Today, we’re kicking off Fair Use/Fair Dealing Week 2016! While we believe every week is fair use and fair dealing week, February 22-26 is a time to celebrate the important doctrines that provide essential balance in copyright law.  ARL has a number of resources that will be released this week, so stay tuned!  Last year, a number of great resources…

Re:Create Applauds Marrakesh Treaty To Improve Access To Published Works For Disabled.  On Feb. 10, President Obama sent the Marrakesh Treaty to Facilitate Access to Published Works for Persons Who Are Blind, Visually Impaired or Otherwise Print Disabled to the Senate for ratification. In response to the treaty, which focuses on copyright exceptions to improve access to books and other…

The Public Domain Takes The Cake In Happy Birthday Copyright Case. New details in the settlement reached by parties in the copyright case over the “Happy Birthday To You” song reveal that as much as $14 million will be offered to those who paid for the rights. The Feb. 9 New York Post article, Settlement gift: ‘Happy Birthday’ song won’t…

No Hollywood Special Interest Left Behind In New Education Bill. In How Lobbyists Turned Big US Education Reform Bill Into The “No Copyright Propaganda Left Behind” Act, Techdirt’s Mike Masnick reports that Hollywood lobbyists successfully inserted copyright language into the recently-passed education bill, Every Student Succeeds Act. Specifically, the language added to the bill requires technology training to include education…

  For us over at Public Knowledge, the monkey selfie case has been more fun than a barrel of, well, monkeys. The case started when a Celebes crested macaque stole a camera from a traveling British photographer and, in the course of monkeying around with the camera, took a particularly attractive picture of itself. The photographer said that he owned the copyright in the photo; the People…

Yesterday, the Department of Commerce released its “White Paper on Remixes, First Sale, and Statutory Damages.” The paper is the culmination of more than five years of work by the Department’s Internet Policy Task Force. Among its many recommendations, the paper plots a course for significant progress on calibrating statutory damages for copyright infringement. In July 2013, Commerce published its…

  Today, the Department of Commerce’s Internet Policy Task Force released its “White Paper on Remixes, First Sale, and Statutory Damages: Copyright Policy, Creativity, and Innovation in the Digital Economy.” Public Knowledge commends the Department for recognizing the importance of a balanced copyright law, and that copyright law’s onerous statutory damages provisions need to be changed. The following can be…

*Guest post by Jonathan Band, policybandwidth* The Department of Commerce Internet Policy Task Force today released its White Paper on Remixes, First Sale, and Statutory Damages. (This follows on from the Green Paper issued in 2013.) The Task Force has proposed several significant changes to statutory damages. It recommends that the statutory damages provision be amended: 1) to incorporate a…

Washington — Today the Department of Commerce Internet Policy Task Force released a long-awaited white paper on several areas of copyright reform: remixes, first sale, and statutory damages. The Computer & Communications Industry Association has long advocated for balanced copyright, and filed comments as part of the process of this paper being written and released.  The following can be attributed…

It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s a…cease and desist order? This week, a panic spread among cosplayers that a recent Supreme Court case on copyright infringement might have a negative impact on their craft, if not make dressing up as your favorite superhero illegal. As a cosplayer myself, I have to admit, I was a little jarred. The idea…