Everything you need to know about 'The Social Network' and the law

Today we've got another attorney guest post, this one from Aaron Moss, a partner at L.A.'s Greenberg Glusker and co-founder of the firm's Law Law Land blog. He follows our thoughts on the subject with the best analysis we've seen of the possible legal claims stemming from "The Social Network." We'll let Aaron explain...

By Aaron Moss

The new Facebook movie, "The Social Network," opened this weekend to rave reviews and the No. 1 spot at the box office. If history is any guide, we should now prepare ourselves for two things: (1) a string of copycat films (coming soon, "Friendster: We Totally Came Up With This Idea First, Really!" and "MySpace: Hey, Where Did Everybody Go?"); and (2) a string of lawsuits.

As studio litigation departments know well, the standard legal claim that follows the release of a successful movie is one for “idea theft” brought by plaintiffs who claim that their idea for the movie was stolen by the filmmakers. But because "Social Network" is based on a true story — and because everyone who believes he invented Facebook has already sued Mark Zuckerberg — any claims are likely to focus on the film’s portrayal of real-life individuals.

'Gurl' fight: Why Katy Perry probably shouldn't be afraid of the Beach Boys

We've got another attorney guest post today from Ben Sheffner, the Copyrights and Campaigns blogger and Billboard columnist, analyzing the legal issues in play when one copyrighted work takes a little bit from another copyrighted work....

By Ben Sheffner

Universal Music Publishing Group's Rondor Music, which owns the copyright to the Beach Boys' "California Girls," has sent a letter to Capitol Records demanding that it grant writing credits and royalties for the Katy Perry summer hit "California Gurls" to Brian Wilson and Mike Love, the writers of the 1965 classic.

No one would mistake Perry's song -- which topped the Billboard Hot 100 for six straight weeks in June and July -- for "California Girls." But at the end of "Gurls," rapper Snoop Dogg says, "I really wish you all could be California girls"—not far off from "I wish they all could be California girls" in the Beach Boys' refrain.

Lenders beware: A warning about Hollywood film libraries

Sky Moore is back with another attorney guest post, this time examining why film libraries aren't like real estate.... 

By Schuyler M. Moore

Have you ever been a lender against a film library that isn't performing up to someone's projections and wondered what to do? And perhaps management has asked you to let it use all the current income to keep paying for overhead and development to "refreshen" the library, instead of paying down your loan?

What's a lender to do?

Mel Gibson Saga: When is it legal to record a conversation?

Today we've got another attorney guest post looking at a ripped-from-the-headlines issue: when can you record a phone conversation without telling the other person? Joshua Briones and Ana Tagoryan are lawyers in the LA office of DLA Piper...

By Ana Tagvoryan and Joshua Briones

If you had this nagging feeling that there must be some law against recording conversations, you are right. The audio tape recording of what appears to be actor/director Mel Gibson is already the focal point for the attorneys and law enforcement involved in the high-profile domestic violence investigation and child-custody dispute between Gibson and ex-girlfriend Oksana Grigorieva. If it is Gibson in the recording, is it admissible in court? 

According to reports, Grigorieva secretly recorded the conversation, which was banned from release by the judge overseeing the child-custody lawsuit but somehow leaked to Radar Online. In California, it is illegal to intentionally record a confidential communication without the consent of all parties to the communication. Secretly recording a confidential communication -- defined by the California Penal Code as any communication carried on in circumstances reasonably indicating that one or more of the parties desires it to be confined to the parties to the communication -- is punishable by up to a $2,500 fine or imprisonment of up to a year, or both. Gibson, as the party who was allegedly secretly recorded, may also have a civil right of action against Grigorieva for statutory damages of $5,000 or actual damages, plus payment of his attorneys' fees and costs. 

How Elena Kagan might rule on Hollywood cases

Another interesting attorney guest post from Ben Sheffner, an NBC Universal lawyer, blogger and Billboard columnist ...

By Ben Sheffner

Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan endured questioning at the end of June from the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee about the weightiest legal issues of the day. Abortion. Separation of powers. The president's authority in wartime.

But even though committee chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., is a champion of the recording industry and strong copyright protection for all creators, Kagan managed to avoid a grilling on her views about the proper scope of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act's safe harbors or whether sound recordings properly qualify as works made for hire.

