Techdirt. Stories filed under "sale" Easily digestible tech news... http://www.techdirt.com/ en-us Techdirt. Stories filed under "sale"http://www.techdirt.com/images/td-88x31.gifhttp://www.techdirt.com/ Tue, 30 Oct 2012 15:59:42 PDT Universal Music Settles Key Fight Over Eminem Royalties... With Secret Agreement Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20121030/14173020888/universal-music-settles-key-fight-over-eminem-royalties-with-secret-agreement.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20121030/14173020888/universal-music-settles-key-fight-over-eminem-royalties-with-secret-agreement.shtml won on appeal. That resulted in a somewhat insane and contentious fight over how much Universal would have to pay up, with a judge slamming Universal for hiding revenue with tricky funny money accounting, and even trying to expense the cost of this very lawsuit back against what they owed.

However, the damages phase of the case was set to go to trial in the spring, and it would have (1) revealed an awful lot about the blackbox of Universal Music's accounting practices and (2) given a roadmap for the many other similar lawsuits against Universal Music (and the other major labels). Given that, it should come as no surprise that Universal Music scrambled to come up with a way to get FBT to settle... with the terms of the settlement being secret. This almost certainly means that UMG paid through the nose, with the hope that it makes it more difficult for other artists to get similar rewards, and while allowing Universal to keep its secrets secret... for now.

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]]> of-course http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20121030/14173020888 Fri, 30 Sep 2011 17:30:00 PDT Psystar Loses Again: Appeals Court Says It Can't Install Legally Purchased OSX On Other Hardware Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110930/03204216148/psystar-loses-again-appeals-court-says-it-cant-install-legally-purchased-osx-other-hardware.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110930/03204216148/psystar-loses-again-appeals-court-says-it-cant-install-legally-purchased-osx-other-hardware.shtml sued the company in 2008 for violating its license. Psystar went through a variety of (often questionable) defenses before settling on the one I thought had the best chance: the first sale doctrine -- basically claiming they legally purchased the software, and that they should be able to install it wherever they want. Psystar also claimed "copyright misuse," against Apple, arguing that its EULA restricting installation to only Apple hardware was a form of copyright misuse to stifle competition. Two years ago, though, the court granted summary judgment to Apple, rejecting both arguments.

Psystar appealed, focusing on the copyright misuse argument and, while it took some time, the always slightly wacky 9th Circuit has upheld the ruling. The court, tragically in my opinion, buys Apple's argument that its EULA does not unfairly restrict competition, because Psystar could go find a different operating system, rather than Apple's. Here, the court relies on the awful Vernor v. Autodesk ruling that basically said, "as long as a software company claims it's leasing the software to you, rather than selling it to you, your first sale rights disappear." This is true even if the "sale" really is a sale rather than a lease. It all depends on what you call it.

So, in this case, the court ruled that the copyright misuse claim must fail, because it's really an attempt to create a "right of first sale" for software -- and because Apple pretends its software sales are licenses, there is no right of first sale. So, without that... no copyright misuse. If you think this logic is circular, you should see if you can become a judge on the 9th Circuit, since they appear to need help. Furthermore, it argues that since Psystar could just go write its own operating system there is no copyright misuse:
Apple’s SLA does not restrict competitor’s ability to develop their own software, nor does it preclude customers from using non-Apple components with Apple computers. Instead, Apple's SLA merely restricts the use of Apple’s own software to its own hardware. As the district court properly concluded, Apple's SLA has "not prohibited others from independently developing and using their own operating systems." Apple I, 673 F. Supp. 2d at 939. Psystar produces its own computer hardware and it is free to develop its own computer software.
As with the Vernor case, the reasoning here is convoluted. It's really just another court decision that chips away at first sale rights, which are (were?) an important part of copyright law.

