Tech Law Prof Blog

Warners Plays Hardball With YouTube Over Videos

Must be time to renew a contract.  Warner Brothers is making an aggressive push to remove videos from YouTube that uses copyrighted materials.  The newest twist is the removal of videos where amateurs perform Warner copyrighted songs in various forms, including snippets in the background. More from the New York Times.

Best Buy Price Matching Under Fire

Best Buy's price match guarantee is under fire in a class action suit.  This isn't the first time Best Buy has had funny pricing.  They were once cited for having an internal web site that was different from the public web site in that pricing was quite different.  Customers would be referred to the internal site when they questioned pricing.  That, of course, is another story.  More on the current suit in Ars Technica.

Obama Administration Supports Damages in P2P Case, Files Brief

The Obama administration has filed a brief supporting statutory damages as reasonable in the Massachusetts trial for copyright infringement via P2P.  The plaintiff is the RIAA, and the defendant is Joel Tennenbaum.  He's being defended by Professor Charles Nesson and his Harvard class.  The Obama administration move is hardly a surprise.  If the administration felt strongly about this issue, it would have proposed legislation changing the damages scheme.  If anything, Congress will likely tighten up penalties for digital copying rather than easing up.  More in CNET which also notes how high ranking IP attorneys who worked for the RIAA are taking high ranking positions in the Justice Department..

Patent Reform in Congress

Patent reform, specifically to address suits by patent trolls, is up in Congress, with a meeting scheduled before the Judiciary Committee on the Leahy-Hatch patent bill.  Commentary from IPWatchdog.

IE8 Reviews

USAToday publishes a roundup of reviews for Internet Explorer 8.  Microsoft says it's faster than Firefox.  Like any such claims, this one is subject to a lot of qualifications.  Read more here.