To get a sense of how she would rule on issues of interest to the entertainment industry, we are instead left to scour her record for tea leaves. Let's take a look.

Do you know your showbiz deal terms?

Regular commentator Schuyler Moore is back with another attorney guest post, this time tackling the difference between "gross," "adjusted gross" and "net" in Hollywood deals. Test your knowledge against the master....

By Schuyler Moore

Hey, ever been at a Hollywood party and wanted to impress a member of the opposite sex with your mastery of Hollywood jargon? Just print out this article, fold it up, stick it in your wallet, whip it out at the opportune time -- after a drink or two -- and use it for speed seduction as a form of neuro-linguistic programming.

But brace yourself because there is a complete disconnect between what a word means in English and what it means in Hollywood. When Humpty Dumpty said, "When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean" in "Through the Looking Glass," he must have thought he was in Hollywood.

So here we go:

How to make a 'Twilight' fan remix film without getting sued

Today we've got another guest post. This one's from Jacqueline Lipton, a professor and associate dean at Case Western Reserve University Law School in Cleveland. She's co-director of the school's center for law, technology and the arts, and is the author of an upcoming Maryland Law Review article called "Copyright's Twilight Zone: Digital Copyright Lessons from the Vampire Blogosphere," from which this piece has been adapted....

By Jacqueline Lipton 

With the release of “The Twilight Saga: Eclipse” fast approaching, the fan blogosphere is again whipping itself into a frenzy. And Twi-hards aren't just talking about the movies— they're producing their very own digital interpretations of the story, often borrowing copyrighted material from the "Twilight" movies and mixing it up themselves. 

Can they do this?

What all of Hollywood can learn from Warner Bros.' loss

Today we've got another attorney guest post. Ken Basin is an associate at the Century City firm Greenberg Glusker, which just launched a new entertainment law blog called Law Law Land. Basin weighs in with his thoughts on what could be one of the most influential showbiz cases of the year....

By Ken Basin

Last week, the California Court of Appeal upheld a $3.2 million jury verdict for producer Alan Ladd, Jr. in his profit participation lawsuit against Warner Bros. If you are neither a Warner Bros. executive nor named Alan Ladd, Jr., you may well have yawned and gone about your day (actually, Ladd is rich enough that he may have actually yawned and gone about his day). But if so, then tsk tsk: the Ladd case is big news for everyone in the entertainment industry, be they talent, producers, studio executives, or the lawyers scrambling for their business. 

Why support the boxoffice futures exchanges?

Film finance lawyer and THR commentator Schuyler Moore testified last week before a House agriculture subcommittee in favor of boxoffice exchanges. See if you can detect the sarcasm in this excellent guest post...

By Schuyler M. Moore

The parties lined up against the proposed boxoffice futures exchanges are legion: the MPAA, the Hollywood studios, IFTA, the guilds, Sens. Boxer and Feinstein, Mother Teresa and Save the Whales. Who possibly could dare to support it? Certainly not me. So, in an effort to support this Holy War, let me offer reasons why the blasphemous idea of "The Exchange" must be squelched in its infancy:

Is it time to completely reform U.S. copyright law?

Today we've got another attorney guest post. Ben Sheffner is a copyright lawyer who has represented movie studios, TV networks and record labels. He's currently an attorney in the NBC Universal Television Group, writes one of our favorite law blogs (Copyrights & Campaigns), and is a columnist for Billboard, where this piece first appeared ...

By Ben Sheffner

It’s hard to find anyone who loves the current U.S. copyright law.

The law frustrates record labels and movie studios, which complain it’s inadequate to combat rampant infringement on the Internet. It infuriates music entrepreneurs, who fear the imposition of bankrupting awards of statutory damages if they guess wrong about whether their device or service requires licenses from the labels and publishers — licenses that they probably couldn’t afford in the first place. It baffles the general public, which doesn’t know whether it’s legal to copy a CD or a DVD onto an iPod. (The labels say it’s generally OK, and the studios say “no.”) And it earns the ire of copyright skeptics in academia and self-proclaimed “public-interest groups,” which argue that copyright law is abused by big corporations to stifle technological innovation and quash artistic freedom.

So what to do about it? Is it time for wholesale reform of the system?