are fighting back and have posted dozens of messages on the Internet, calling the lawsuit a desperate attempt to get money and fame.

Record industry sues hundreds for file-sharing
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – A trade group representing the U.S. music industry said on Thursday it filed lawsuits against 757 people it claims used online file-sharing networks to illegally trade in copyrighted songs.
The latest round brings the total copyright infringement lawsuits filed against individuals to 14,800 filed by the U.S. music industry.
Of the 757 filed on Thursday, about 64 were filed against individuals using college networks, said the Recording Industry Association of America, which represents labels like Sony/BMg and Vivendi Universal’s Universal.

Senators turning up heat on P2P pirates
WASHINGTON (Hollywood Reporter) – Lawmakers pushed federal authorities Wednesday to crack down on peer-to-peer services that pirate copyrighted works, while one P2P operator told them pressure from the recording industry was forcing him to change his ways.
Sens. Arlen Specter, R-Penn., and Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., told officials with the Justice Department and the U.S. Copyright Office that they wanted recommendations for government action on the issue.
They spoke at a Capitol Hill hearing on the services following the Supreme Court’s June decision in MGM v. Grokster that file sharing networks could be liable when their users copy music, movies and other protected works without permission.
Feinstein, in particular, was upset over what she views as inaction by the Justice Department.
“We have a unanimous Supreme Court decision, and peer-to-peer use is increasing,” she said. “To me, that’s a signal we need a strong law to protect copyright companies.”
Debra Wong Yang, the U.S. attorney for California’s central district, defended the department’s actions, pointing out several investigations DOJ has undertaken that have led to arrests and convictions.
“Our mind-set is to go after those who are distributing the bulk of the material,” said Yang, who chairs the new Subcommittee on Cyber Crime and Intellectual Property of the department’s Advisory Committee.
That failed to mollify Specter or Feinstein, who appeared to want her department to be much more active.
“Why not go after both levels?” Specter asked. “Why not get tough? That’s what Sen. Feinstein wants to do, and I think it’s a good idea.”
Yang told the lawmakers that the department is concentrating on netting the big fish because it does not have the resources to go after every infringer.
“It’s got to either be made legal or shut down,” Feinstein said. “What bothers me is the information we’re being given that the activity is increasing.”
Despite the fact that some lawmakers view it as a lack of action, the Grokster decision claimed at least one victim as the developer of the eDonkey P2P application said he is planning to call it quits.
“I’m not an anarchist,” said Sam Yagan, president of MetaMachine Inc., which created eDonkey and Overnet. “I’m throwing in the towel.”
EDonkey was one of several that received “cease and desist” letters from the RIAA this month. Yagan said his company planned to convert to a “closed” P2P environment once it reaches a settlement deal with the Rceording Industry Assn. of America, the trade group that represents the major U.S. labels.
The decision to remake eDonkey was prompted by the cost it would take to litigate in the post-Grokster world, not that the company would fail on the merits. Yagan told the committee he thought the litigation after the Grokster case was misguided because “off-shore, underground, rogue P2P operators” will benefit the most because they have lost “a handful of their most legitimate competitors.”

