Stanford Center for Internet and Society

Some time ago I did a post on the new copyright legislation in Israel. There are many interesting things about this law, and now, at the curtsey of Prof. Niva Elkin-Koren from Haifa University, there is an unofficial English translation of the new statute available.

Here's a link to the press release. It is not my jurisdiction to cover this development - I trust you’ll hear more details and updates from Anthony and his team soon. I'd only say it looks like one of the most exiting and challenging fair use cases I’ve seen recently and a must-follow one. From the press release:

I am echoing here a post from Science Commons’ blog featuring another juicy story of apparent abuse of copyrights against a science student at the University of Michigan who posted on her blog tables and charts taken from a peer-view scientific magazine and quickly received a cease and desist letter from the publisher.

Alexander Ponosov is a teacher in a small Russian village who was prosecuted for violating Microsoft’s intellectual property rights by installing illegal versions of Windows operating system and Word software (see Balazs Bodo’s post here). Ponosov claimed to his defense that the 12 new computers at issue were delivered already with the unlicensed software installed.

Yesterday I finished my draft of my preliminary search results for primary and secondary authority covering the application of the fair use defense to 'borrowed' video clips in documentaries.