Pirate bay taken down from the internet yet again

Pirate Bay has been taken down yet again and this time by the Swedish Government for allegedly streaming pirated data. It is also speculated that Pirate Bay was showing content from the latest Sony Hacking incident. In addition, other torrent websites like EZTV, Torrage and Zoink were also down.

Although this is latest that pirate bay has been taken down, but the website which offers torrent files and peer to peer sharing has had its fair share of run inn’s with the law especially pertaining to copyright infringement and piracy issues in the past. Started in September 2003 as an anti- copyright organization Piratbyran it became a separate organization in 2004 this notorious site has also been banned in several countries as it is a constant infringer and illegal distributer of copyrighted material, although the site often pop ups with proxies and in no time resurrects with a different domain name (it is rumored that after the recent incident the site came back with a .cr domain name only to be taken down again) although after the latest incident and till now it does not seem that the site is back yet.

In India pirates bay had been banned in May 2012, after an order of the Madras High Court however the order was overturned and the court stated that specific url’s of the website should be blocked rather than the entire website itself. In July 2014, the site was blocked again due to infringement caused in the policies regarding FIFA broadcasting activities in countries.

The latest news is that several clones of the pirates bay have come up on the internet, but whether the mortally wounded ‘original’ pirates bay would come back to operations is yet to be seen in this new year.

Tribute or Copycat Part-I

Have you ever felt that you have gotten so inspired by an artwork or written work or a tune that you end up creating something strikingly similar to the original? If so, do you know when your original is still a tribute and when you end up being a copycat? In this series of posts, we shall discuss each of these individually.

In this post we shall discuss the dilemma of an artwork and photographs of when it turns into a copy work and when it is truly a tribute to someone.

When someone works on an already pre existing work, which may be from one or multiple sources, it is deemed derivative work. Examples of derivative work includes translation, musical arrangement, dramatization, fictious, motion picture version, sound recording, art reproduction, abridgment, condensation, or any other form in which a work may be recast, transformed, or adapted. For example, a movie inspired by a novel comes under derivative works.

In the case of photography, 2 photographers taking pictures of the same visual or location is not a copyright infringement. If a famous photographer for example takes the picture of a sunset and someone captures the sunset at the same time and location, it is not a copyright infringement. However photographs taken of an original work (like stills of an original concept photo shoot) which is used to recreate something strikingly similar would be deemed copyright infringement.

This can be illustrated in the case of  Horgan v. MacMillan, Inc., 789 F.2d 157 (2d Cir. 1986) a book containing a series of still photographs of performers dancing a copyrighted choreographic work (Balanchine’s Nutcracker ballet) can be an infringing derivative work if there is “substantial similarity,” even though it is not possible to reconstruct the ballet from the photographs alone, and even if permission for the book was secured from the ballet company, the set and costume designers, and the dancers but not from the choreographer the copyright owner.

 If there is a photograph of a copyrighted artwork like a sculpture or painting, and it is used for profit or mass scale without permission (example The U.S. Postal Service (USPS) licensed the use of a photograph of the Korean War veterans’ memorial sculpture for a postage stamp, but failed to obtain permission from the sculptor who held copyright in the underlying three-dimensional work.) is not fair use.

Taking an already existing photograph and doing certain changes on the original and claiming it as your own is not fair use and would be copyright infringement (Cariou vs. Prince), however making a painting using a photograph as inspiration would be fair use.

From a artists point of view, if an artist works for hire to create original work of art, it is usually deemed that they have been paid the remuneration for the artwork on the whole (which includes the copyright), and therefore he cannot make profits from further resale of the product. Using an artwork like a poster as a backdrop of a movie without prior permission of the artist is not fair use.

It is okay to copy another person's painting, as long as you give them credit and don't try to pass it off as your own. Even if you change some things, as long as it is recognizable as someone else's original you cannot claim it as your own. A common way of giving credit would be to say "Painted by (your name) after (artist's name) or to say "Based on a painting by (artist's name).

 Search engines practice of creating thumbnails of the original works of art is deemed fair use.

Museum reproductions, whose purpose is to duplicate the original work as precisely as possible (like for example in the case of art students), do not involve enough originality to be copyrighted as a derivative work. In other words, a museum reproduction of fine art in the public domain is itself public domain, and unauthorized duplication of the reproduction is not copyright infringement but if you create confusion about the origin by copying an artist’s work and selling it as their creation rather than your own, it an infringement of copyright.

To sum it up artists should always know the difference between fair use and infringement. Often clients want upcoming artists to copy artworks of famous artists, and therefore an artist should be aware of their boundaries. It is always recommended to add your own style while doing an artwork and sign your own name on the same.

Seth MacFarlane sued over ‘Ted’

Celebrity animator and producer Seth MacFarlane, who is known for creating series like ‘Family Guy’ and ‘American Dad’ has landed in a copyright infringement case over raunchy comedy animation movie ‘ted’ which released in 2012 and had Mila Kunis and Mark Wahlberg in leading roles . The movie was the 12^th highest grossing movie of 2012 and was a commercial success.

