Rapper 50 Cent has another notch in his court battle belt as a federal judge in Newark dismissed an infringement allegation against both himself and his record label, G-Unit.

The plaintiff, author Shadrach Winstead, claimed the rapper plagiarized his book, The Preacher’s Son – But the Streets Have Turned Me Into a Gangster, directly ripping off elements for 50 Cent’s 2009 movie and album of the same name, Before I Self Destruct.

According to 50 Cent’s legal team, the judge tossed the case after determining that the only genuine similarities between the works were a main character that came up on the mean streets of Newark. Phrases that were arguably points of contention were deemed common and not infringement worthy.

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Matthew David Howard Smith, 23, of Raleigh, North Carolina, pleaded guilty in Virginia federal court for copyright infringement. Upon sentencing (December 16th, 2011) he faces up to five years in prison for each count.

According to court documents, Smith was a founder of NinjaVideo, which operated from February 2008 until it was shut down by law enforcement in June 2010.

The site enabled visitors to illegally download movies and television programs still in theaters or that had yet to be released.

Users were asked to make donations to the site, which provided access to private forums that contained, more material for download. Officials said the operators allegedly collected more than $500,000 during the website’s two-and-a-half years of operation.

NEW YORK –– Copyright law protects your intellectual property immediately upon the fixation of a creative work in a tangible form. However, in many circumstances it is desirable to additionally register your works with the United States Copyright Office; especially if you want to maintain the ability to sue for significant damages.

Although copyright attaches to a particular work upon its fixation in a tangible media (a tape, a CD, a file, etc.), you cannot actually sue someone for infringing your copyright until you have registered your work with the Copyright Office. One can always register the copyright just prior to suing, however there is a major advantage to registering the copyright within three months from the date of first publication, or at least prior to the date of infringement: The ability to collect statutory damages. If you do not register your copyright within three months of initial publication, or before the date of the infringement, one would only be eligible for actual damages –– which are difficult to prove and may only be nominal in amount.

To see how this plays out, assume that I have created an amazing spoken-word audio program and posted it on a website without registering the copyright. Since the audio program is an original work fixed in a tangible form (a playable file) it is protected by copyright. Therefore, if someone from another website comes and copies the file and places it on their website, my copyright has been infringed. In order for me to sue, I need to register the file with the Copyright Office.

Assuming that the infringing website doesn’t have any valid defense –– such as fair use –– then I would be able to collect my losses, plus any profits that the infringer accrued by virtue of the infringement.

What are my losses? It is easier to determine the value of the loss when the content is only available by paid subscription, rather than content that is freely available. How does one prove the value of the harm? What if the infringing website isn’t profiting from the infringement? Additionally, I would end up paying my attorney’s fees.

However, if I had registered this program within three months of its first publication, then I would be able to recover statutory damages in lieu of my virtually non-existent actual damages.

If the court finds that as long as the infringement was not committed willfully, the penalty per instance of infringement is between $750 and $30,000. However, if the court determines that the infringement was committed willfully (i.e. it was taken off your website and had any identifying owner information removed), the court may increase the award of statutory damages to a sum of not more than $150,000. Additionally, the infringing party also pays for attorney fees and court costs when infringement is willful.

Filling out the forms online can be complicated and it is recommended that you contact a licensed attorney in your state to assist with your registration process.

Matthew B. Harrison, an entertainment and media attorney, is a senior partner with Harrison Strategies, LLC based in Springfield, Massachusetts. He can be phoned at 413-565-5413 or e-mailed at matthew@matthewharrison.com.

By Matthew B. Harrison, esq.
PhotosAndTheLaw.com

How many of you have your own website that showcases your photography? How many of you use other websites – such as myspace, deviantart, webshots, flickr, etc – to display your work? The Internet can be an amazingly inexpensive way for you, as a photographer, to 1) be able to showcase your work and 2) hopefully bring in potential business through these self-promotional efforts. However, before you run out and get yourself a website to showcase your images, I would like you to think about protecting yourself and your property, so that you do not end up falling into the group that answers affirmatively to the next question.

