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Psystar, in its amended complaint, accuses Apple of copyright misuse, as well as unfair competition violations based on its alleged copyright misuse. Judge Alsup, in citing a previous case--Practice Management Information Corp v. American Medical Association--notes in his order:
Copyright misuse does not invalidate a copyright, but precludes its enforcement during the period of misuse." Practice Management, 121 F.3d at 520 n.9. Moreover, "a defendant in a copyright infringement suit need not prove an antitrust violation to prevail on a copyright misuse defense." Id. at 521.
While Judge Alsup found in Psystar's favor by allowing the company to continue its counterclaim with a misuse of copyright argument, the Mac clone maker failed to win on all of its arguments. He denied Psystar's motion to amend its claim that Apple's conduct with respect to its intellectual property is "unfair," threatening or harming competition.

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The groups, which represent record labels, music publishers, songwriters, and music Web sites, say their proposal would resolve what has been a source of strife between the music industry and Web sites that offer on-demand streaming services.

Under the agreement, sites like Napster and Imeem would have to begin paying royalties of about 10.5 percent of revenue. Download services like Amazon MP3 and iTunes already pay such fees. And online radio sites saw a major royalty hike last year. Pandora, one such site, may be on the brink of going out of business due to that rate increase, according to its founder, Tim Westergren.

The organizations involved were the Digital Media Association, the Nashville Songwriters Association International, the National Music Publishers Association, Recording Industry Association of America, and the Songwriters Guild of America.

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At the very least, we all know that when the warning signs appear, what follows are a few very-important-sounding sentences noting the dire consequences of unauthorized use of what we're about to see. We don't necessarily understand it, but we know it's bad. And if we were to believe what they tell us, discussing Barry Bonds' homeruns around the water cooler would put us all in jail. Did it ever occur to you that, in many cases, these serious, ubiquitous warnings may not actually be accurate?

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When Novell and Microsoft announced their patent deal, the Free Software Foundation was quick to say it would move to prohibit such arrangements in a future version of the General Public License (GPL), the most widely used open-source license. The most recent draft seeks to prohibit all future deals of that nature and potentially past ones, too. The timing of Microsoft's pronouncement is telling, Radcliffe said, "particularly when you think that GPL version 3 is still in draft. I don't think that is a coincidence," he said.

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In Florida, Utah, and soon in Rhode Island and Wisconsin, selling your used CDs to the local record joint will be more scrutinized than then getting a driver's license in those states. For retailers in Florida, for instance, there's a "waiting period" statue that prohibits them from selling used CDs that they've acquired until 30 days have passed. Furthermore, the Florida law disallows stores from providing anything but store credit for used CDs. It looks like college students will need to stick to blood plasma donations for beer money. Why this trend, and why now? It's difficult to say, but to be sure, there is no love lost between retailers who sell used CDs and the music industry. The Federal Trade Commission has scrutinized the music industry for putting unfair pressures on retailers who sell used CDs, following a long battle between the music industry and retailers in the mid 90s. The music industry dislikes used CD sales because they don't get a cut of subsequent sales after the first. Now, via the specter of piracy, new legislation is cropping up that will make it even less desirable to sell second-hand goods. Can laws targeting used DVDs be far behind?

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The FSF is strongly hostile to DRM. The first draft of the v3 revision expressed this philosophy directly: "This license intrinsically disfavors technical attempts to restrict users' freedom to copy, modify and share copyrighted works. Each of its provisions shall be interpreted in light of this specific declaration of the licensor's intent," and, while the words may have been toned down, the anti-DRM tune remains loud and clear. The FSF's position on DRM is not new. What is new is a fundamental change in the reach of the license terms that makes that hostility more of a threat.

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Advocates have dreaded the CRB ruling, which they say could raise rates between 300 to 1200 per cent for webcasters. Earlier this month, the CRB threw out an appeal by commercial webcasters, National Public Radio and others to review the new rates and postpone a May 15 deadline for the introduction of the royalty schedule.

If passed, today's bill would set new rates at 7.5 per cent of the webcaster's revenue - the same rate paid by satellite radio. Alternatively, webcasters could decide to pay 33 cents per hour of sound recordings transmitted to a single user.