Bengal Mantle Producers allege that the animation movie ‘ted’ is heavily inspired and ‘strikingly similar’ to their series "Charlie the Abusive Teddy Bear," the central character of the series with the similar name, a series of Internet videos which were aired in 2009, claiming that Ted infringes on the copyright of its videos due to the Ted bear largely matching the background story, persona, voice tone, attitude and dialogue of the Charlie bear. The complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles said “Both Charlie and Ted reside in a substantially similar environment; including that both Charlie and Ted spend a significant amount of time sitting on a living room couch with a beer and/or cigarette in hand. Charlie has a penchant for drinking, smoking, prostitutes, and is a generally vulgar yet humorous character."

MacFarlane has not commented on the controversy and is busy making a sequel to the film title ‘Ted 2’. It is interesting to note that it is not the first time that the characters created by him have created controversy, especially in terms of content borrowing. Animated series ‘family guy’ has been criticized in the past for being too similar to animated series ‘The Simpsons’ and ‘South Park’. His own series ‘family guy’ ‘American dad’ and ‘Cleveland Show’ have been criticised for being ‘too similar’ to each other in plot and characters. On October 3, 2007, Bourne Co. Music Publishers filed a lawsuit accusing Family Guy of infringing its copyright on the song "When You Wish upon a Star", through a parody song entitled "I Need a Jew" appearing in the episode "When You Wish Upon a Weinstein" (although it was ruled in 2009 that since the song was taken for comical use it was not an infringement).

Will the latest lawsuit affect the release or commercial success of the movie Ted-2 is yet to be seen, but it leaves us with a question of inspiration vs. infringement in creative endeavours. How much inspiration leads to intrusion is still debatable. What happens when a person repeats their own work, would that be infringement of one’s previous work? When is really the time when a designer realizes that their work is getting copied by someone else and it is time to file for an infringement suit?

Tattoo- Your Expression or Mine

Tattoo artists are artists who create on human canvas. Tattooing as an art has been around for ages and is one of the oldest forms or art and expression. There has been a patronage by both celebrities and common people and they have becoming more mainstream and acceptable than ever. This article discusses the ambiguity in copyright for permanent tattoos which are a debatable form of art for copyrights, the designs on tattoo sticker/ stick on are covered under the copyright law and the copyright ownership remains with the creator (usually no dispute there).

The art of tattooing has two people involved, the artist who creates and the person whose body is being used as a canvas. This brings us to a discussion of whose tattoo is it anyway; the artists or the person who is tattooed? Logically the answer is the person on whom the tattoo is inked is the owner as they are walking around with the tattoo, and the tattoo is going to be on their bodies forever (unless the person decides to modify or surgically remove them) and they have paid for it as well. This is now being disputed by tattoo artists who claim that they have a copyright on the tattoos as tattoos are art form and they are artists. They are now increasingly asking for the compensation for their tattoos appearing on silver screens and video games along with the images of the person who has been tattooed, as it would happen naturally with any other form of artistic expression which is protected under copyrights.

A few tattoo artists have even gone ahead and sued companies that have shown unique tattoos created by them in various capacities. Notable cases include Tattoo artist Stephen Allen suing video game maker Electronic Arts and former Miami Dolphins running back Ricky Williams over a tattoo Allen put on Williams' bicep. The tattoo appeared on the cover of EA's "NFL Street" video game claiming copyright (source: http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-raustiala-tattoo-copyright-20131006-story.html) and tattoo artist Victor Whitmill against Warner Bros. For showing a tattoo created by him for Mike Tyson in the movie Hangover-II. The former case was dismissed the latter case was settled for an undisclosed amount.

Now this leads us to a lot of questions as if the tattoo artist is the owner of the tattoo they can prevent the tattooed person from tampering or removing their creation, which sounds vague as people have a right over their own bodies and someone else asking them to stop modifications of any sort sounds absurd.  Also tattoos themselves are often heavily borrowed from surroundings and are often copies of existing artworks, which means that they themselves can be infringements of someone else's creation. Another issue with tattoos is that the tattooed person is actively involved in creating the tattoo which is often based on the persons personality, their past experiences and life events, and they are the canvas for the artists creation, which makes them as actively involved in the process as the artist himself. Moreover if the tattooed person is a celebrity it is often possible that their images are used to promote products especially in the case of sports persons whose images are used for virtual games and the tattoos on their bodies are a part of their persona.  In this case the tattoo artist cannot claim that the tattoo be removed from the illustrations/ caricatures/images as they are an integral part of the celebrities image.

 Although artistry of the tattoo artist as an artist working on a different canvas cannot be denied in this case, tattoo art and copyright is a grey area in the field of intellectual property, which need further investigations and probably amendments in the existing structure of copyrights, or a different law altogether. The rights of the tattoo artists remain ambiguous till then.

Singapore Pirates Alert!

To curb the menace of illegal downloading and the failure of various ISP providers to comply with anti-piracy measures, the Singapore government has approved a proposed copyright law which shall come into effect starting August 2014. The websites that show support for piracy will go down, if content creators lodge complaints with internet service providers. If the websites fail to remove the content from these websites they can be blocked.

The law targets websites like torrents and Pirates bay etc. which are notorious for uploading content for which they have no rights upon them and regularly infringe copyright of various artists.

Before this law the owners could just request the ISP’s to remove the content, and could sue the content provider, which meant long and expensive court battles, which the content generator usually avoided.

Since the gateway can easily be by-passed by experienced users using  VPN’s and the illegal content providers constantly changing their IP addresses it remains to be seen how useful these changes can be for piracy in the future and how vigilant ISP’s can remain in tracking the piracy menace.