LawFont.com

On 13 July, the Court of Appeal ruled in BHB v William Hill, the long-awaited UK case applying the European database right. The judgment, which is the result of an appeal from Justice Laddie’s decision in the Chancery Division of the High Court, applied the findings of the European Court of Justice regarding the interpretation of the database right. The result was that the BHB database was ruled as not falling within the scope of the law’s protection, as it was not the result of a “substantial investment” in either the obtaining, verification, or presentation of the contents of the database, as required by Article 7(1) of Directive 96/9. (more…)

Australia’s first decision involving the legality of linking was delivered last week. The good news for bloggers is that linking itself is not at risk. Providing links to infringing material is not such a good idea, though, especially when the material is owned by major music studios. (more…)

Groklaw is reporting that it has a copy of a 13 August 2002 email from an expert hired by SCO to look into whether any code had been copied from AT&T Unix into Linux.

It is interesting reading and does not bode well for SCO. The money quote: “At the end, we had found absolutely *nothing*. ie no evidence of any copyright infringement whatsoever.”

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The New York Times reports that business is booming for manufacturers of cheap DVDs. An increasing number of titles, typically old films and cartoons, are being priced in the US$0.99 to US$1.99 range, the low price a reflection of the fact that these works are no longer protected by copyright.

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Not everyone is very happy about Google these days. The Association of American University Presses believes that Google’s plan to digitise the libraries of Oxford University and others will result in widespread copyright infringement. And a journalist at Wired.com has warned readers that Google is doing its best to collect more and more information on its users, noting that “Google is big, bad, ubiquitous, and whipping Microsoft, the dominatrix of the desktop.”

Have things really become that bad? I for one do not mind the targetted advertising that I see when I check my Gmail account. If Google has a little information on me that it uses to create advertising, I don’t mind so long as it’s discreetly displayed on the side of my screen. It is certainly a far sight better than the pseudo-pornographic spam that I receive at Hotmail.