Colleges offer legit downloads
WASHINGTON (Hollywood Reporter) – More than half a million students at nearly 70 colleges and universities now have access to legitimate music download services, according to a report given to Congress on Wednesday by a joint entertainment industry-university task force.
While the report’s authors say there has been “considerable progress” in the attempts by universities and copyright holders to reign in copyright piracy on campuses nationwide, it also shows how far the higher education institutions have to go.
According to the report by the Joint Committee of the Higher Education and Entertainment Communities, 670,000 students can get access to legitimate services through their universities and colleges. By contrast, the Chronicle of Higher Education estimates that there are more than 17 million college students enrolled across the nation.
Despite the relatively few students who have access to legitimate file-sharing services, the report’s underwriters said the number of students who now have a legitimate alternative is impressive because there were no alternatives just a few years ago.
“Universities have made impressive progress in combating piracy of music and movies through educational efforts, technical controls, and the adoption of legitimate online services,” said Pennsylvania State University president Graham Spanier, the committee’s co-chairman. “At the same time, we in higher education must expand the reach of our efforts and must continue to be vigilant.”
The committee, composed of entertainment and higher education leaders, was formed in 2002 as a way to help combat copyright piracy on campuses nationwide. University students, who have access to their institutions’ high-speed Internet networks, are often the most likely to illegally download music and movies.
The committee admitted that it was unable to determine how many of the students who now have access to legal services actually use them. Penn State spokesman Tysen Kendig said 30,000 of the university’s 81,000 students had signed up for the service.
Recording Industry Assn. of America president Cary Sherman, the committee’s other co-chairman, said the recording industry was encouraged by the progress.
“We are thrilled to see the number of schools offering legitimate services more than triple in the last year, and (we) remain hopeful that these partnerships will continue to flourish,” said Sherman, whose group represents the major U.S. record labels. “At the same time, complacency looms as a constant threat to the tremendous progress we have made. As the landscape changes, so must the anti-piracy programs within the university community. There is much promise in the coming years, but our work is far from done.”
The report also identified a number of problems that need to be addressed, including student-run file-sharing systems on schools’ local area networks as well as the increased use of unauthorized hacks of the legitimate online service iTunes, both of which are emerging as significant problems.
The release of the report comes a day before entertainment industry officials and university leaders are scheduled to testify before Congress on campus file-sharing problems.

CRIA wants tougher internet piracy law in Canada
The Canadian Recording Industry Association said Canada has become a music piracy haven.
The CRIA — representing companies that produce more than 95 per cent of all recorded music sold in Canada — wants the federal government to toughen internet piracy laws.
This follows a federal court decision in Australia on Monday that found six defendants guilty of copyright infringement and ordered them to pay back 90 per cent of the recording industry’s costs in the case.
The defendants included Kazaa’s owner, Sharman Networks Ltd., and its Sydney-based chief executive officer, Nikki Hemming, as well as Altnet, a company that provided some of the software for the Kazaa website.
Software for Kazaa, which until recently was the largest unauthorized file-sharing service with a peak of 4.7 million users worldwide, will no longer be available to download in Australia.
CRIA President Graham Henderson said: “The law that is currently on the books — that’s enforced — is so antiquated that the net result has been, despite all of our best efforts, Canada’s become a piracy haven.”
According to a June report from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, Canada has the highest per capita rate of unauthorized file-swapping in the world.
It has also been reported to have the second highest level of broadband penetration, making it vulnerable to piracy.
Kazaa’s lawyers had argued that the software was no different from a tape recorder or photocopier, and that Kazaa could therefore not control copyright infringement by users of the network.
It’s an argument that CRIA lawyer Richard Pfohl said could be interpreted in the wording of Canada’s existing draft legislation, and one that may protect internet pirates.
Henderson said: “Kazaa might well take a good look up here and (say) ‘Canada looks pretty good.’ And we can’t have that.”
The CRIA president said he hopes the government will make the amendments necessary to give Canada a robust copyright law when the legislation is debated in September, so that the record industry can get its fair share of the digital marketplace.
“The opportunity is here. The world — legislators, courts, people around the world — are speaking very clearly about what the new social norm is. And it’s not free copyright,” he said.
The Australian judgment comes 10 weeks after an unanimous U.S. Supreme Court ruling against the file-swapping operator Grokster, and three years after the shutdown of the original Napster.