Of those who do display their work online – how many of you have had the pleasant experience of surfing the web and seeing your image somewhere without your permission? Unfortunately, it happens more than any of us would like to admit and you need to be aware of this phenomenon so that you can adequately protect yourself.

As a point of reference, this article is about non-commercial use of the image by an unauthorized party as opposed to a commercial use. Unauthorized commercial use is an entirely different animal and may be outlined in future articles.

Pretend for a minute that you are not the intelligent and informed reader of this website that you are, but instead are my cousin Vinny. While he may think he is of sound legal mind, he is not a lawyer. He’s just a normal guy who doesn’t really know much about anything – and even less about technology. He may know what a computer is – but his main purpose for using it is the access to free adult material.

So while I can write about copyright protection until the cows come home, and throw out directives for you to assume that materials on the Internet cannot be used without permission – do you think that my cousin Vinny is going to listen to what I am talking about – let alone follow by my words? Not a chance – even if I had a scantily clad model holding up a giant sign.

But Vinny! You are committing a copyright violation by taking that image off someone else’s website and posting it on your page – or sending it out via email to your buddies – or even using it on your desktop as a background image.

His actual response: (after the shut up kid… you bother me) “Hey… I got it for free on the Internet… If they didn’t want me to have it, why would they put it out there?

What Vinny is trying to get at is a fair use argument. Does his justification have merit?

What is fair use?

Fair use is a copyright principle based on the belief that the public is entitled to freely use portions of copyrighted materials for purposes of commentary and criticism. For example, if you wish to criticize a novelist, you should have the freedom to quote a portion of the novelist’s work without asking permission. Absent this freedom, copyright owners could stifle any negative comments about their work.

So what is Fair Use? The only guidance is provided by a set of fair use factors outlined in the copyright law. These factors are weighed in each case to determine whether or not a specific use qualifies as a fair use. For example, one important factor is whether the potentially infringing use will deprive the copyright owner of income. It seems straight forward, but unfortunately, weighing the fair use factors is often quite subjective. For this reason, the fair use road map is often tricky to navigate.

The Fair Use statute: The doctrine of fair use developed over the years as courts tried to balance the rights of copyright owners with society’s interest in allowing copying in certain, limited circumstances. This doctrine has at its core a fundamental belief that not all copying should be banned, particularly in socially important endeavors such as criticism, news reporting, teaching, and research. Under the Act, four factors are to be considered in order to determine whether a specific action is to be considered a “fair use.”

These factors are as follows:

· The purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
· The nature of the copyrighted work;
· The amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
· The effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

So getting back to Vinny – if a work is freely available on the internet – making a copy will have little or no effect on its market simply because no commercial market for the work has been established or claimed… and that is not good for the photographer who gets ripped off from someone like Vinny. It means that as long as you – the photographer – were not selling the particular image copied (in the form that was copied) whoever did the copying has a pretty strong argument for a fair use defense.

So how do you protect yourself from falling into the trap of a fair use argument?

While I hate to say this because as an artist myself the following advice pains me…

A photographer needs to identify their work and claim the value of it on their website. One way to identify the owner of the work is to watermark the image; and if you really want to protect yourself at the cost of devaluing the overall aesthetic of the image – the watermark should be towards the center of the image so that it cannot be cropped off. By doing this – it is painfully obvious that the work belongs to someone.

By offering licensing to use the image, or making the image for sale in the form of a print on your website, you are evidencing actual financial value to the image on the site – and to any reproduction made by the image. This will, in the least, provide you with an argument against a proposed fair use defense that an infringer may have.

Matthew B. Harrison is an entertainment and media attorney with Harrison Strategies, LLC. The New York based talent management group has offices in Massachusetts, New York and Washington D.C. When not practicing law, Harrison also is a fine art photographer with FNS Studios located in Springfield, MA and Silver Jack Photo located in Brooklyn, NY. Visit him on the web at www.photosandthelaw.com or email him at matthew@matthewharrison.com