A photographer says BuzzFeed should pay copyright damages not only for an unauthorized photo that appeared on its site — but for the dozens of other sites on which the photo appeared. Read more »
The case accusing Apple of fixing ebook prices is heating up. New court documents show that Steve Jobs’ biographer have been dropped from the case but that Jobs himself is still at the center of it. Read more »
Injure someone’s feelings online and you or your company can be sued for defamation, no matter how silly the slight. Josh King, of Avvo.com, says such nuisance suits — known by the acroynm SLAPP — stifle free speech. Read more »
While Google may see its payments to French publishers as a smart move for its own short-term purposes, the deal is still being seen by many as a payment for links, and that could set a dangerous precedent. Read more at GigaOM »
A federal court has found that scanning books for search — which Google was doing for a university project called the Hathi Trust — is clearly covered by the “fair use” principle in copyright law, which could help Google in its own lawsuit with the Authors Guild. Read more at GigaOM »
The implications of Apple’s recent billion-dollar victory over Samsung in a patent-infringement case go beyond the specifics of this particular battle — the reality is the war over software and design patents is bad not just for individual companies but arguably for society as a whole. Read more at GigaOM »
In a filing late Wednesday in response to Apple and book publishers, the Department of Justice reiterates its claim that agency pricing and the alleged conspiracy have resulted in “unmistakable consumer harm,” but refuses to release its ebook pricing analysis. Read more »
Twitter’s decision to suspend the account of a British journalist raises a host of questions about the company’s behavior, but one of the important ones is to what extent Twitter’s filtering and curation features could make it legally liable for the content flowing through the network. Read more at GigaOM »
U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh has abruptly recused herself from a high-profile case in which Facebook had recently proposed to pay at least $10 million to settle accusations that it violated users’ privacy when it used their photos for “sponsored stories” without their permission. Read more »
With its channels now officially pulled off the programming guides of Dish’s 14 million U.S. subscribers, AMC gets straight to the point: This dispute has nothing to do with ratings or fees and everything to do with unrelated litigation, the programmer said Saturday night. Read more »
The hype surrounding Facebook has rapidly turned sour since the company went public in a media frenzy last Friday. Read more at GigaOM »
Attempts by various levels of government both in the U.S. and around the world to track dissidents through social networks has put pressure on companies like Twitter to comply with these court orders — but Twitter seems determined to uphold its users rights whenever possible. Read more at GigaOM »
Apple says it had to cut an agency-pricing deal with publishers in order to weaken Amazon’s monopolistic control over the e-book industry. But wait — didn’t Apple behave exactly the same way towards the record labels as it is accusing Amazon of behaving towards book publishers? Read more at GigaOM »