Court rules against Kazaa
SYDNEY (Reuters) – An Australian court ruled on Monday that users of the popular Internet file-sharing network Kazaa were breaching copyright, and ordered its owners to modify the software to prevent online music piracy.
Federal Court Judge Murray Wilcox ruled that Kazaa’s Australian owner and developer, Sharman Networks, had not itself breached copyright but had encouraged millions of Kazaa users worldwide to do so.
“The respondents have long known that the Kazaa system is widely used for the sharing of copyright files,” said Wilcox in his ruling in a Sydney court.
The decision follows a similar judgment in June in which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that file-sharing networks such as Grokster can be held liable if their intent is to promote copyright infringement of music or movies.
“The message is very clear for P2P services: It’s time to go legal,” said John Malcolm, chief executive of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI). “Today’s judgment shows that Kazaa — one of the biggest engines of copyright theft and the biggest brand name in music piracy worldwide — is illegal.”
Peer-to-peer (P2P) networks distribute data between users instead of relying on a central server.
Sharman Networks said it was disappointed with the judge’s decision, and that it planned to appeal.
The consequences of the Kazaa ruling on illicit file-sharing are uncertain. Previous legal crackdowns on P2P services have usually only served to send users to other networks.
“Inevitably, when you have successes it drives people elsewhere,” IFPI boss Malcolm said. “We know we’re never going to completely eradicate this kind of piracy, but the progress has been remarkable.”
VICTORY FOR MUSIC INDUSTRY
Australian record companies — including units of Universal Music, Sony BMG, EMI Group, Warner Music, and several independents — will now seek damages for hundreds of millions of illicit music downloads at a later hearing.
“The court has ruled the current Kazaa system illegal,” Michael Speck, a spokesman for the Australian music industry, told reporters outside the court. “It is a great day for artists, it is a great day for anyone who wants to make a living from music.”
Sharman Networks had defended the use of the Internet to download music tracks, telling the court that file sharing represented a revolution in the way music was distributed and sold.
It said it could not control the actions of an estimated 100 million worldwide users.
Judge Wilcox said Kazaa failed to use available technology such as key word filters to prevent copyright infringement because it would have been against its financial interest.
He said that Kazaa’s “Join the Revolution” Web site campaign did not directly advocate sharing copyright files, but criticized record companies for opposing file sharing.
“It seems that Kazaa users are predominately young people, the effect of this web page would be to encourage visitors to think it ‘cool’ to defy the record companies by ignoring constraints,” Wilcox said.
Wilcox ordered Sharman Networks to modify the Kazaa software with filters to protect copyright.
“If Kazaa cleans up its act and does what the court has ordered it to do, stop its illegal business, then they have an opportunity to be part of the music industry,” said music industry spokesman Speck.
A growing number of legal online music services such as Apple’s iTunes, Napster, and RealNetworks’ Rhapsody have grown in popularity over the past year. And a new generation of P2P services like Mashboxx are hoping to hoping to offer the advantages of file-sharing without infringing on copyright.

Recording industry sues more U.S. file-swappers
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – The recording industry on Wednesday filed its latest round of copyright infringement lawsuits, targeting 754 people it claims used online file-sharing networks to illegally trade in songs.
The lawsuits were filed in federal district courts across the country, including California, Colorado, Georgia, Missouri, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Washington, D.C.
The world’s major record labels, represented by the Recording Industry Association of America, have filed more than 14,000 such lawsuits since September 2003.

Crowe Reaches Settlement With Hotel Worker
LOS ANGELES – Russell Crowe has reached a settlement with a Manhattan hotel employee who claimed the actor threw a phone at him, according to a statement released Thursday by the actor’s publicist.
The Academy Award winner allegedly struck concierge Nestor Estrada in June while Crowe was in New York to promote his movie “Cinderella Man,” in which he portrayed a boxer.
“Both sides expressed satisfaction at the resolution,” the statement said.
Terms of the settlement were not disclosed.
The 41-year-old Australian movie star publicly apologized on the “Late Show with David Letterman” shortly after the incident, saying it was “possibly the most shameful situation that I’ve ever gotten myself in in my life, and I’ve done some pretty dumb things in my life.”
Crowe was angered by a malfunctioning phone at the Mercer Hotel and at 4 a.m. threw it and struck Estrada in the face.
Crowe is married to actress Danielle Spencer and they have a young son together. He was trying to call home to Australia and got mad because the phone wasn’t working.
Prosecutors charged Crowe with second-degree assault and fourth-degree criminal possession of a weapon √≥ the telephone. Crowe, who’s free on his own recognizance, is scheduled to return to court Sept. 14.

