In the lawsuit filed in federal court in Manhattan, Lee says Samuel Pinkus, the son-in-law of Lee’s long-time agent, Eugene Winick, took advantage of her failing hearing and eyesight to transfer the rights on the book, which has sold more than 30 million copies worldwide and became an Oscar-winning film.
The 87-year-old says she has no memory of agreeing to relinquish her rights or signing the agreement that cements the purported transfer.
Winick had represented Lee for more than 40 years. When he became ill in 2002, Pinkus diverted several of his father-in-law’s clients to his own company, the lawsuit said.
According to the lawsuit, in 2007 Pinkus “engaged in a scheme to dupe” Lee into assigning the novel’s copyright without any payment and had since failed to respond to licence requests.
Lee received the Presidential Medal of Freedom for her book in 2007 from President George W. Bush, a fan of Lee’s work. She has rarely shown her face in public otherwise.
You should have an unvarnished outlet for your creativity: It’s your voice. It’s your writing. Even if it doesn’t make you a penny, you should be an entrepreneur about it. You should tell the world, hey, I got this new thing, and it’s awesome, because it’s my vision.
Too many journalists are hoping that someone will give them the answers about their work. Why? Even if you can’t write your full destiny, write part of it. You don’t have to wait for someone to notice your work. You just have to be savvy, creative, and ready to hustle.
In my first post on Medium, my take on why it’s important to write for free—as long as the main beneficiary is yourself. (Hint: You own the copyright.) — Ernie @ SFB
Hector will get what he deserves. We can turn around and stop that song. That’s a clear breaking of intellectual property rights.Javier Gómez, the manager of reggaeton artist Hector Delgado • Discussing the negotiations he’s involved in with the Mad Descent label over royalty payments for Baauer’s surprise hit “Harlem Shake.” The song, which became a YouTube staple last month, features an unlicensed sample of Delgado (under the name Hector El Father) using the phrase “Con los terroristas” at the beginning of the song. The song also used an unlicensed sample from rapper Hennessy Youngman (the guy who says the “Do the Harlem Shake” line) from a 2001 Plastic Little song. Youngman, born Jason Musson, is also working out payment details with the label, but is happier about the unexpected success than Delgado is.
The major ISPs have a new anti-piracy system, but how they implement it is up to them.
Worked on this most of the day, and very satisfied with how it turned out.
“A Time Warner Cable representative told Mashable that it will not throttle customers’ data plans or terminate service under CAS mitigation. Time Warner Cable customers accused of piracy will receive a series of alerts which, if they are ignored, will lead to customers experiencing a browser lock until they call Time Warner Cable representatives for an instructional conversation about copyright and legal methods of downloading content.”
Yikes. Thanks for the good work on this, Alex. It’s a much-more-useful explanation than this video.
Ever wanted to hear copyright issues discussed in a, say, Orwellian style? If so, watch this video about the new six-strike system a group of major ISPs are implementing starting today.
But still, because of my habit of linking to my own site where I post my own original content, I’ve been labeled a spammer and have been banned. I’ve messaged the admins twice in the last two weeks, but haven’t gotten any response. It seems that the only way I could avoid this is if I were to relinquish any rights to my original content and post it exclusively to Imgur.Modern Primate blogger Chris Menning • Writing a tough criticism of the Reddit community, particularly in regards to the tendency of the system to be rigged against original content creators in favor of people who share content without necessarily giving credit. (Menning actually got banned from the site.) This has been an ongoing frustration for a number of humor blogs such as Slacktory and The Frogman, with these bloggers pointing out that it’s easier for a stolen, uncredited version of their content to go viral on Reddit via an uncredited Imgur link than it is for a blog post by the same author with the exact same content to do the same. Sites like Tumblr have a system that at least encourages sourcing content — do Reddit and Imgur need to do the same?
