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Entries Tagged as 'Copyright Law'

RIAA on the SOPA/PIPA protest and Masnick’s reactions

February 8th, 2012 · No Comments

RIAA:  http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/08/opinion/what-wikipedia-wont-tell-you.html
Mike Masnick’s line-by-line reply:  http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120208/01453517694/riaa-totally-out-touch-lashes-out-google-wikipedia-everyone-who-protested-sopapipa.shtml
 
Hat tip to Lauren Gelman.

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Tags: Commons · Copyright Law · Intellectual Property Law · Online Norms and Culture

Thoughts on Ammori’s Free Speech Architecture and the Golan decision

February 5th, 2012 · No Comments

There is an interesting blog symposium at Concurring Opinions about Marvin Ammori’s Free Speech Architecture article.  I am participating in the symposium this week, and here is my first post:
Thank you to Marvin for an excellent article to read and discuss, and thank you Concurring Opinions for providing a public forum for our discussion.
In the article, [...]

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Tags: Commons · Copyright Law · Ideas · Intellectual Property Law · Law & Technology

Best Practices in Fair Use for Research Libraries

January 30th, 2012 · No Comments

#librarianscode .  Just released:  the newest Best Practices in Fair Use statement from American University’s Center for Social Media (in the School of Communication) and Washington College of Law: The Code of Best Practices for Academic and Research Libraries. The website  has generous amounts of background information and context.  I’ve been a member of [...]

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Tags: Copyright Law

Where “C” and “D” Are Chords Instead

January 27th, 2012 · 2 Comments

As reported originally here in Texas Monthly, and most recently here by the TM Daily Post, Robert Earl Keen has taken a creative approach to settling a score (not a lawsuit) with Toby Keith.  (Additional interviews with Keen here and here.)
In an interview with Texas Monthly, Robert Earl Keen discussed the release of his new album, [...]

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Tags: Copyright Law · Intellectual Property Law

Copyright and the Collective Unconscious

January 19th, 2012 · 1 Comment

Megan’s post about copyright and the muse reminded me to get back to this post that I started to draft a couple of days ago and never got back to because my computer crashed.
As I mentioned in my comment on Megan’s post I’ve been reading a lot lately about the act of creating literary works.  [...]

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Tags: Copyright Law

Call for Submissions: IP/Cyberlaw Articles

January 19th, 2012 · No Comments

On behalf of the editors of JOLTI at Case Western Reserve, some readers may be interested in the following:
Call For Submissions
Case Western Reserve’s Journal of Law, Technology & the Internet is searching for a final article to publish in its spring edition. Any scholarly work related to cyber law, intellectual property law [...]

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Tags: Academia · Copyright Law · Intellectual Property Law · Law & Technology · Patent Law · Trademark Law

Authorship and the Muse

January 18th, 2012 · 5 Comments

I have been thinking a lot about authorship lately.  Perhaps this is because I am learning my first instrument and trying to write my first song.  Or because I failed miserably at a write-a-novel-in-a-month exercise last November.  Or because I am in the middle of a wrestling match with an article.
An interesting episode of the show [...]

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Tags: Copyright Law · Ideas

Remix Culture Reconsidered

January 14th, 2012 · 3 Comments

A few years ago I tried to express some anxieties about the rise of a remix culture that valued technology and novelty over timeless content. Those worries resurfaced while I was reading Rob Horning’s recent reflections on his own defensively reactionary tastes:
[T]he key issue is to think about why we choose novelty over immersion. [...]

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Tags: Copyright Law · Ideas · Intellectual Property Law

Velvet Underground, Warhol, and Wiz: A Slippery IP Tale

January 12th, 2012 · No Comments

[Updated January 15, 2012:  I changed the post title, because I am still learning that search engines dislike non-literal titles.  The original title was "'W"'Stands for Infringement."]
An emerging by-product of Pittsburgh’s claim to be a new entertainment capital (see blog post here – the claim is not entirely without merit, as a lawyer might say) [...]

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Tags: Copyright Law · Trademark Law

The Conservative Turn in Copyright Politics

January 11th, 2012 · 1 Comment

David Brooks had an interesting column earlier this week in which he asked, “Why aren’t there more liberals in America?” According to Gallup Poll numbers, about 41% of Americans self-identify as conservative, versus 36% moderate and 21% liberal. This strikes Brooks as a bit of a puzzle, since the financial crisis and the economic downturn [...]

