The new and growing market for eBooks has allowed companies to call into question some of the basic and universal characteristics of reading and owning books. That you can loan them to your friends, for example, or that by purchasing a book you’re also purchasing the ability to read it whenever you want, wherever you want, until you lose it, donate it, give it away, or wear through its well-loved spine.

eBook publishers have, to put it mildly, established that these are qualities of a book that they do not intend to carry over to the new format, which is to a certain extent fine, so long as consumers know what they’re getting into. But the eBook market also has other problems, namely accusations of price fixing, and, due to the combination of software that limits the kind of device a given eBook can be read on and the dominance of the Kindle over the eReader market, bullying tactics. A new lawsuit filed by three independent bookstores is looking to strike at the heart of the problem: the insistance of eReader makers that their books should not be readable on other devices.

Yeaaah…what about all those Imperial officers who get injured in the line of duty? Who can they turn to?

(via igeektrooper)

I don’t know about you but I wouldn’t mess with Nick Fury of S.H.I.E.L.D. but a German luggage company is about to step up to the main man in a big way. The company, Rimowa GmbH, is suing Marvel and owner Disney’s Buena Vista Home Entertainment. Why? See that magnificent DVD case above? That’s one of Rimowa GmbH’s designs. We know that for sure because they allowed Marvel to let Samuel L. Jackson carry it in The Avengers. What they didn’t do was allow Marvel to mass produce and sell it. Oops. 

Some primitive screwheads unaffiliated with the people who created the Evil Dead franchise have been trying to use the horror classic’s title to produce a third sequel to the original movies. But one of those creators, Sam Raimi, never actually signed away the rights to the Evil Dead name, so now he’s suing to stop the aforementioned screwheads from screwing with the series while Raimi is producing an actual Evil Dead movie. However, the screwheads — Award Pictures — say that Raimi all but gave them permission to make an Evil Dead sequel — when he said something to that effect in The Evil Dead Companion, published in 2000. Yup. A random quote in a book from 2000, a quote preceded by the word “Ha,” was read as a go-ahead for Award Pictures to make their own unauthorized sequel to The Evil Dead. Yeah. Good luck with that.

Alex Boston, like many teenagers, has been the victim of relentless and disgusting bullying on Facebook. Some kids thought it would be funny to set up a fake profile in her name, with a distorted picture, on which a false version of her spouted racist remarks among other falsehoods. But when she reached out to her school and the police for help, they didn’t provide any. And when she asked Facebook to take down the fake profile, but they (initially) refused to take down the fake account. Left without any other options, Boston and her parents filed a lawsuit against the kids who were bullying her, as well as their parents, claiming libel.

An even skeevier development from the “Belvedere Vodka rapey” ad front: The woman featured in the ad, Alicyn Packard, is now suing the company for using her image. Why? Because for one thing, the image comes from a video featuring Packard that was never meant to be used for another company’s advertisement; it’s a screenshot from a sketch that appeared on Strickly Viral. For another, no one bothered to get Packard’s permission to use her image for this highly questionable ad in the first place, because it’s not as if she posed for a stock photo that could have ended up anywhere, even without her direct consent. So, let it be known: companies can go find a video online — any video — take a screenshot, put it in a horribly different context, and expect to get away with it. Well, that’s great.

The Walking Dead returns to AMC tomorrow night and make-up supervisor, and newly dubbed co-executive producer, Gregory Nicotero spoke with Blastr about the second half of the season. We’ve also got a follow-up on The Walking Dead lawsuit situation between original creators Tony Moore and Robert Kirkman. Kirkman has now given a statement. 

The original artist of The Walking Dead, Tony Moore, is suing his former collaborator Robert Kirkman (the creator and writer of the graphic novel) over the proceeds from the now-hit AMC show. Way back in 2005, Kirkman told Moore that their popular, award-winning graphic novel had the chance of becoming a TV show. Moore wasn’t so sure about that, so he was convinced enough to sign over his rights to Kirkman completely. But now The Walking Dead is the highest-rated show on cable, and Moore is calling foul. Does he have every right to do this? Let’s take a look at the back story.

A long-time lawsuit, over who owned select characters created for McFarlane’s Spawn, between creators Neil Gaiman and Todd McFarlane has finally been settled. And according to Gaiman, the suit sets a new precedent for comic book copyright that could prove beneficial for the industry going forward. 

Seven companies — including Pixar, Lucasfilm, Google, and Apple — have been named in a lawsuit claiming that agreements not to recruit each other’s employees are in violation of antitrust laws. The judge for the case says that while the agreements by the individual companies aren’t really the problem, she’s wondering if there’s some sort of conspiracy going on that will hamper competitiveness in the marketplace. And now, a post about antitrust law written by someone who knows absolutely nothing about antitrust law, in case that wasn’t obvious already.