Content gatekeepers stand in the way of innovation By Joshua Lamel The Hill February 21, 2018 Charlie Puth was discovered after posting his music to YouTube. “Girlboss” Sophia Amoruso launched her fashion and business empire with an eBay account. Amanda Hocking’s self-published paranormal thrillers have sold millions of copies on Amazon. These are just a handful of notable and highly…

Re:Create Unveils Research On The New Creative Economy. The Re:Create Coalition released a new report, Unlocking the Gates: America’s New Creative Economy, which finds that 14.8 million independent, American creators earned a baseline of almost $6 billion from posting their music, videos, art, crafts and other works to internet platforms like Amazon Publishing, Instagram, Etsy and YouTube in 2016. As…

Ad Bowl Fallout Continues For Chrysler. Chrysler’s Super Bowl ad for a pickup truck has already been criticized for using a speech from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, but things took a turn for the worse when Current Affairs magazine created a critique video. After using audio from the same exact speech where King explicitly criticizes car ads, the media…

Meet Fanfiction Writer Michael Lemley. Michael Lemley first discovered fanfiction through MTV’s Teen Wolf. Since then, he has written over 800,000 words of fanfiction on Archive of Our Own, the leading forum for fanfiction and a free service run by the Organization for Transformative Works. In the latest profile for our New Creator Series, Michael explained the role of fair…

Don’t Be Fooled By Hollywood’s Latest Fiction. In yet another attempt to push heavy-handed enforcement measures, Hollywood and members of the entertainment industry are calling for more stringent copyright enforcement. “The gatekeepers of the entertainment industry claim to represent ‘creators’ yet they routinely ignore the interests of millions of bloggers, podcasters, internet video stars and Etsy artisans who rely on…

MPAA, Creative Groups Urge Pro-IP Track in Trade Talks By Anne Veigle January 24, 2018 “…NAFTA delegates and policymakers ‘shouldn’t be fooled by Hollywood rhetoric,’ responded Joshua Lamel, Re:Create Coalition executive director. ‘The gatekeepers of the entertainment industry claim to represent “creators” yet they routinely ignore the interests of millions of bloggers, podcasters, internet video stars and Etsy artisans who rely on…

Farmers Or Celebrities? Livestreaming Changes Country Life In China. Livestreaming is transforming some Chinese farmers into celebrities, reported NPR. Liu Jin Yin is a 26-year-old farmer who earns far greater income from livestreaming videos of his daily life in rural Sichuan Province to nearly 200,000 subscribers. “When I started livestreaming, my neighbors saw me talking to myself and thought I…

Users Don’t Own Their Marvel “Create Your Own” Comics. Social media and other creative platforms are usually celebrated for empowering ordinary people to create and share content. However, Marvel’s “Create Your Own,” a new platform for fans to write comic strips featuring Marvel characters, ironically does just the opposite, according to The Verge’s Kaitlyn Tiffany. The “Create Your Own” terms…

America’s Public Domain Laws Remain Stuck In The Past. January 1 marked Public Domain Day — the date when certain published works enter the public domain, allowing artists and consumers to freely appreciate, recreate and remix works by creators like Rene Magritte, John Coltrane and Winston Churchill. The U.S., however, will wait one more year until works enter the public…

Keep America Winning Online: Promote America’s Balanced Copyright System By Joshua Lamel Morning Consult December 14, 2017 When the North American Free Trade Agreement was signed in 1993, the internet economy as we know it today barely existed. Online content platforms such as Facebook and YouTube were a decade from launching and a few lucky users connected to the internet…