Viacom, Inc. (NASDAQ:VIAB)
Another fierce defender of its intellectual property, Viacom, Inc. (NASDAQ:VIAB) works hard to protect its content. Viacom, Inc. (NASDAQ:VIAB) is one of the more aggressive senders of cease and desist orders to YouTube under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, forcing the service to take down items that it believes violate its copyright. It’s a sign of things to come, in my humble opinion, that Viacom, Inc. (NASDAQ:VIAB) has to spend that much time and money (lawyers ain’t free) defending something that they did in the past. Any chink in the enforcement of copyright could harm the firm quickly.
Time Warner Inc (NYSE:TWX)
Another large media firm hoping to hold on to copyright in a digital world for as long as it can. It’s clear that actually controlling content in an international and networked world is impossible, so TWX and others depend on controlling the laws and working to land even harder on violators – even outside their ability to pay. Still, the company has reason. When a firm invests tens or hundreds of millions in developing a product there’s a certain justification in wanting to protect it as long as possible. The debate becomes how long that should be.
eBay Inc (NASDAQ:EBAY)
A clear winner in the supreme court’s decision this week, online auction site eBay Inc (NASDAQ:EBAY) found itself in an interesting position before the case. If works made overseas couldn’t be sold in the U.S. how would it be required to police such things on a site that is premised on anyone being able to sell almost anything? Given that the student involved had sold the textbooks in question on eBay Inc (NASDAQ:EBAY), I’m sure there were a bunch of IP attorneys watching this one closely. For now, it appears that eBay Inc (NASDAQ:EBAY) is off the hook, but if it had gone the other way I could have easily seen lawsuits aimed at punishing eBay Inc (NASDAQ:EBAY) for allowing people to violate copyright.
So, one more step in the ongoing copyright shuffle. It should be an interesting ten years or so as firms that hold intellectual property remain behind the curve of technology, and the law remains hugely behind both of them. Honestly, though, the most interesting thing about this case, and the one most indicative of the fact that this could go either way, is the split of the judges. Voting in Kirtsaeng’s favor (and against the holder of the copyright) were three republican appointees (Alito, Roberts and Thomas) and three democratic appointees (Breyer, Kagan and Sotomayor). Those voting against were similarly split (Scalia, Kennedy and Ginsburg). We seem to have an issue here that doesn’t admit of easy political or legal lines.
Good luck!
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The article The Troubles With Copyright Holders originally appeared on Fool.com and is written by Nate Wooley.
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