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Contributory Copyright Infringement
Contributory copyright infringement is a way of imposing secondary liability for infringement of a copyright. It is a means by which a person may be held liable for copyright infringement even though he or she did not directly engage in the infringing activity. It is one of the two forms of secondary liability apart from vicarious liability. Contributory infringement is understood to be a form of infringement in which a person is not directly violating a copyright but induces or authorizes another person to directly infringe the copyright. This doctrine is a development of general tort law and is an extension of the principle in tort law that in addition to the tortfeasor, anyone who contributed to the tort should also be held liable. Requirements The requirements for fulfilling the threshold of contributory infringement and imposing liability for copyright infringement on a party are: # The defendant having knowledge of a direct infringement; and # The defendant materially contrib ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Secondary Liability
Secondary liability, or indirect infringement, arises when a party materially contributes to, facilitates, induces, or is otherwise responsible for directly infringing acts carried out by another party. The US has statutorily codified secondary liability rules for trademarks and patents, but for matters relating to copyright, this has solely been a product of case law developments. In other words, courts, rather than Congress, have been the primary developers of theories and policies concerning secondary liability. Early case law Secondary liability in copyright has come about with case-by-case decisions. In other words, there has not been any real or consolidated theory. Furthermore, patent and copyright cases have tended to cross-cite each other. Examples of this are cases such as ''Kalem Co. v. Harper Brothers''''Kalem Co. v. Harper Brothers''222 U.S. 55(1911). (the producer of the movie '' Ben Hur'' did not himself infringe, but was responsible for making and commercially dis ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Peer-to-peer
Peer-to-peer (P2P) computing or networking is a distributed application architecture that partitions tasks or workloads between peers. Peers are equally privileged, equipotent participants in the network, forming a peer-to-peer network of Node (networking), nodes. In addition, a personal area network (PAN) is also in nature a type of Decentralized computing, decentralized peer-to-peer network typically between two devices. Peers make a portion of their resources, such as processing power, disk storage, or network bandwidth, directly available to other network participants, without the need for central coordination by servers or stable hosts. Peers are both suppliers and consumers of resources, in contrast to the traditional client–server model in which the consumption and supply of resources are divided. While P2P systems had previously been used in many application domains, the architecture was popularized by the Internet file sharing system Napster, originally released in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
MGM Studios, Inc
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. (also known as Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures, commonly shortened to MGM or MGM Studios) is an American Film production, film and television production and film distribution, distribution company headquartered in Beverly Hills, California. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer was founded on April 17, 1924, and has been owned by the Amazon MGM Studios subsidiary of Amazon (company), Amazon since 2022. MGM was formed by Marcus Loew by combining Metro Pictures, Goldwyn Pictures and Louis B. Mayer Pictures into one company. It hired a number of well-known actors as contract players—its slogan was "more stars than there are in heaven"—and soon became Hollywood's most prestigious filmmaking company, producing popular musical films and winning many Academy Awards. MGM also owned film studios, movie lots, movie theaters and technical production facilities. Its most prosperous era, from 1926 to 1959, was bracketed by two productions of ''Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Safe Harbor (law)
A safe harbor is a provision of a statute or a regulation that specifies that certain conduct will be deemed not to violate a given rule. It is usually found in connection with a more-vague, overall standard. By contrast, "''un''safe harbors" describe conduct that ''will'' be deemed to violate the rule. For example, in the context of a statute that requires drivers to "not drive recklessly", a clause specifying that "driving under 25 miles per hour will be conclusively deemed not to constitute reckless driving" is a "safe harbor". Likewise, a clause saying that "driving over 90 miles per hour will be conclusively deemed to constitute reckless driving" would be an "unsafe harbor". In this example, driving between 25 miles per hour and 90 miles per hour would fall outside of either a safe harbor or an unsafe harbor, and would thus be left to be judged according to the vague "reckless" standard. Theoretical justifications Safe harbors have been promoted by legal writers as redu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Digital Millennium Copyright Act
The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) is a 1998 United States copyright law that implements two 1996 treaties of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). It criminalizes production and dissemination of technology, devices, or services intended to circumvent measures that control access to copyrighted works (commonly known as digital rights management or DRM). It also criminalizes the act of circumventing an access control, whether or not there is actual infringement of copyright itself. In addition, the DMCA heightens the penalties for copyright infringement on the Internet. Passed on October 12, 1998, by a unanimous vote in the United States Senate and signed into law by President Bill Clinton on October 28, 1998, the DMCA amended Title 17 of the United States Code to extend the reach of copyright, while limiting the liability of the providers of online services for copyright infringement by their users. The DMCA's principal innovation in the field of copy ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Willful Blindness