Remember that time Gizmodo interviewed the Craigslist guy and asked him about the company’s controversial changes regarding user ownership of content (which were eventually, and quietly, revoked), and their ongoing legal fight against Padmapper? Us neither. Dudes, you had him on the line — days after your sister site wrote a brutal assessment of the service — and you wrote a puff piece. What the heck? Sure, it’s great that he does all this nonprofit work, but what happened to the idea of holding someone’s feet to the fire?
You have to give it up to Kim Dotcom: Despite the fact that his house was dramatically raided and his reputation took a major hit, he’s not giving up his mega-entrepreneur dreams. In fact, he still plans to launch the service Megabox, which will give artists a way to sell directly to their fans, later this year. Not bad brah.
Starting next week, we will begin taking into account a new signal in our rankings: the number of valid copyright removal notices we receive for any given site. Sites with high numbers of removal notices may appear lower in our results. This ranking change should help users find legitimate, quality sources of content more easily—whether it’s a song previewed on NPR’s music website, a TV show on Hulu or new music streamed from Spotify.Google Senior VP of Engineering Amit Singhal • Regarding changes to Google’s search algorithm that will favor sites that post legitimate content that hasn’t received copyright removal notices. Despite this change, Singhal claims that the company will keep those sites in the engine, though they may rank lower. “So while this new signal will influence the ranking of some search results, we won’t be removing any pages from search results unless we receive a valid copyright removal notice from the rights owner,” he says. “And we’ll continue to provide “counter-notice” tools so that those who believe their content has been wrongly removed can get it reinstated.” (thanks Andrew Hart)
Clicking ‘Continue’ confirms that craigslist is the exclusive licensee of this content, with the exclusive right to enforce copyrights against anyone copying, republishing, distributing or preparing derivative works without its consent.A provision on Craigslist • Giving them exclusive rights to your advertising. Recently, the company moved this message to a more prominent position on the site, so that people would see it. The company is currently locked in a battle with two companies, Padmapper and 3Taps, over its usage of content in an API format. Raise your hand if this makes you less likely to post on Craigslist.
I can’t add much to what’s already been (and will be) ...
One of the perks of being an early employee...
Over the last 90 days, the Digg...
#FMMDI (at 30 Rockefeller Plaza)
Thanks. I guess my thoughts are as follows:
1. I think...
Two Months Ago I set out to interview the principal cast...
There’s literally no reason I can think of why it has to be heard in America … at no point was the site ever in America. I think they’re trying to use my website as a sort of guinea pig to try to scare everyone else making linking websites.British student Richard O’Dwyer • Discussing the potential extradition order he’s facing from the United States. He’s being targeted for running a Web site that merely linked to other Web sites where you could watch TV shows and movies online. (His site hosted none of the shows in question.) He’s not from the U.S., but customs officials are trying to extradite him to make an example out of him, after pressure from the entertainment industry. Sound a little like SOPA? Effectively, what’s happening to O’Dwyer is an example of the kind of thing SOPA was meant to enforce. Mind you, it’s not like search engines don’t link to these sites already. (A full timeline of the case is over here.)
Hey Pizza Hut: If you use an obvious rip-off of a Black Keys song in your commercial, you’re gonna get sued. Just an FYI. You too, Home Depot. Dan Auerbach and company doesn’t mess around.
How to respond to a threatening letter: Matthew Inman, the creator of The Oatmeal, recently received a letter from a lawyer representing FunnyJunk, a meme site which actively allowed users to steal his content without credit, advertising all over it. The letter claimed that he was grossly misrepresenting the site, and that they wanted him to give them $20,000 or fight a lawsuit in court. Inman did neither, choosing instead to write an epic annotated response and use the situation as an excuse to raise money for charity — half for the National Wildlife Federation and half for the American Cancer Society. So how long did it take Inman to raise $20,000 as the result of his post? An hour. Boom.
Looking to spend $3,999 on a painting of recently-deceased hellraiser Andrew Breitbart in a coat of armor? May want to rethink that decision, based on this allegation that the armor is actually copied from an Assassin’s Creed video game. (So in other words, this story, in reverse.) Oops.
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