ISSUE083
19.01.2016
w w w. i p p r o t h e i n t e r n e t . c o m
The primary source of global intellectual property internet news and analysis
Mainstream adverts populate pirate sites
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An extensive study has revealed that mainstream advertising made up almost half of the adverts displayed on 14,000 webpages suspected of intellectual property rights infringement. The Office for Harmonization in the Internal Market’s Observatory on Infringements of IP Rights commissioned whiteBULLET Solutions to study the scale of ad-based funding of suspected IP infringing websites affecting the EU market. Of 14,000 webpages hosting 180,000 ads, 64 percent were linking websites, 23 percent were hosting sites and 13 percent were BitTorrent portals.
Spotify faces unpaid royalty suits
Two musicians have hit Spotify with classaction lawsuits over unpaid royalties.
“Spotify chose expediency over licences,” argued Ferrick in her complaint.
Melissa Ferrick filed her copyright infringement complaint against Spotify in the US District Court for the Central District of California on 8 January, arguing that the streaming service copied her work without permission.
The service has “profited handsomely” while the copyright owners have “not been able to share in that success”. She is reportedly seeking $200 million in damages.
Ferrick’s complaint is the second levelled at Spotify in less than a month, after alternative rock singer David Lowery brought a classaction suit against the music streaming service over unpaid royalties in December. Ferrick, who is also seeking class-action status, claims Spotify took an “infringe now, apologise later” approach when it copied her music and made it available to stream or temporarily download. She claims her music has been accessed one million times in three years.
Lowery, who filed his class-action suit against Spotify in the same court on 28 December, claimed the streaming service has made “unauthorised reproductions of [his] copyrighted musical compositions”. He asked the district court to find Spotify guilty of direct copyright infringement, and order it to pay at least $150,000 per infringement in damages. Spotify claims to have more than 75 million users and forked out $3 billion in royalties since its inception. Continued on p2
WhiteBULLET identified more than 1,500 unique brands during its study, with mainstream advertising making up 46 percent of all ads collected.
Continued on p2
Authors Guild takes Google Books to Supreme Court Authors Guild has urged the US Supreme Court to intervene and correct the Court of Appeal for the Second Circuit’s ruling that allowed Google to copy millions of books without compensating rights owners. The case began in 2004 when a number of university libraries allowed Google to scan their collections to create a database containing the full text of millions of works, called the Mass Digitisation Project and later branded as Google Books. The Authors Guild claimed that Google sought to profit from using its members’ books to maintain a competitive edge without obtaining their permission.
Continued on p2