New Zealand Web Service Allows Users to Block Location (The Wall Street Journal)
Customers of New Zealand telecommunications provider Slingshot can now block their location and gain access to foreign Web services such as Netflix, bringing into question how long copyright holders can continue to bar users in specific regions from accessing their content.
Court Rules No Class-Action Status in Google Book Case (Bloomberg Businessweek)
The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals stripped a group representing authors of its class-action status in a lawsuit brought against Google over claims that its plan to create the world’s largest digital library will violate copyrights.
Patent Exam Saves Cities From Suits, Group Says (Courthouse News Service)
The Electronic Frontier Foundation says it has curbed patent holder ArrivalStar from going after cities and transit agencies that use vehicle-tracking systems by having the patent’s legitimacy re-examined.
BitTorrent: We Don’t Deal in Pirated Content (CNET)
In an effort to clear its name association with pirated movies, music and games, BitTorrent’s vice-president of marketing penned a blog post saying that while BitTorrent built the open-source, peer-to-peer technology used for content sharing, it does not endorse piracy in any shape or form.
New York City Secures .NYC Top-Level Domain (PCMag)
New York City announced that ICANN approved its request for the .nyc top-level domain, making the city one of the first in the world to be granted one of these location-specific domains.
ICE, European Partners Seize 328 Internet Domains Selling Counterfeit Goods in Coordinated Operation (U.S. Dept. of Homeland Security)
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) and several law enforcement agencies in Europe, coordinated by the European Police Office (Europol), announced the seizure of 328 domain names in two related operations. The seized domain names were associated with websites illegally selling counterfeit merchandise online to unsuspecting consumers.
Keith Kupferschmid is General Counsel and SVP, Intellectual Property Policy & Enforcement at SIIA.