One Night in Paris
Not exaclty on topic, but it does involve distribution via the internet and the right to privacy -- the Paris Hilton video and transcript and Smoking Gun has info on the defamation lawsuit filed by Rick Salomon in Los Angeles Superior Court against Paris for wrongfully accusing him of improper/ criminal conduct in connection with the filming of the video and the tape's subsequent sale to an internet porn site. As a further aside, I called Paris Hilton's cell phone yesterday to congratulate her on the rave reviews of her new sitcom Simple Life and see if she needed me to handle her case, but her voice mail was full so I paged her. No return call yet though, she's probably too busy milking cows or picking up roadkill. Another question involving the lawsuit/video is whether Paris Hilton directed her own sex video and what rights that would confer. Does the Gaiman v. McFarlane decision (Posner, 7th Cir., 2004) affect our thinking on Marvad's legal argument? Joe Gratz has this on the decision:
February 24, 2004: Marvad: "Salomon's failure to identify [Paris] Hilton as a co-author on the application for copyright registration renders the certificate of registration invalid and fraudulent," ... said the documents filed by Marvad Corp., which asked District Judge Dean Pregerson to dismiss Rick Salomon'S lawsuit, alleging that Marvad violated his copyright by distributing clips of the video on its Web site, sexbrat.comon, on the basis that Hilton also held rights to the video.Even if the contribution is not itself copyrightable, the contributor is a co-author if the joint work would lose its copyrightability absent the contribution in question. This makes the present case come out the right way (Count Cogliostro ends up being jointly owned by Gaiman and McFarlaine), and makes the important co-authorship precedents come out the right way too.
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