Cultivated Compendium

"The estate of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle has put forward an defence ingenious enough for Sherlock Holmes himself in a US copyright case that could redraw the boundaries of copyright law to recognise 'complex literary characters.'" the Guardian reports. The plaintiff is seeking to establish that the characters of Holmes and Watson are already in the public domain, but the estate argues that the characters remain protected until the copyrights for all the works in which they appear expire "because the subtleties and quirks of character that define the super-intelligent detective, his trusty right-hand man, and the duo's relationship, were developed throughout the entire body of works," the Guardian further reports.

The Wall Street Journal Digits Blog reports that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the level of trust that users of the social media network have in Facebook has diminished because of the NSA's surveillance. Zuckerberg was speaking at an event held at the Newseum in Washington, D.C., and sponsored by The Atlantic.

Zuckerberg also said that he has no plans to get into the news business as Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is doing by acquiring The Washington Post, USA Today reported: http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2013/09/18/mark-zuckerberg-...

The Washington Post reports the Securities and Exchange Commission split 3-2 along party lines to require publicly traded corporations with more than $1 billion in revenues or $75 million in publicly traded securities to disclose the rate of their chief executives' pay in relation to the pay of a valid statistical sample of their workforce around the globe. Proponents say the measure will give stockholders and investors more information to make informed decisions, while opponents said the measure will have too much regulatory costs for American businesses. The regulation fulfills a measure of the Dodd-Frank bill enacted over outrage over high executive pay.

A federal judge is leaning toward Aereo, the firm challenging copyright law's boundaries by providing individual subscribers retransmissions over the Internet of free broadcast TV through individually assigned antennas, and against a Hearst-owned station in a Boston federal case, the Boston Globe reports.  Federal district courts in California and D.C. have ruled against Aereo's competitor, FilmOn X, but the Second Circuit ruled in favor of Aereo.

You might think false confessions are impossible, but attorney Ronald Goldfarb argues that "an expert on false confessions pointed out that prisoners of war as well as common criminal suspects confess to crimes they didn’t commit after stressful, prolonged, deceitful interrogation." The solution? Record police interrogations. Assure better defense lawyers for criminal defendants.

The Des Moines Register reports that a competitor to Aereo, a firm pushing the boundaries of copyright law by transmitting free broadcast television over the Internet, has fought off a subpoena. The federal judge ruled that Aereo competitor "Syncbak will not have to provide competitor Aereo with investment-related documents and labeled Aereo’s efforts to acquire emails that reference the company a 'fishing expedition,'" the paper reported.

Cases involve Aereo and another competitor FilmOn X have resulted in federal circuit splits on whether their rebroadcasting of broadcast TV shows violates intellectual property rights to exclusively control the public performance of those shows. Many predict the cases will go to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Along with the development this week that Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff called off a state dinner in Washington over the National Security Agency's alleged spying on her and a Brazilian energy company, Brazil also is considering new Internet laws, the Wall Street Journal's Digits Blog reports. One of the proposals would require Internet firms to store data about Brazilians in Brazil, the blog reports, to give "the Brazilian government more control over Internet data, and Brazilian courts would more easily be able to issue orders for access to information about Brazilian users of services from foreign companies." Iit would be very difficult to enforce such a law in the globalized world in which people cross borders almost as easily as data does.

Free Press' Josh Stearns argues the proposed federal shield law for journalists, the Free Flow of Information Act, which passed out of the Senate Judiciary Committee last week, "could be greatly strengthened and simplified by defining journalism as an act, a process that anyone can participate in, instead of a profession limited to a few practitioners."

Two Pennsylvania institutions--Penn State University and the Catholic Church-- were shown to have severe institutional problems of failing to protect children from sex abuse due to two criminal prosecutions. The guilty verdicts were reached the same night against ex-football coach Jerry Sandusky for sexually abusing multiple victims and against Monsignor William Lynn, the first Catholic Church official in the country to be convicted of a crime related to the sexual abuse of youth who were directly abused by other clergy. Appellete arguments in both cases coincided the same day too. Here's a roundup of coverage of the legal arguments before separate panels in the Pennsylvania Superior Court in both cases:

Sandusky:

Allentown Morning Call- Sandusky lawyer cites delay in victims reporting abuse in reasoning for new trial: http://www.mcall.com/news/breaking/mc-penn-state-jerry-sandusky-appeal-0...

Harrisburg Patriot-News- Jerry Sandusky gets his day in appeals court: http://www.pennlive.com/midstate/index.ssf/2013/09/jerry_sandusky_gets_h...

Scranton Times-Tribune- http://thetimes-tribune.com/news/justices-to-decide-new-sandusky-trial-1...

Lynn:

The Legal Intelligencer- Superior Ct. Hears Arguments In Priest Sex-Abuse Case:

http://www.law.com/jsp/pa/PubArticlePA.jsp?id=1202619567790&Superior_Ct_...

Philadelphia Inquirer-Convicted monsignor's lawyer questions law's application: http://www.philly.com/philly/news/breaking/20130918_Convicted_priests_la...

Associated Press- Pennsylvania Appeals Court Hears Monsignor Lynn’s Endangerment Case: http://philadelphia.cbslocal.com/2013/09/17/pennsylvania-appeals-court-h...

One of the most notorious incidents of lawlessness the wake of Hurricane Katrina was the alleged murder of two men on a New Orleans bridge by police officers who arrived with guns blazing and who then allegedly covered up the killings. Now the convictions have been thrown out, in part, because of online comments federal prosecutors made on news articles on the New Orleans Times-Picayune web site, that paper reported. The judge in the case said in a 129-page order, according to the paper, "The government's actions, and initial lack of candor and credibility thereafter, is like scar tissue that will long evidence infidelity to the principles of ethics, professionalism, and basic fairness and common sense necessary to every criminal prosecution, wherever it should occur in this country."