Category: Copyright

The MPAA claims that in a 6 month period it sent 11 million takedown notices to search engines and another 13 million to sites directly.

There are those who argue this demonstrates that copyright infringers have the upper hand. But keep in mind these are just takedown notices, the entertainment industry doesn’t have to prove any infringement took place, let alone operate with good faith or care. Many have noted that illegitimate takedown requests are common, mostly because there are almost no consequences for abuse.

An interesting little video on Copyright & Creativity from Marco Bagni.

If you are a musician, this won’t be surprising news. But with all the hoopla about copyright infringers, etc., it might be of real interest to non-musicians.

A Tiny Percentage of Artist Income Comes from Copyright, Study Finds… | Digital Music NewsDigital Music News.

Creative Commons just released the new version of their copyright license suite, and they look pretty good.

Choose a Creative Commons Version 4.0 License..

Of course, that makes sense. They reached the final version through a transparent process of public discussions, blog posts, mailing lists and open meetings, over a period of two years, and were able to reach a broad public consensus.

All that makes the secretive discussions, closed negotiations, and back room sessions about copyright policy by the Trans-Pacific Partnership all the more despicable.

Here’s a great article by Antonio Machado arguing for the introduction of a renewal system in copyright. He also argues that the “investment horizon” for composers, artists and authors is more like 10 years, not 50 or 100, or lifetime + 70.

Is Not the Price, Is the Value: Revisiting Copyright Economics.

So maybe Mordy Tikotzky’s Apple-Tracker widget, that steered customers to Apple Stores near them that were most likely to have the newest iPhones or iPads in stock, was in violation of Apple’s Terms of Use, but Apple used the Digital Millennium Copyright to issue a takedown notice.

Apple invokes the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

This article by Alex Wild discusses the reasons for the huge copyright lawsuits and the recent proposal by the Copyright office for a “small claims” copyright court.

Why are copyright lawsuits ridiculously big?.

The Canadian Supreme Court upheld the ruling that the 30 to 90 second previews in iTunes are not a public performance and do not require a copyright fee be paid to the music industry. They also ruled that the download of a game is not a public performance of the music in that game and doesn’t require a second payment. The court chastised the music industry for trying to double-dip. See the full story here.

Came across this tongue-in-cheek proposal for “eternal copyright” discussing the “benefits”, implications, etc. The real purpose, of course, is to showcase how ridiculous the current copyright laws are.

You’ll find it at NEWSgrist.

A good article, by Is That Legal, explaining the Supreme Court decision in Golan v. Holder, that congress has the right to restore copyright protection to foreign works that were previously in the public domain.

Read the article here.