WaPo Editorial Board: Senate Should Give Librarian Of Congress Nominee A Vote. Yesterday, the Senate approved Dr. Carla Hayden to become the fourteenth Librarian of Congress. Earlier in the week, The Washington Post Editorial Board urged the Senate to give Dr. Carla Hayden “the consideration she deserves” following reports that partisan infighting delayed Senate approval. Following her confirmation, the American…

Without DMCA’s Safe Harbor Provisions, New Platforms Wouldn’t Exist. Re:Create Coalition Executive Director Josh Lamel penned an op-ed in Engadget, Let’s Fight to Protect the Democratization of Creativity, on Section 512 and the recent roundtables held by the U.S. Copyright Office. In the piece he argues proposed changes to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) could impose irrevocable harm: “Without…

Section 230(c)(1) of the Communications Decency Act (CDA) states that “No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.” Section 230 provides immunity to online service providers and intermediaries for the content created and posted by their users. It was enacted in 1996…

In its recent decision in the long-running Kirtsaeng v. Wiley copyright litigation, the Supreme Court provided much needed clarification of the appropriate standards for lower courts to apply in determining when to award attorneys’ fees to the prevailing party. But perhaps the most important passage of the Court’s unanimous opinion, written by Justice Kagan, concerns the purpose of the Copyright…

Music Industry Continues To Face Heavy Criticism Amid Push To Change The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). A recent attack on the DMCA by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has sparked criticism from diverse groups and organizations. Josh Lamel, Executive Director of the Re:Create Coalition, directly refutes the RIAA’s claims in a June 23 Medium post highlighting how…

By Joshua Lamel, Executive Director of the Re:Create Coalition At a time when the public and businesses are increasingly taking advantage of internet-enabled access to new markets, new audiences and new sources of income, the public has also grown to expect greater levels of openness, engagement and transparency made possible by the internet. Unfortunately, some proposed reforms to copyright law,…

Written by Joshua Lamel, Executive Director of the Re:Create Coalition Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram, Etsy, YouTube and Medium. If you post on any of these platforms, you are a creator. If you spend any time on these platforms, you are consuming the creative content of other creators. People are using these platforms as an important medium to express themselves and…

Re:Create Coalition Hosts Hill Panel On Fair Use, Innovation And Creators On The Internet. On Monday, the Re:Create Coalition hosted “How It Works: Understanding Copyright in the New Creative Economy,” which was comprised of panelists from Google, Medium, the Organization for Transformative Works and a YouTube celebrity. The panel discussed fair use and the latest “take down and staydown” proposals…

CDT has consistently cautioned against the introduction of ancillary rights in copyright laws in Europe because of the negative effects of such rights on smaller publishers, citizen journalism and, more importantly, freedom of information. CDT restated our objection to this idea in our submission to the European Commission’s public consultation on the role of publishers in the copyright value chain…

Dear Congress, By now, maybe you’ve read the “Dear Congress” letter that many music companies and individual artists have signed asking you to “fix” the Digital Millennium Copyright Act—a law Congress negotiated in 1998 in response to widespread fears that the Internet was going to kill the music industry because of digital redistribution. As a lawyer who has been working…