Tyler Perry Wins Lawsuit

The actor-screenwriter Tyler Perry has won a lawsuit that accused him of stealing material from Donna West's play for his movie "Diary of a Mad Black Woman." The jurors found that West did not present evidence that supported her accusation of copyright infringement.

West is accusing Perry of stealing material from her play called "Fantasy of a Black Woman" that has been performed three times in 1991 in Dallas, TX and claims that Perry could have accessed the script in 1998 when he presented his plays to the Dallas Black Academy of Arts and Letters. Perry testified in court that his screenplay is an original work. West was asking the court to receive money for damages and profits made from the film, which earned around $50 million in theaters after it was released in 2005. Her attorneys are planning to seek a new trial.

You-Tube Creates Anti-Piracy Filters

The website YouTube has created a way to get rid of copyrighted clips. They have made filtering tools so that the owners of copyrighted material can block their material from being shown on YouTube. They also have the option for owners of copyrighted material to sell ads around their material if they want the clips to stay available on YouTube.

Seven months ago, Viacom Inc. sued YouTube for $1 billion dollars for showing thousands of copyrighted clips that the company owned. Over time, movie and TV studios have become upset with piracy through YouTube even though YouTube says it follows copyrighted laws by removing protected videos when requested.

You Tube has been working with Google engineers to make tools that can flag copyrighted video. They have been working at it for the past six months. YouTube also needs copyright holders to provide copies of the video that they want to protect so that they can compare the files provided with the material uploaded on its site. The movie and TV studios will have to provide all of their copyright material if they don’t want it on YouTube. Without doing this, YouTube will have a difficult way of knowing which material is legally or illegally posted on the site.

Woman Loses Thousands of Dollars in Lawsuit for Downloading Music

A woman in Minnesota, named Jammie Thomas, was court ordered to pay $222,000 for downloading and sharing copyrighted music online. The record industry wants to make an example out of her and send the message that downloading and sharing music is not okay or legal.

Thomas is ordered to pay the six record companies that sued her for $9,250 for each of the 24 songs that they are focusing on in this case. They say she shared a total of 1,702 songs. This is the first time that one of the music industry's lawsuits went to trial. Most people settle and pay the companies a few thousand dollars. Thomas thought that she didn't do anything wrong and proceeded with the lawsuit against her. Thomas claimed she didn't own a file sharing account with Kazaa but evidence showed that the Internet address belonged to her.

Jammie Thomas is 30 years old and lives paycheck to paycheck and now she could get a fourth of her paycheck garnished for the rest of her life. Including the attorney fees, she could owe nearly half a million dollars.