Most copyright litigation is civil in nature--a court finds that a defendant has infringed and orders the defendant to pay either statutory damages or actual damages and profits. There are also criminal copyright penalties, and Congress has shown recent interest in increasing these...

As vigorously as companies work to ensure that their own copyrights aren't being infringed, today's easy access to electronic information makes it increasingly important that they also be wary that they aren't--inadvertently or not--infringing on other companies' copyrights. One frequent mistake is...

Birdman faces a federal lawsuit that accuses him of sampling other artists' songs without paying licensing fees.The lawsuit claims the popular rapper, whose real name is Bryan Williams, owes several music publishing companies an unspecified amount of money for using copyrighted songs without permission.Williams and...

YouTube agreed Tuesday to post Japanese warnings against uploading copyrighted material onto its popular video-sharing Web site soon, a group of Japanese companies said.YouTube also said that it would make efforts to filter out copyrighted Japanese video with the help of its parent company Google,...

Examines the growing problem of music piracy. Discusses the cause and offers possible solutions.