Tuesday Afternoon Legal Information Coverage Explosion

(Left: A page from the Center for the Study of the Public Domain’s “Bound by Law” comic book.)

This was originally supposed to be the Monday Afternoon Legal Information Coverage Explosion (“M.A.L.I.C.E.”), but somehow Monday afternoon turned into Tuesday morning. What’s with the acronym, you ask? I’ve been reviewing criminal law for the North Carolina bar exam and I’ve got mnemonics, acronyms and altered mental states on the brain.

Anyway, here are some interesting news stories, opinion pieces and academic papers that came across our desks in the past week.

Our former professor James Boyle (@thepublicdomain) alerts us to The Public Domain Manifesto and to the latest installment of his always-excellent Financial Times column (registration required), entitled “Obama’s Mixed Record on Tech Policy.” Boyle notes that the U.S’s decision to stand up at the World Intellectual Property Organization’s recent summit in support of certain limited copyright exceptions intended to aid the visually impaired has been seen as a small victory for copyright sanity, but that “[w]hen the decision not to throw the blind under the copyright juggernaut counts as enlightened policy, it tells one a lot.”

Our friends the Future of Music Coalition have information for you about the ins and outs of the LiveNation / Ticketmaster merger and the progress of an antitrust suit alleging a digital download price-fixing scheme between the Big 4 major labels.

There’s been some hand-wringing in the press of late about the Federal Trade Commission’s recent announcement that it would scrutinize blogs for violations of its endorsement guidelines, leading one of my friends to add the following helpful disclaimer to his blog: “The FTC can suck it.” (The Citizen Media Law Project and the Consumer Advertising Law Blog offer explanations here and here of what the FTC is actually up to.) The Daily Beast reports upon another trend the FTC will likely be concerned about: celebrities are tweeting like crazy about products they’re purportedly using without disclosing the fact that they’re being paid to do it.

There’s an interesting paper on SSRN entitled “Celebrity, Death and Taxes: Michael Jackson’s Estate” that addresses estate planning for celebrities, with particular attention to the valuation and tax treatment of intellectual property after a celebrity’s death.

Amazon is going to be offering a substantial boost in Kindle royalty rates to authors who play by their pricing rules. Positive: Amazon is setting aside a much bigger piece of the pie for authors. Negative: this plan not only encourages authors to retain their electronic publishing rights to their titles and license them directly to Amazon, it actually encourages authors to work together with Amazon to the detriment of their publishers, who are providing marketing support for the print versions of their titles.

The CEO of Sonicbids recommends promoting consumer brands with indie music, reasoning,”Every brand craves one thing: authenticity. And what’s more authentic than homegrown, unadulterated, uncompromising music that’s not been watered down by corporate interests?” He then discusses the ins and outs of adulterating and compromising indie music by watering it down with corporate interests.