Singer/songwriter John Fogerty’s new memoir Fortunate Son reminds us that the fiercest battles in the copyright area often are not between rights holders and users or technology platforms, but between artists and their distributors. As a recent review of the memoir in the Washington Post explains, the brief success of Fogerty’s band Creedence Clearwater Revival “teed up a lifetime of…

It appears the National Football League is cracking down on the unauthorized proliferation of GIFs and Vines of league-owned content. Sometimes these snippets are of funny incidents or for serious study of various facets of the game. Two of the biggest violators, Deadspin and SBNation, recently were suspended by Twitter for violating the Digital Millennium Copyright Act after receiving takedown notices…

On October 16, 2015, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit unanimously affirmed the lower court’s fair use in Authors Guild v. Google, also known as the “Google Books” case. Google, through its Library Project, made digital copies of tens of millions of books submitted to it by libraries. It then included these copies in a search index…

  Today, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit unanimously found that the Google Books project, under which Google digitized, indexed, and permits users to search and view snippets of millions of printed books, constitutes a fair use. The following can be attributed to Raza Panjwani, Policy Counsel at Public Knowledge: “The circuit court’s decision is a…

NFL Shuts Down Deadspin And SB Nation Over GIFS. The NFL sent 18 takedown notices to Twitter this weekend regarding Deadspin’s alleged copyright violations while tweeting GIFS of NFL games. Meanwhile SB Nation’s Twitter account was similarly suspended for tweeting out GIFS of college football highlights. The NFL claimed exclusive rights to “intellectual property of the NFL and its Member…

Are lawyers the driving force behind artistic freedom? Astonishingly, that’s the impression you get when you read the Copyright Alliance’s account of a recent panel on music copyright hosted at George Mason University. To be clear, they note the importance of creators, in the sense that: Intellectual property drives economic and artistic freedom, thereby supporting a professional class of musicians…

Today the Copia Institute released a report entitled The Carrot or the Stick? Innovation vs. Anti-Piracy Enforcement.  The idea of evaluating carrots, or incentives, versus sticks, meaning penalties, in the context of IP enforcement is a subject frequently explored here at DisCo  [1] [2] [3].  In general, government policies tend to focus on sticks to the exclusion of carrots, even…

Next Librarian Of Congress Pivotal For Copyright Reform. After Librarian of Congress James Billington stepped down on September 30, Max Lewontin with The Christian Science Monitor highlights the tech industry’s interests in a modernized Library of Congress and U.S. Copyright Office in the Oct. 5 article: Why Silicon Valley Cares So Much About Who Will Lead the Library of Congress….

Why Silicon Valley cares so much about who will lead the Library of Congress  After years of debate over the Library of Congress’ failure to adapt to changing digital technology, the resignation of its longest-serving Librarian represents a new opportunity to move into the digital age. By Max Lewontin, Staff writer OCTOBER 5, 2015 Hector Emanuel/For The Christian Science Monitor…

A problem: On July 17, the Environmental Protection Agency advised the Copyright Office against granting temporary exemptions to the copyright laws prohibiting the circumvention of the technological protection measures (TPMs) designed to prevent access to vehicles’ embedded software.  The agency warned that, without the TPM’s and the prohibition of their circumvention under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), car owners…