Week 1
- Rapper Wyclef Jean is accused of copyright infringement because of a song in his album Carnival 2: Memoirs of an Immigrant. Another rapper, Blahz, is the one accusing Wyclef of sampling of his songs without permission. Sony BMG has also become involved in the lawwsuit and seeks an unkown amount of money which could possibly be up to $50 million dollar.
- Another rapper, Bryan "Birdman" Williams, is faced with a federal lawsuit accusing him of sampling other people's works without permission. It is said that Birdman owes several muisic companies a numerious amount of money because of his use of copywritten work. Birdman and his record label have already paid $400,000, according to the lawsuit, but music companies are not happy with this because they believe that they have not finished paying off everything. The lawsuit also involves breach of contract and asks for compensation of unspecified damages, plus other costs.
- Israel has enacted an new copyright law that is going into effect in the spring. The law starts of with a section defining various terms. Two interesting terms that it describes are "infringing copy" and "publication". The new law has some elements to it that here in the U.S. it would conflict with other areas. However, this new law also contains a few sections that would be nice to have in the U.S. stature, but there is a chance that nothing would change and the courts would end up with the same result. Israeli's new copyright law does not have an ISP or DRM provisions, however the Electronic Commerce addresses some of those issues.