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Some claim that the digital music industry is not going to grow any larger than it already is--mostly due to piracy occurring online. Inspired by the U.S. Senate, which shut down LimeWire last year, other countries across Europe and Asia are looking to revisit copyright laws to crack down on piracy and promote growth in the digital music industry, as well as lead a shift away from monopolizing applications, like iTunes, and redirect sales to alternative subscription music service websites.

The Country music duo the "Bellamy Brothers" are upset over Britney song title's resemblance to their 1979 hit but it seem they will not be suing the popstar.

I know that the Bellamy Brothers specifically mention the title, but I think they would have a much stronger case on the basis of "fixing" the double entendre within the song: the BB's lyrics are "If I said you had a beautiful body / would you hold it against me" vs. Britney's "If I said I want your body now / would you hold it against me." That's pretty startlingly similar, and even if you can't copyright ideas, you can copyright the expression of those ideas... and there's enough overlap between the two to be persuasive.

Now that I know copying a song title doesn't count as copyright infringement, I wonder what percentage of a songs lyrics must be exactly the same as another song in order for that to count as copyright infringement. And even if the lyrics happen to be the same, can an artist still avoid a lawsuit if his or her melodic line/ chordal progression/ instrumentation is different enough to make the song "original"? I'm guessing that its a case-by-case thing...

The Twilight poster and album cover have an undeniable resemblance to each other, however, I think Summit's interference and influence on pulling his music from YouTube and iTunes was unnecessary. If Summit believed that the artist had stolen material for his album cover, then the company should have sued him instead. Also, if Twilight had inspired his music, then technically, this is not copyright infringement. I do not think that the music itself was a violation of intellectual property.

Creative Commons is facilitating the use and reuse of educational materials. According to this post written by a policy coordinator at the nonprofit organization, it can potentially allow students to save money they would be spending on textbooks. A professor at the University of MIchigan published a $10 book in 11 days because he adapted a book "offered under an open content license"

The use of Creative Commons licenses to broaden access to educational materials represents a general shift in academia. Although universities have often controlled this access to knowledge, these open source resources allow most people to educate themselves without the high barriers to entry, such as tuition. Like the MIT Open CourseWare, "iTunes U" compiles lectures from various universities. NYU actually just sent out its IT newsletter e-mail today, which contained a notice about its Open Education Pilot program. http://www.nyu.edu/its/connect/w11/openedpilot.html Even though it seems like universities are open to sharing lecture materials and other educational resources under the Creative Commons license, how lenient do you think these schools will be? Would they truly offer alternative textbooks in which the college has to forfeit their profit from their bookstore, for example?