Remember the situation with David Letterman and Joaquin Phoenix arguing copyright on Letterman's show?

While they were joking about it, the issue revolved around whether or not Phoenix's last movie was really a documentary or not. It uses the famous clip of Phoenix acting crazy on Letterman's show in the film, and the producers claimed that it was "fair use," since it was a documentary.

However, once Phoenix admitted that the whole thing was faked, Letterman realized it wasn't actually fair use any more. Of course, they were mostly (we think) joking around, but a similar issue may have cropped up in another lawsuit.

Recently emerged are the details of a lawsuit over the movie Catfish, a little indie documentary that supposedly shows the story of the filmmaker's brother getting involved in an online relationship, where the object of his desire later turns out to be someone entirely different than he thought it was.

Apparently, when the film was shown, many people thought the filmmakers must have setup the story, since it seemed unlikely to be real, but they insisted that it was an actual documentary and what is seen on camera was what actually happened.

Here's where it gets tricky, though. Apparently, one of the key parts of the movie is that the woman that this guy has met over the internet, emailed him some songs that she had recorded, and one of the ways he discovers that she's not who she says she is, is that he finds more information about the song on YouTube and realizes the woman who sent it to him did not actually write and record it.

The song is actually All Downhill From Here, by Amy Kuney, who is signed to Spin Move Records. Apparently Spin Move and Kuney were happy to be featured in the movie at first -- with Spin Move doing a blog post touting how Kuney's song played a central role in the movie... but then the lawyers showed up and said, "hey, shouldn't we be getting paid...?" So the label removed the post and sued.

The filmmakers response, of course, is that it's a documentary, and it accurately portrays what happened, so it's fair use. So, now, they not only have marketing reasons to claim it's a documentary, but legal reasons as well. The lawyers for Spin Move, on the other hand, have every reason to seek to prove that the movie was planned, rather than just a documentary, because if that's the case, there may not be a fair use defense. Of course, the other possibility is that the filmmakers figure out a way to settle (i.e., pay up) before the case goes anywhere, and they don't have to swear under oath whether or not the movie is real...

Of course, when you think about it, this kind of highlights another rather silly aspect of copyright. Whether or not the use of the song is legal or not depends entirely on whether or not the film is a documentary or not. Note that nothing actually changes about the movie.

When a copyright system punishes people based on how people classify a movie, doesn't that seems like the system isn't working?

Avatar has broken Blu-ray sales records and it looks like it may have broken the record for illegal downloading too.

Having sold 6.7 million copies in the four days following its DVD release, the movie sold 2.7 million Blu-rays and overtook the Dark Knight's Blu-ray sales on the first day.

Today TorrentFreak reports that the Blu-ray version of Avatar is well on its way to becoming the most pirated Blu-ray title.

"With more than 200,000 downloads in the first four days, Avatar has squashed all competition," TorrentFreak's Ernesto writes. "The download figures are still quite low compared to those of 'regular' pirated DVDs – this could be in part due to the larger file size (~10GB) and the fact that Blu-ray market penetration is nowhere near DVD levels yet."

Ernesto goes on to say that in the first few days, a high percentage of the downloads were coming from the UK and Australia, something that can probably be attributed to the fact that the DVD did not go on sale in those countries until after the torrent was made available on line.

The fact that Avatar is smashing Blu-ray records left and right should come as no surprise. However, more and more people are starting to believe this has less to do with how "revolutionary" the hugely popular movie is and more to do with the fact that Blu-ray is getting increasingly popular as time goes by. When the Dark Knight hit Blu-ray in 2008, adoption of the format was not what it is today.

Buy Avatar, legally, here.

Three strikes and you’re out! A decision by a judge to allow record companies to hand over the IP addresses of illegal music downloaders to internet service providers clears the way for a widespread crackdown on copyright violation in Ireland.

The judgement by Judge Peter Charleton which provides a strong defense of the rights of copyright holders effectively sweeps aside concerns of the Data Protection Commissioner Billy Hawke that this could result in the invasion of privacy.

Judge Charelton ruled that allowing the record companies to hand over IP addresses of illegal downloaders was not a breach of the data protection law.

The case follows a judgement last year in a case taken by the big four record companies – EMI, Sony, Warner and Universal – against Eircom.

In his judgement, Judge Charleton said: "The right to be identified with and to reasonably exploit one's own original creative endeavour I regard as a human right.

"It is completely within the legitimate standing of Eircom to act, and to be seen to act, as a body which upholds the law and Constitution. That is what the Court expects of both individuals and companies."

Speaking after the decision, Dick Doyle, Director General of IRMA said: "We are very pleased with this decision today. Resolving this issue has caused six months of disruption to the IRMA/Eircom agreement. We will now proceed immediately to implement the full agreement.”

Willie Kavanagh, chairman of IRMA, added: “The whole music industry, including performers, composers and record labels, has been decimated by illegal peer to peer traffic and our losses amount to over €60m per annum.

“Our industry has lost 40pc in sales value between 2005 and 2009 with devastating effects on artists and creativity. Today's decision is the first step back towards allowing artists to make a living again,” Kavanagh said.

