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Under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, video artists who break the encryption on a DVD or sample online streaming videos could face legal threats - even if the video they create is considered fair use.

In a bizarre ruling, an English court has ruled that in favor of a commercial poster company that argued that a photo that showed a similar (but different) scene taken by a different person in a different place nevertheless infringed the copyright of a poster. What the judge ruled was that photographing a scene that is “substantially similar” to a scene someone else has already photographed infringes the first shooter’s copyright.

Last week, there was a flurry of news surrounding the New Zealand arrest of several high-ranking MegaUpload employees (including founder Kim Dotcom) and the subsequent shutdown of MegaUpload’s server. Now, we’re entering the long, drawn-out legal wrangling that typically accompany a major case such as this, with the first step being Kim Dotcom’s extradition to the US. According to a Reuters report, this won’t be a simple matter: after being denied bail, Dotcom will be under custody until at least February 22nd, when the extradition application will be filed. But due to possible appeals and procedural reviews on both sides, it could take significantly longer to complete the process.

New Zealand police, responding from a request from the US government, raided MegaUpload today, arresting founder and CEO Kim ”Dotcom” Schmitz and three “associates.” The service, which allowed users to upload files that were too big to email, claimed 150 million users. The entertainment industry alleged that the service was primarily intended to facilitate copyright infringement, since people could use it to illegally share music and movies, but the company claimed that while some users might infringe copyright with MegaUpload, others simply used it to share files that belonged to them. For example, I use a comparable service, YouSendIt, to exchange large MP3 files of my podcast with John Taylor Williams, the sound engineer who masters them. At other times, companies that wanted me to review their movies and music have uploaded them to a file locker and supplied me with the link and password to get them.

“More stringent security measures. Universal electronic surveillance. No-knock laws. Stop and frisk laws. Government inspection of first-class mail. Automatic fingerprinting, photographing, blood tests, and urinalysis of any person arrested before he is charged with a crime. A law making it unlawful to resist even unlawful arrest. Laws establishing detention camps for potential subversives. Gun control laws. Restrictions on travel. The assassinations, you see, establish the need for such laws in the public mind. Instead of realizing that there is a conspiracy, conducted by a handful of men, the people reason — or are manipulated into reasoning — that the entire population must have its freedom restricted in order to protect the leaders. The people agree that they themselves can’t be trusted.”

― Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea, The Eye in the Pyramid, 1975

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