It was a problem that had been solved for all intents and purposes years ago when YouTube put the power into the hands of major copyright owners. Now, WSJ has uncovered that a new round of full-length movie uploads has been creeping onto YouTube, some of which have received millions of views. Google launched the Content ID tool and gave it to 4000 major publishers such as Disney and Sony in 2007. The problem of illegally uploaded content shifted away from YouTube and onto torrent sites and other file-sharing services. The shift didn’t last forever. The fight against content piracy was revolutionized…

Remember the amazing self-portrait of the monkey that was making the rounds the other week? The Cliff’s Notes background: A photographer, David Slater, left his camera unattended for a little while while he was in the forests of Indonesia. A female black macaque got curious, as monkeys are wont to do, and picked it up. The image accompanying this article was among the results. The photo, first published in the Daily Mail, quickly made the rounds on the Internet and a monkey star was born. This photo was published simply EVERYwhere. TechDirt wrote an interesting piece about the copyright issues…

When the tables turn, comedy often ensues. Such is the ironic case of Righthaven.com, the “copyright troll” that attempts to seize cash and domains from bloggers and other publications who repost pictures and stories from the Las Vegas Review-Journal. For a year, Righthaven has filed claims that by printing the material of which they own the copyright, they are entitled to anything from a few thousand dollars up to the domains themselves where the content was posted. Thanks to GoDaddy, we can laugh a little at them. Apparently, they either failed to supply the proper registration information…

Nobody likes the companies the RIAA and MPAA are using to chase Peer-To-Peer file sharers, but I was particularly tickled to see this pop up in my RSS feed. The US Copyright Group has filed more than 14,000 lawsuits against P2P users, but apparently they’re not above a little copyright infringement themselves. Their own website is shown to be a rip off of a competitor’s website, Copyright Settlements. TorrentFreak details the story, no doubt rubbing their hands together with glee at the same time. So what does all this mean? Well, obviously the organizations suing consumers on behalf of the RIAA…

Woah. This is big. You know how the DMCA says it’s illegal to, say, crack the DRM on a DVD – that you bought and paid for – so that you can watch it on your iPod? And you know how that seems, ya’ know, totally insane? Well it seems someone out there has seen the light. As reported by Crunchgear, the U.S. Copyright Office has reviewed the exceptions to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and has decreed that there are now six legitimate exceptions: 1. Defeating a lawfully obtained DVD’s encryption for the sole purpose of short, fair use in an educational setting or for criticism 2. Computer programs that…

The Spanish government is quite unique as far as copyright laws are considered: it is completely legal to upload and download copyrighted material as long as it is for “personal use.” This means that every single Spaniard can download the latest Timbaland track, rip the latest Avatar movie, and acquire an unlimited amount of content through file sharing, for free. They got it good, don’t they? However, there is pressure on the government to change. Most countries that participates in international trade would like it if Spain would conform to copyright infringement laws. To the MPAA, RIAA,…