02
MAY
2013

UK allows use of orphan works for commercial purposes

Last week, the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill proposed in the UK received Royal Assent. This means that the Bill has been approved and promulgated, thus making it law. The Bill will allow orphan images to be licensed for commercial use.  Orphan works are works of which the rights holder cannot be contacted even after a ‘ diligent search’. The Bill will allow these works to be used...
01
MAY
2013

SABAM starts lawsuit against ISP's for profiting from streaming services

Belgian collecting society SABAM claims 3,4 per cent of the turnover of Belgium’s top three Internet Access Providers. According to SABAM, ISP’s unduly profit from streaming video and music services. SABAM is of the opinion that the popularity of Internet services like iTunes, YouTube and Spotify generates high traffic for the Internet Access Providers and as a result, these companies profit...
01
MAY
2013

iTunes celebrates its 10th anniversary

On Sunday, iTunes celebrated its 10th  anniversary. Let's take a look at the history of the largest and best known online entertainment store. On 28 April 2003, Apple launches the iTunes Music Store for Mac in the US. The online store has a catalogue of 200,000 songs, sold for $0,99 each. In the first week, more than 1 million songs are downloaded. In October, iTunes is also released for...
30
APR
2013

Increasing IP enforcement in China: Government to shut down file-sharing websites

The Chinese government is achieving increasing results after stepping up its anti-piracy policy. This week, the Chinese authorities shut down two of the country’s largest file sharing websites. It concerns the domains Siluhd.com and YYeTs.com.  Silu HD is one of the largest distributors of pirated HD content with, supposedly, 140 million registered users. After shutting down the website,...
29
APR
2013

Victory for painter and photographer Prince in lawsuit about fair use

On 25 April, the US Court of Appeals ruled in the long-running case between photo journalist Patrick Cariou and painter and photographer Richard Prince. Prince's re-works of Cariou's photographs are considered fair use. In 2000, Cariou released his book Yes, Rasta with photographs of Rastafarians. In 2008, Prince took 35 of Cariou's pictures for his Canal Zone series and re-used them in order...