FINAL EXAMINATION

SPRING 2007

Answer the following question. Spot all issues. Resolve all problems and potential problems with concise prose reminiscent of Hemingway and not the garrulousness of Mailer or the ponderous assault of Wolfe but with a nod to the mellifluous and poetic lilt of Rushde. Answers are due Wednesday May 16, 2007 in class. Analysis is more important than volume. Be precise and attend to spotting issues and analysis. Do not cut and paste or recite copyright law in detail.

Bilbo Peckins, a narcissistic opera singer in retirment, had just publised his biography, "Me Me Me Me". He had a website online with a search engine and a web crawler. The website was named cheronline.com (ShareonLine was taken by a fishing club) He developed a piece of software called "Share and Share Alike" (SSA) which allowed opera and musical buffs from all over the world to download the software (the software was free but contained adware (which gave Bilbo income per click on ad sites) and to share their favorite opera music on line. Bilbo made available on his site a large library of public domain opera tracks that had been uploaded and digitized. His website had a blog about opera singers and a blog about some popular singers who had been in rock musicals and rock operas. Bilbo used metatags with prominent opera stars' names and Cher of course.

Also prominent on the site was what Bilbo called "a public interest section on copyright law" with a link to a hacker site that gave the code to unlock the copyright protection just developed specifically for opera music. The site also linked to places where the code could be downloaded.

There was also a fan club that could be joined to which members could login. Membership cost $99 dollars per year. Various products were advertised on the site such as opera tours and opera and musical cruises. Contests were run for the best imitations of opera and musical singers. Bilbo was paid per click on an advertisers site when referred from his site. Bilbo's website was up and running for about a year. His slogan also was "Share and Share Alike". He suspected in the first six months that some opera fans who frequented his site were sharing songs that were new releases in Bulgaria (Bulgarian folk opera is hauntingly beautiful) since that was suggested in one of his blogs by a frequent user of his software and member of his club. Although any exchanges of music was between club members and software users, Bilbo kept an internal log of activity. World-wide, there were over a million users of his software.

Deeper on the site were pages of pictures of opera and musical stars. Prominent was the singer Cher who was the only singer besides Beverley Sills on the main page of the site. Bilbo also ran a small Cher fan club. Clicking on Cher would take users to a porn site with people "sharing" according to Bilbo.

Bilbo received a cease and desist letter from Bulgarian rock opera group "Hug". They told him to shut down his site.

Bilbo received a cease and decist letter from the rockstar, Cher, telling him to shut down his site and to transfer the domain name. Bilbo immediately switched his services to another domain name and dedicated the original page to Cher's charity for out of work and immigrant rock stars called "Yacht People". Cher had filed a complaint with the WIPO.

Bilbo received a cease and desist letter from an Eastern European recording association called, EIAA, that they would brings suit against him.

The EIAA had just filed a U.S. federal suit against Bilbo alleging willful infringement.

 

1. Spot all the issues and answer them.

2. Explain how Bilbo might argue to protect himself and what the outcome might be given the circumstances.