In law, willful ignorance is when a person seeks to avoid civil or criminal liability for a wrongful act by intentionally keeping themselves unaware of facts that would render them liable or implicated. In '' United States v. Jewell'', the court held that proof of willful ignorance satisfied the requirement of knowledge as to criminal possession and importation of drugs.Criminal Law – Cases and Materials', 7th ed. 2012, Wolters Kluwer Law & Business; John Kaplan, Robert Weisberg, Guyora Binder, . The concept is also applied to situations in which people intentionally turn their attention away from an ethical problem that is believed to be important by those using the phrase (for instance, because the problem is too disturbing for people to want it dominating their thoughts, or from the knowledge that solving the problem would require extensive effort). Terminology Willful ignorance is sometimes called willful blindness, contrived ignorance, conscious avoidance, intentional i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Preliminary Injunction
An injunction is an equitable remedy in the form of a special court order compelling a party to do or refrain from doing certain acts. It was developed by the English courts of equity but its origins go back to Roman law and the equitable remedy of the "interdict". "When a court employs the extraordinary remedy of injunction, it directs the conduct of a party, and does so with the backing of its full coercive powers."'' Nken v. Holder''556 U.S. 418, 428 (2009) (citation and internal quotation marks omitted). A party that fails to comply with an injunction faces criminal or civil penalties, including possible monetary sanctions and even imprisonment. They can also be charged with contempt of court. Rationale The injunction is an equitable remedy that was created by the English courts of equity. Like other equitable remedies, it has traditionally been given when a wrong cannot be effectively remedied by an award of money damages. (The doctrine that reflects this is the requ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Encryption
In Cryptography law, cryptography, encryption (more specifically, Code, encoding) is the process of transforming information in a way that, ideally, only authorized parties can decode. This process converts the original representation of the information, known as plaintext, into an alternative form known as ciphertext. Despite its goal, encryption does not itself prevent interference but denies the intelligible content to a would-be interceptor. For technical reasons, an encryption scheme usually uses a pseudo-random encryption Key (cryptography), key generated by an algorithm. It is possible to decrypt the message without possessing the key but, for a well-designed encryption scheme, considerable computational resources and skills are required. An authorized recipient can easily decrypt the message with the key provided by the originator to recipients but not to unauthorized users. Historically, various forms of encryption have been used to aid in cryptography. Early encryption ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Instant Messaging
Instant messaging (IM) technology is a type of synchronous computer-mediated communication involving the immediate ( real-time) transmission of messages between two or more parties over the Internet or another computer network. Originally involving simple text message exchanges, modern IM applications and services (also called "social messengers", "messaging apps", "chat apps" or "chat clients") tend to also feature the exchange of multimedia, emojis, file transfer, VoIP (voice calling), and video chat capabilities. Instant messaging systems facilitate connections between specified known users (often using a contact list also known as a "buddy list" or "friend list") or in chat rooms, and can be standalone apps or integrated into a wider social media platform, or in a website where it can, for instance, be used for conversational commerce. Originally the term "instant messaging" was distinguished from " text messaging" by being run on a computer network instead of a cellula ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
In Re Aimster Copyright Litigation
''In re Aimster Copyright Litigation'', 334 F.3d 643 ( 7th Cir. 2003), was a case in which the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit addressed copyright infringement claims brought against Aimster, concluding that a preliminary injunction against the file-sharing service was appropriate because the copyright owners were likely to prevail on their claims of contributory infringement, and that the services could have non-infringing users was insufficient reason to reverse the district court's decision. The appellate court also noted that the defendant could have limited the quantity of the infringements if it had eliminated an encryption system feature, and if it had monitored the use of its systems. This made it so that the defense did not fall within the safe harbor of 17 U.S.C. § 512(i). and could not be used as an excuse to not know about the infringement. In addition, the court decided that the harm done to the plaintiff was irreparable and outweighed any ha ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Music Sharing
File sharing is the practice of distributing or providing access to digital media, such as computer programs, multimedia (audio, images and video), documents or electronic books. Common methods of storage, transmission and dispersion include removable media, centralized servers on computer networks, Internet-based hyperlinked documents, and the use of distributed peer-to-peer networking. File sharing technologies, such as BitTorrent, are integral to modern media piracy, as well as the sharing of scientific data and other free content. History Files were first exchanged on removable media. Computers were able to access remote files using filesystem mounting, bulletin board systems (1978), Usenet (1979), and FTP servers (1970's). Internet Relay Chat (1988) and Hotline (1997) enabled users to communicate remotely through chat and to exchange files. The mp3 encoding, which was standardized in 1991 and substantially reduced the size of audio files, grew to widespread use in the l ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Morpheus (file-sharing Software)
Morpheus was a file sharing and searching peer-to-peer client for Microsoft Windows, developed and distributed by the company StreamCast Networks, StreamCast, that originally used the OpenNap protocol, but later supported many different peer-to-peer protocols. On April 22, 2008, distributor StreamCast Networks filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy after a long legal battle with music companies; all of their employees were laid off and the official download at www.morpheus.com stopped being available, though for a small period the website remained online. As of October 29, 2008, the official Morpheus website is offline, including all other websites owned by StreamCast Networks, specifically MusicCity.com, Streamcastnetworks.com and NeoNetwork.com. Availability Users of the Morpheus community have set up a website (at GnutellaForums.com) where the Morpheus software can still be downloaded. At that site, there is a support internet forum, forum and support chat room setup from the site ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
