Google, Microsoft and Yahoo to Media Co's: Enough with the copyright warnings

Interesting new front in the copyright wars...

A group of tech and communication companies say that media companies are using copyright warnings to scare consumers, and they've just filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission, according to the NY Times. From the piece:

...[T[he group, the Computer and Communications Industry Association, said that the National Football League, Major League Baseball, NBC and Universal Studios, DreamWorks, Harcourt and Penguin Group display copyright warnings that are a “systematic misrepresentation of consumers’ rights to use legally acquired content.”

The complaint alleges that the warnings may intimidate consumers from making legal use of copyrighted material, like photocopying a page from a book to use in class.

“It is an attempt to convince Americans that they don’t have rights that they do in fact have,” said Ed Black, the association’s president and chief executive. “This is part of the larger context of what should be and what are proper rules for copyright in an Internet age.”