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Tags: Copyright Law

If you don’t copyright your ms …

January 7th, 2012 · 6 Comments

Another thing I picked up while auditing a publishing course over the break was the statement by an instructor that “If you don’t copyright your manuscript, it is in the public domain.”
Obviously, this is incorrect on a number of levels, and again illustrates how difficult copyright law is to understand even for people who are [...]

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Tags: Copyright Law

Fair Use for the Masses

December 31st, 2011 · No Comments

I’ve been auditing a magazine writing/publishing course run through my local rec center over the break, partly for fun and partly to find out how professional and semi-professional writing teachers who are not copyright lawyers understand the nature of authors’ rights.
I wasn’t necessarily surprised at the number of inaccuracies in the lecture on copyright law.  [...]

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Tags: Copyright Law · Intellectual Property Law

Some Truly Fascinating Numbers on Video Game Economics

December 26th, 2011 · 3 Comments

Back in October, Valve co-founder Gabe Newell explained the economics of video games as his company sees it. The Geekwire article is worth the read. For now, I’ll point out that he admits “We don’t understand what’s going on” and uses the language of co-creation of value, which I happen to believe is the current [...]

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Tags: Copyright Law · Intellectual Property Law · Law & Technology

Movies, Now More Than Ever, Or Is It Video Games?

December 26th, 2011 · No Comments

OK, that title is a riff on a line from The Player. I loved it when the film came out and still do. It says so much of nothing, but captures a vibe that persists. Yet again it seems the film industry is in trouble, or rather doldrums. The Times reports that this year’s box [...]

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Tags: Copyright Law · Ideas · Intellectual Property Law · Law & Technology

Son of SOPA

December 15th, 2011 · No Comments

The House Judiciary Committee held a markup hearing today on the Stop Online Piracy Act, H.R. 3261, the bill that is quickly shaping up to be this year’s big copyright battle. I’ve written two prior posts on the bill, Part I and Part II.
This is a good opportunity to recap where I came out at [...]

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Tags: Copyright Law · Trademark Law

Regarding Bella’s Jacket

December 1st, 2011 · 1 Comment

I feel like I’m scooping Jacqui here, since she’s the Madisonian Twilight expert, but I was so bothered by the recent district court decision in the Bella’s Jacket Brouhaha that I’m chiming in on the intersection of intellectual property and teen vampires.
Twilight is probably part of basic 21st century cultural literacy, so I’ll presume [...]

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Tags: Art and Politics · Copyright Law · Intellectual Property Law · Online Norms and Culture · The Trouble With Trademarks · Trademark Law

Two Flaws in the SOPA

November 28th, 2011 · 2 Comments

This is the second post in a series looking at the Stop Online Piracy Act. In Part I of this series I looked at Section 102 and concluded that it was largely unobjectionable. Section 102 essentially provides the DOJ with supplemental provisional remedies it can use against sites that are violating U.S. criminal laws but [...]

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Tags: Copyright Law

More on Security but with an IP Twist

November 22nd, 2011 · 2 Comments

Many IP profs watch legislation, and we write about the way proposed laws are good or bad or wise or imprudent. I think the way the IP and online space are going will require more on the technology side. For example, the recent debates on the PROTECT IP Bill and SOPA had some interesting comments [...]

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Tags: Copyright Law · Intellectual Property Law · Law & Technology

What’s Up With SOPA?

November 17th, 2011 · 2 Comments

The tech blogosphere is abuzz with discussion of yesterday’s House Judiciary Committee hearing on SOPA, the Stop Online Piracy Act, H.R. 3261. (Mainstream news sites seem not to have noticed; the New York Times website front page mentions the impending sale of Yahoo, but not SOPA.) A good deal of that discussion refers to SOPA [...]

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Tags: Copyright Law · Law & Technology

“Notably, it is a matter of first impression in the First Circuit, and indeed is unsettled in many circuits, whether pornography is in fact entitled to protection against copyright infringement.”

November 6th, 2011 · 3 Comments

“[2] It is undisputed that Liberty Media is a distributor of lawful, albeit hardcore, pornography, and the Motion Picture is itself hardcore pornography. Notably, it is a matter of first impression in the First Circuit, and indeed is unsettled in many circuits, whether pornography is in fact entitled to protection against copyright infringement. Copyright protection [...]

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Tags: Copyright Law