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]]> copyright-misuse http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20110930/03204216148 Wed, 23 Mar 2011 07:42:14 PDT Forget Infringement, Major Labels Should Be Worrying About Having To Pay Much Higher Royalties On Downloads Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110322/04194213585/forget-infringement-major-labels-should-be-worrying-about-having-to-pay-much-higher-royalties-downloads.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110322/04194213585/forget-infringement-major-labels-should-be-worrying-about-having-to-pay-much-higher-royalties-downloads.shtml Eminem and Universal Music concerning digital royalties. The basics are that the record labels offer incredibly low royalties on sales of music media, such as CDs. However, when it came to "licensing" music (generally for movies or commercials or whatever), it offered a much higher payout to the artist. This made some amount of sense under traditional label thinking, since selling product actually involved a fair amount of costs and work. But licensing a song for a movie was pretty simple.

So, the question that Eminem (and some other artists in other lawsuits) asked was: what is iTunes? Is it a "sale" like a CD, thus entitling the artist to low royalties? Or is it a "license," like for a commercial, entitling him to 50% royalties? Reasonable arguments can be made on both sides, and since the recording industry has a habit of a quantum-like switching where it pretends that something is a sale when it wants it to be a sale, but then insists it's just a "license" when that's beneficial, it felt pretty good about its chances in the lawsuit. And while Universal Music won at the district court, the appeals court went the other way, and said that iTunes represents a license.

And, now, the Supreme Court has refused to hear the appeal, meaning that this ruling lives on in the all important 9th Circuit. It's possible that some other similar cases may come out with a different ruling in a different circuit, greatly increasing the likelihood that the Supreme Court steps in, but for now, it seems that the courts are saying iTunes is a license not a sale. While more recent contracts have been written to avoid this problem, it does seem like there are a lot of legacy contracts out there (which are tied to a lot of ongoing revenue via the back catalogs for the major labels) where this could be an issue. In other words, the record labels may owe a ton of money to artists.

And they still think infringement is the biggest challenge they face?

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]]> well,-look-at-that... http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20110322/04194213585 Fri, 17 Sep 2010 14:04:00 PDT Unix For Sale: Massively Damaged, Sold As Is & Absent Delusions Of Grandeur Over Linux Copyright Infringement Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100916/16052811045/unix-for-sale-massively-damaged-sold-as-is-absent-delusions-of-grandeur-over-linux-copyright-infringement.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100916/16052811045/unix-for-sale-massively-damaged-sold-as-is-absent-delusions-of-grandeur-over-linux-copyright-infringement.shtml apparently trying to sell off what remains of its "Unix assets," -- which, as you may have heard, does not appear to include the Unix copyrights. It's unclear what anyone would really do with whatever magical assets the sale comes with, but I would suggest suing IBM for infringement is not one of the better ideas.

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]]> $1-obo http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20100916/16052811045 Fri, 23 Jan 2009 13:51:05 PST TJX Offers One-Day Sale To Make Up For Massive Data Breach Carlo Longino http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090123/1055363506.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090123/1055363506.shtml earlier this week, TJX held the record for the biggest-ever data leak, for its effort to lose track of some 94 million people's credit card info to a group of hackers. Just to recap, the company lost all the data largely through sheer incompetence, by encrypting its stores' WiFi networks with the easily broken WEP standard, and not having enough security in place to keep the hackers out of its central database after they'd gotten on the network at a single store. Even more astounding was the fact that TJX transmitted credit-card info to banks without any encryption. It was the banks that were largely left holding the bag for all the fraudulent purchases made with the stolen credit-card numbers, while several of the criminals behind the breach were charged, too. What punitive action was taken against TJX? It had to pay a $41 million fine to Visa, but got off with no fine and a wrist slap from the Federal Trade Commission. But apparently the company really wanted to make things up to consumers, so it offered a one-day 15 percent off sale in its US and Canadian stores this week. Wow, so generous, especially to do it in the post-holiday, lets-clear-out-everything-we-didn't-sell-before-Christmas season. You could probably forgive TJX for thinking this would make up for everything, though, since data-leak settlements and punishments are generally toothless and do little to encourage companies to take serious steps to stop the leaks.

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]]> how-generous http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20090123/1055363506