Entertainment Lawsuits

Today I took a look at some entertainment lawsuits that was surprised by what I found out. Just today a lawsuit that was originally filed in December of 2008 got a verdict. The suit was over copyright infringement. The person, Richard Prince that was being sued over photos said he used them under fair use. The original photographer Patrick Cariou won in court today after the judge found that the photos were not changed enough to fall under the fair use laws. As a photographer I think this is a great step in protecting the rights to photographers on the photos they create.

The second lawsuit that I came across is against apple inc., and is over their new iCloud. There is a company called iCloud communications that says they already owned the name and their service is like the service that apple is promoting. It looks like apple will have to pay big bucks on this one. iCloud communications is ready to go all they way through court with this one and apple inc. is hoping to try to settle this one out of court. If you ask me I think it maybe better for these two companies to work something out with one another. Apple inc. has the money and the lawyers to drag this out in court for a long time and it would just hurt the both of them, I think iCloud communications would be better off to work a deal but not completely sell out. I am very surprised that a company as large as apple would not have looked into the fact that someone already has the name.


Now for the last suit that I took a look at, I looked at The Pirate Bay suit. This suit has been going on for sometime now. If you haven’t heard of The Pirate Bay it is a file-sharing site located outside of the United States. I believe they are located in Sweden, at least I know this is where it started. The creator of the site has a lot of good points about how his site is legal and how the groups that are trying to sue him should be happy that there is a avenue here for them to distribute their content. A good example of how this can be turned into a win-win for both sides is napster.com; this site was once the largest file-sharing site out there and now is a site that sells content. I myself don’t believe its right for people to illegally download other people’s creations, but at the same time I understand where the creator of the file-sharing site is coming from. File-sharing on the internet will never be stopped, this is and will be an ongoing battle for the companies that create music, movies and software.

Sources:

Richard Prince Loses Fair Use Argument
http://www.aphotoeditor.com/2011/03/19/richard-prince-loses-fair-use-argument/

Apple Sued Over iCloud Copyright
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izuuWPGLo-o

Pirate Bay Surrenders to Hollywood, interview with co-founder Peter Sunde
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PZpJCTsNtw