I've a presentation to give for my IT Management Degree, and I need some help from you guys. The following scene is from Back To The Future II. It is an ideal clip to use for a debate about employee privacy, but I cannot find it in video format anywhere on the net.

I can of course rip my version of the movie from DVD to avi or flash and edit as required, but would rather not as that can be quite time consuming and I have not long to put this together. So, does anyone fancy helping me track down this clip?

Here's the scene, you know it instantly if you are a fan of the franchise:

Marty McFly: Hey Needles
Needles: So, did you take a look at that little business proposal of mine?
Marty McFly: I don't know Needles.
Needles: What are you afraid of? If this thing works out it will solve all your financial problems
Marty McFly: And if it doesn't work Needles I could get fired! It's ILLEGAL! I mean, what if the Jitz is monitoring, huh?
Needles: The Jitz will NEVER find out!
Marty McFly: Oh, ha, ha
Needles: Come on. Stick your card in the slot and I'll handle it. Unless you want everyone in the division to think your Chicken.
Marty McFly: NOBODY CALLS ME CHICKEN NEEDLES, NOBODY!
Needles: All right, prove it
Marty McFly: All right, all right Needles. Here's my card. Scan it, I'm in.
Needles: Thanks McFly, I'll see you at the plant tomorrow
SHORT PAUSE
Iko 'Jitz' Fujitsu: MCFRY!!!!!!
Marty McFly: Fujitsu-san, Kon-nichiwa
Iko 'Jitz' Fujitsu: McFry, I was monitoring that scan you just interfaced. You are terminated!
Marty McFly: Terminated? No, no, it wasn't my fault sir! It was Needles, Needles was behind the whole thing!
Iko 'Jitz' Fujitsu: And you cooperated!
Marty McFly: No, I didn't, it was sting operation
Iko 'Jitz' Fujitsu: It was illegal, and you knew!
Marty McFly: I was setting him up
Iko 'Jitz' Fujitsu,: McFry, read my fax!
Marty McFly: No! Please! I cannot be fired, I'm fired! Oh.

I have a 1080p High Definition TV (recent purchase, very happy with it). I also have an XBox 360 that I normally stream .avi files to. All good so far. However, now that I want 1080p to enjoy my movies in the highest possible resolution, I'm finding that many of the files out there are actually MKV (Matroska) and not AVI (which apparently suit PS3 users down to the ground).

This won't do at all. I demand 1080p avi files! Luckily, there is a way (surprise surprise) using MEncoder on Ubuntu. MEncoder actually is able to decode MKV!

Unfortunately, you may encounter some strange problems regarding the conversion of MKV to AVI using 1 pass encoding. The error message looks like this:
But our input is NOT avi. Anyway, there is a workaround for this problem too. The easiest solution is to extract the audio stream first then multiplex that audio stream to a new AVI file.

We extract the uncompressed audio stream to audio.wav.
Then, we encode AVI using mencoder as usual plus -audiofile audio.wav
Finally, remove the intermediate file audio.wav.
Okay? Now bung all of this into a script for easy use and chmod + x it.
Now you can convert your MKV files to AVI using:
This should convert a 4.4gb .mkv to a 3.9gb .avi (duration dependant on your CPU and RAM). Sweet

College student Matthew Lloyd Crippen is accused of modifying several consoles for personal financial gain.

The Cal State Fullerton student was arrested Monday on federal charges that he illegally modified Xbox, Playstation, Wii and other video game consoles to enable the machines to play pirated video games.

Crippen, 27, of Anaheim, was taken into custody Monday morning by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. The arrest follows his indictment by a federal grand jury on two counts of violating the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

Specifically, the college student is accused of modifying for personal financial gain technology affecting control or access to a copyrighted work, according to an ICE statement.

Each criminal count carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison.

The charges against Crippen stem from an ICE investigation initiated late last year after the agency received a tip from the Entertainment Software Association.

Last May, ICE agents executed a federal search warrant at Crippen's home, where they seized more than a dozen Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony video game consoles.

“Playing with games in this way is not a game -- it is criminal,” said Robert Schoch, special agent in charge of the ICE investigations office in Los Angeles.

“Piracy, counterfeiting and other intellectual property rights violations not only cost U.S. businesses jobs and billions of dollars a year in lost revenue, they can also pose significant health and safety risks to consumers,” he said.

Counterfeiting and piracy have grown in recent years in both magnitude and complexity, according to ICE. Industry and trade associations estimate that counterfeiting and piracy now cost the U.S. economy as much as 0 billion a year and a total of 750,000 American jobs.

Some estimates indicate that 5 percent to 8 percent of all the goods and merchandise sold worldwide are counterfeit.

Crippen was expected to make his initial federal court appearance late Monday in Los Angeles.

So I got some pretty cool disc images from fanedit.org recently, and also wanted to do a copy of LXG to put on my media server (I own the DVD), so went about what software would be needed to complete a start to finish DVD rip.

The answer was amazingly simple:

sudo apt-get install k9copy acidrip

Use k9copy to decrypt your DVDs (without menus) and then use acidrip to convert the DVD structured directory to avi file - only setting I changed was I set the video codec to 'xvid'.

Done! Amazingly simple