2 jurors now say Jackson is guilty
LOS ANGELES (AP) – Two of the jurors who voted to acquit singer Michael Jackson of child molestation and other charges say they regret their decisions.
Eleanor Cook and Ray Hultman, who both have pending book deals, said in a televised interview Monday night that they believed the singer’s young accuser was sexually assaulted.
“No doubt in my mind whatsoever, that boy was molested, and I also think he enjoyed to some degree being Michael Jackson’s toy,” Cook said on Rita Cosby: Live and Direct.
Jackson defence lawyer Tom Mesereau dismissed the jurors’ comments as “embarrassing and outrageous”during an interview with The Associated Press.
“The bottom line is it makes no difference what they’re saying. It really is a non-event,” he said. “Twelve people deliberated and out of that process justice is supposed to result. Now two months later these jurors are changing their tunes. They clearly like being on TV. I’m very suspicious.”
The jurors’ comments will have no bearing on the verdict, which prosecutors cannot appeal.
Cook and Hultman said they agreed to go along with the other jurors when it became apparent that they would never convict Jackson.
Cosby asked Cook if the other jurors will be angry with her.
“They can be as angry as they want to. They ought to be ashamed. They’re the ones that let a pedophile go,” responded Cook, 79.
Hultman, 62, told Cosby he was upset with the way other jurors approached the case: “The thing that really got me the most was the fact that people just wouldn’t take those blinders off long enough to really look at all the evidence that was there.”
The New York Daily News first reported Aug. 4 that Hultman and Cook planned books and believed Jackson was guilty.
A call Monday to jury foreman Paul Rodriguez was not immediately returned.
Hultman has said that when jurors took an anonymous poll early in their deliberations he was one of three jurors who voted for conviction.
On June 13, the jurors unanimously acquitted Jackson of all charges, which alleged that he molested a 13-year-old boy, plied the boy with wine and conspired to hold him and his family captive so they would make a video rebutting a damaging television documentary.
Cook told Cosby: “The air reeked of hatred and people were angry and I had never been in an atmosphere like that before.”
In June, Hultman told The AP about the verdict: “That’s not to say he’s an innocent man. He’s just not guilty of the crimes he’s been charged with.”
During an appearance on Good Morning America with five other jurors in June, Cook was one of three who raised their hands when asked if they thought Jackson may have molested other children but not the 13-year-old boy.
“We had our suspicions, but we couldn’t judge on that because it wasn’t what we were there to do,” she said at the time.
Hultman’s book will be called The Deliberator and Cook’s is Guilty as Sin, Free as a Bird, said Larry Garrison, a producer who is working with both on their separate books and a combined television movie. Part of the profits from their book sales will go to charity, he said.

Legal Duel Over “Zorro” By Josh Grossberg
As if Zorro doesn’t have enough to worry about while helping the peoples, now he’s gotta contend with lawyers.
With just a couple of months to go before the studio unspools The Legend of Zorro, Sony Pictures and its TriStar Pictures division has found themselves the target of a lawsuit filed by a Hollywood film company contesting the rights to the swashbuckling swordsman.
Sobrini Films, a subsidiary of producer Mark Armin’s Maroda Inc., sued Sony on Tuesday, accusing the distributor of squashing the shingle’s attempts to get its own Zorro film off the ground.
In the suit, filed in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, Sobrini claims it alone owns the exclusive rights to the 1919 Johnston McCulley serial, The Curse of Capistrano, from which the classic Zorro character was born. Sony, the suit claims, controls the rights to later stories.
As result, the company says it is free to proceed in producing its own version of the masked avenger, a futuristic tale called Zorro 2110.
According to court documents, Sobrini initiated the legal action after receiving a cease-and-desist letter from Sony that asserted the studio had the exclusive rights to all film and TV productions created from the Zorro property.
Sobrini’s attorney, Bruce Isaacs, said the letter was an attempt to sabotage his client from making its own Zorro flick because it can’t get the requisite insurance.
“We have a Zorro script that we’re really excited about and we’re planning to go forward with our movie, but Sony TriStar is under the impression that they have the exclusive rights to make Zorro movies and we think they’re wrong, so we’re going to the court asking them to agree with us,” Isaacs told E! Online.
“So it’s really a fight over whether they have the exclusive rights to Zorro.”
The lawsuit also seeks a court ruling affirming that Zorro’s Mexican bandito getup–the black mask, cape, hat and sword–is in the public domain and cannot be claimed for private use under copyright or trademark laws.
A Sony rep declined to comment on the suit, pending litigation.
Meanwhile, The Legend of Zorro, the long-awaited sequel to 1998’s blockbuster, The Mask of Zorro reuniting smoldering stars Antonio Banderas and Catherine Zeta-Jones with director Martin Campbell, will be swinging into theaters Oct. 28√≥just in time for Halloween.