Blog entries tagged copyright

Second-Life Virtual Real Estate Lawsuit

sean — Mon, 03 May 2010 19:02:41 +0100

We’re all familiar with the old adage “invest in real estate, because they’re always making new people, but they’ll never make any more land.” Well, old sayings just might need some updating for the digital age, because it seems that virtual real estate is becoming serious business. ...

Opera Mini: Wait... Apple's Okay With This?

sean — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 02:30:00 +0100

The iPhone version of Opera Mini does indeed look promising. In true Opera form, they are offering streamlined versions of the essential features with the added speed that comes from not being bogged down with unne...

Update: The fallout of Fox vs. Time Warner

Ryan Hammond — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 21:00:00 +0100

The battle over carriage fees was previously deferred by the addition of supplemental cable properties, such as FX, Fox Sports, and Fox News. This strategy has become less feasible in recent years, as many providers have reached their limits on the sheer number of channels. This puts the industry back at the position of networks demanding extra cash infusions from providers, and...

Fox and Time Warner call uneasy truce

Ryan Hammond — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 18:00:00 +0100

The duel of Fox Broadcasting Company and Time Warner Cable seemed like a Quixotic struggle to rule obsolescence, until an 11th hour deal staved off disaster. The agreement reached in the late hours of Jan 1 prevented Time Warner Cable subscribers from losing all Fox shows, ending a protracted dispute over carriage fees. The disagreement began with negoti...

Additional Update: Amazon's kindle is burning up the record books

Ryan Hammond — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 02:35:50 +0100

Some business analysts feel the statements made by Amazon signal a new digital revolution, where e-book sales will maintain strong growth trends and potentially hurt the sales of physical books. Tom Taulli of Blogging Stocks writes "this is not necessarily a sign that traditional books will vanish and everyone will be lugging a Kindle. However, visionary ...

Update: Amazon's kindle is burning up the record books

Ryan Hammond — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 02:19:37 +0100

Alex Pham of The Los Angeles Times cautions that while the Kindle is selling faster than McDonald's can make Hot Cakes, consumers should wait until next year to buy any competing products. "Next year will bring a wider array of choices, fancy features and, very likely, lower prices, analysts predict. A number of companies are holding off their product ...

Amazon's kindle is burning up the record books

Ryan Hammond — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 02:01:47 +0100

Here's a page-turner: Amazon.com's Kindle is the company's most gifted product for the American market this Christmas, and the most gifted product in the company's history.
They did not provide any quantitative sales data, but founder and CEO Jeff Bezos credits the Kindle's massive library, which contains over 390,000 titles, many of them best sellers and ne...

Update: Microsoft loses appeal in Word patent lawsuit

Ryan Hammond — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 06:08:38 +0100

In a paper published by a panel of three judges, the Court of Appeals said "The district court found that Microsoft captured 80 percent of the custom XML market with its infringing Word products, forcing i4i to change its business strategy." The court documents go on to state that "after its effective date, the injunction prohibits Microsoft from selling, offering to sel...

Microsoft loses appeal in Word patent lawsuit

Ryan Hammond — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 23:59:45 +0100

A federal appellate court may have the last word today, regarding Microsoft Word 2007. The United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit upheld a ruling dating back to August 12, 2009. The ruling concerned a lawsuit by small Toronto-based software developer i4i, who claimed industry giant Microsoft violated its 1998 patent (No. 5,787,449) on a method for reading...

Aviary: a digital art playground for the everyman

Emily K Williams — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 18:48:00 +0100

Photoshop is great, but not everyone can afford to hand over a few hundred bucks to Adobe for the software. Now, there's an online alternative for all the budding digital artists among us. It's called Aviary, and they have big plans.

Aviary is a start-up out of Long Island that offers free online image and ...

Show me the money!!!!

Colby Cremins — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 21:00:09 +0100

Photographer Louis Psihoyos is suing Apple Inc. over the use of his 1000 TV’s photograph. The only problem is, Apple is not the one using the picture. An iPhone application, i.TV, is using the photo to market its television and movie listing services.

The Communications Decency Act has a clause that states tha...

Is Flickr Censoring Again?

Emily K Williams — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 07:00:00 +0100

Well, it looks like Flickr is once again brewing up some controversy by deleting user images. The company is citing copyright infringement, but many online are crying censorship.

It all started when Firas Alkhateeb, a history student at the University of Illinois, decided to play around with photoshop and "jo...

Justice Sotomayor: photo friend or foe?

Emily K Williams — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 21:04:10 +0100

Now that Sotomayor has been confirmed, we are all asking the same question: where does she stand on issues that matter to me?

All of you freelancers out there should be aware of a ruling she made back in 1997. This was at the time that companies such as ProQuest and Lexus Nexus were selling electronic databases containi...

Photographer Sues Disney and ESPN

Emily K Williams — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 19:05:11 +0100

Well it is shaping up to be a plagiarism filled day here on the Amvona blog. Not that I'm misappropriating content (check out my sweet citation below!), but it looks like everyone else is!

Sherry Martin, of Sherry Martin Photography, is suing Disney, ESPN and others for copyright infringement to the tune of $75,000.