Striking is the sheer volume of takedown notices Google receives: in just the last month, it processed over 1.2 million requests for Search alone, from 1,296 copyright owners and 1,087 reporting organizations. That scale allows it to present trends in the data that might not otherwise be apparent. For example, even in the case of notorious "pirate" sites like The Pirate Bay, Google has received takedown notices for less than 5% of their indexable pages.<p>

On the other hand, this report also provides a clearer look into the abuse of copyright tools. Google explains that it's complied with 97% of takedown requests received between July and December of 2011, but also provides examples of obviously invalid copyright requests it's received.

The Space Hijackers had been using an altered version of the 2012 logo on their site and their Twitter page.<p>

The Olympic organisers are notoriously prickly about branding, but also about protest, and laws introduced after London won the right to host this years games could potentially <a href-"http://www.indexoncensorship.org/2011/11/olympic-ideal-puts-money-before-democracy/">place restrictions</a> on protest for the duration of the Olympics and Paralympics.<p>

It could be argued that the logo in itself was a justifiable reason for the suspension: but you have to seriously ask: is anyone actually going to confuse the Space Hijackers account for an official Olympic account?

The new Google-commissioned paper, written by well-known UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh and attorney Donald Falk, argues that such regulations would be preempted by the First Amendment. Google's search engine, they write, "uses sophisticated computerized algorithms, but those algorithms themselves inherently incorporate the search engine company engineers' judgments about what material users are likely to find responsive to these queries."<p>

The authors argue that this selection process is no different, constitutionally speaking, from a newspaper editor selecting wire stories to run, a guidebook deciding which attractions to feature, or a parade organizer choosing which floats to include. The courts have ruled that all of these editorial processes are fully protected by the First Amendment.

It's hard to imagine another, similar case on the scale of Oracle versus Google, so it's remarkable that an almost identical one came to resolution in Europe at almost the same time. SAS Institute sued World Programming for copyright infringement in what seems like a much more clear-cut case than Oracle versus Google. World Programming copied the SAS programming environment with the intent of direct competition, yet the court did not find against World Programming.</p><p>

Although the case has nuances, the court was clear that although software itself could be copyrighted, its externalities -- the function it performs, the programming interfaces it exposes, and the data structures it uses -- cannot be. This is entirely reasonable. Without such a division, interoperable technology markets would be impossible.

With this paradoxical partial decision, the jury has left the case very much in the air, and Google has already moved for a mistrial.</p><p>

On Monday, as the Google-Oracle case entered its fourth week, a jury ruled that Oracle has proven that Google infringed the overall structure, sequence, and organization of copyrighted works of 37 APIs used by the Java platform. In building Android, Google created a new version of the Java platform known as the Dalvik virtual machine, and this mimicked the Java APIs, or application programming interfaces, which are essentially a way for a Java application to talk to the platform.</p><p>

But the jury was unable to reach a decision on whether Google’s Java clone constituted “fair use.” A fair use decision would let Google off the hook.

A dispute over whether a Swedish ISP can be forced to hand over the details of one its subscribers to an anti-piracy group has just received its long-awaited ruling from the Europe’s highest court. A few moments ago the European Court of Justice announced that there are no EU barriers which prevent the ISP handing over its customers’ private details to copyright holders.

I was told to prepare a five-minute speech, so apart from speaking of the reality musicians are facing, I spent days reading the actual [ACTA] agreement, different points of views on it, as well as looking into the different issues it deals with, to make sure I knew what was being discussed. I'd heard from the Pirate Party as well as some other action groups that it would impede freedom of speech so naturally I was concerned – after all, musicians rely on freedom of expression, as do journalists. I was surprised to find that Acta would do nothing of the sort. In fact, it wouldn't change any existent laws in the EU.</p><p>

It soon became clear that my preparations were in vain.

As an independent analyst and blogger, I will express only my own opinions, which cannot be attributed to any one of my diversity of clients. I often say things none of them would agree with. That said, as a believer in transparency I would like to inform you that Oracle has very recently become a consulting client of mine. We intend to work together for the long haul on mostly competition-related topics including, for one example, FRAND licensing terms.</p><p>

We've known each other ever since I vocally opposed Oracle's acquisition of Sun Microsystems (not because of Java), but that's history as I fully respect the European Commission's clearance decision and the subsequent closing of the deal.

The most enduring front in the battle over code may end up over something even more foundational than an operating system. Up next are software languages and APIs, the raw material from which our digital edifices are built. Arguments continued this week in the case of Oracle v Google, in which Oracle claims that the Sun programming language is itself copyrighted, as are the ways in which software can be written to expect to run in some version of Java. If Oracle wins, projects like GNU will be in danger: simply rewriting Unix from scratch as GNU wouldn't free the Platonic programming language behind Unix of copyright limitations. If a language itself can be copyrighted – and Oracle and Google, in otherwise solemn briefing, engage on whether Game of Thrones's Dothraki or Avatar's Na'vi can be so protected – then anyone speaking or writing in Dothraki or Na'vi would have to answer to those works' creators.

This is a battle that appears to be bleeding beyond the major labels.  We've seen the markings of a broader artist and industry backlash, and now, there's this.  The sharpest attack on Grooveshark is now coming from TuneCore CEO Jeff Price, an artist champion who spends most of this time fighting against the majors.  Yet on Friday, Price tore into the company for failing to compensate his artists and blatantly exploiting legal loopholes.  In fact, Price is now urging his massive indie and DIY community to boycott the company, and directly contact Grooveshark advertisers to pressure change.

Plagiarizing someone's idea because you don't like their person is spiteful and spite has been the justifying tone behind a lot of Dustin [Curtis]'s critics. Yes Dustin came off as an arrogant ass and I think he will learn from this experience. But does that really justify ripping of the dude's idea and hard work and then sharing it with the world? Absolutely not. If the community accepts copying and re-distributing ideas because someone doesn't like the person who originally built it, that would be chaos. Anyone could use that as an excuse to reproduce anyone else's work.

A Danish copyright group has won a court order to block music streaming site Grooveshark from the nation's pastry-munching pirates.

In a report of questionable accuracy (the plaintiff Rettighedsalliancen is incorrectly described as a "local IFPI") at tech site Comon [Den - Eng]. Hutchison-owned mobile operator 3 must implement the block immediately. Denmark was one of the first to implement DNS-level blocking, first against Pirate Bay more than three years ago. An appeal is expected.

What’s interesting, though, isn’t that some developers plagiarized some stuff from some other developers. What’s interesting is the overwhelmingly hostile response to the theft from the wider tech community.

Do a quick search on Twitter for Curebit and behold at the self-righteous rage at the original crime and the extremely grudging acceptance of the inevitable apology. The last time we saw this kind of outpouring of rage amongst tech people was when — uh — the government tried to clamp down on copyright theft.