False And Abusive DMCA Takedowns Used To Censor Facebook Content. CNET examines the impact of Facebook’s status as a media-sharing source and publishing forum in a December 15 article, noting how abusive DMCA takedowns can be used as censorship on Facebook and other online platforms. In the past 6 months, WordPress rejected 9% of its takedown requests for being abusive. Corynne McSherry with the Electronic Frontier Foundation commented that “[c]opyright complaints offer a tool with which postings can be removed almost immediately with little review.”
The Mummy Trailer Goes Unintentionally Viral Thanks To The Internet. On Tuesday the Imax YouTube page accidentally posted an unfinished trailer for The Mummy forgetting one thing — the sound effects. The Verge reported in the December 20 article The messed-up Mummy trailer is mutating faster than Universal Pictures can keep up that the accidental blunder has gone viral as internet users recreate the trailer with their own sound effects and music. While Universal Pictures is filing DMCA takedowns to remove these new trailer spoofs, The Verge argues the resulting creativity and entertainment is proof of the beauty of the internet and a “gift of a spontaneous publicity wave.”
Can A Tattoo Be Considered Copyright Infringement? “People may think that because the [tattoo] ink is under their skin and they paid for it, that they own that work. They would be wrong,” said Drake University law professor Shontavia Johnson in an interview with the Des Moines Register on tattoo’s copyright implications in the column Copyright, trademark on tattoos murky, researcher finds. Up to 20% of all Americans and nearly 40% of millennials have at least one tattoo, but several copyright lawsuits have occurred over tattoos. For instance, Warner Bros. was forced to settle with Mike Tyson’s tattoo artist when he sued over the use of Tyson’s famous face tattoo in The Hangover Part II.
An Example Of Why “Notice & Staydown” Shouldn’t Come Up. After including the phrase “winter is coming” in artwork posted on Redbubble, a teenage girl finds herself as a prime example why “notice & staydown” is a flawed approach. TechDirt’s Timothy Geigner, in Notice & Staydown In Action: HBO Didn’t Even Need To Send Takedown Over Autistic Teen’s Artwork, explains how sites, such as Redbubble, who take it upon themselves to monitor and police potentially infringing material cause more harm than good. Geigner explains: “Redbubble policed HBO intellectual property on its site based on previous complaints. That’s not required by law, of course, but it certainly is what many in Hollywood want to see as the standard. And this is a perfect case for why it’s a terrible, terrible idea.”
Project DISCO: Copyright Office Report On Software-Enabled Treatment Of Licensing Issues Is “Disappointing”. Last week, the U.S. Copyright Office released a report on the role of copyright in the development and use of software-enabled consumer products. In The Copyright Office Report on Software-Enabled Consumer Products: Nothing to See Here, Project DISCO’s Jonathan Band explains how the reports represents a missed opportunity to start an important discussion about the constraints software licenses can place lawful online activity. “The report examines the impact of copyright law on software-enabled consumer products… and ultimately concludes that ‘faithful application of existing copyright law doctrines should provide no barrier to legitimate uses,’” writes Band. “To reach this conclusion, however, the report minimizes or avoids the adverse impact of software license terms prohibiting these activities.”