This post is the third installment of #CopyrightwithCourtney, a series from Courtney Duffy on the copyright challenges faced by artists in various disciplines. Courtney, who is the Robert W. Deutsch Arts & Technology Policy Fellow at Public Knowledge, focused on authorship in her first post. In the post below, she continues her three-part series on filmmaking. You can read Part…

When it comes to the nexus between competition and regulation, competition is all too often cursed with fair-weather friends.  For today’s example, we’ll take a trip down the copyright regulation rabbit hole. It begins with a Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) proceeding for setting webcaster rates under a statutory license in Section 114 of the Copyright Act.  The process, called “Web…

South By Southwest Panels – Cast Your Vote For Re:Create Today. The 23nd annual South by Southwest (SXSW) Interactive Festival returns to Austin in March and Re:Create wants copyright to be part of the discussion. Our Copyright & Creators: 2026 panel entry features a respected academic, a noted futurist, fan fiction leader and a reporter with the Los Angeles Times…

I think that recording artists should have the right to prevent public performances of their copyrighted works, the same as composers. I just don’t think that a district court in New York can spontaneously give them that right and insist it always existed. Last week, Public Knowledge filed an amicus brief in lawsuit between the company Flo & Eddie, which…

Free Market Groups Warn International Trade Commission On Digital Data Authority. Re:Create members R Street and FreedomWorks along with the Niskanen Center sent a letter to the chairwoman of the International Trade Commission expressing their deep concern over categorizing the transmission of digital data as an “importation.” The August 3 letter cites specific concerns that treating digital data in such…

The United States is currently negotiating a large, regional free trade agreement with eleven other countries: Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam. On August 5, 2015, Knowledge Ecology International published a new leak of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement’s (TPP) negotiating text for the intellectual property chapter. This text, dated May 11, 2015 reflects…

Happy Birthday Song Could Celebrate Entry Into Public Domain. The New York Times’ article, New Evidence Should Free ‘Happy Birthday’ From Copyright, Lawyers Say, details documents showing that the popular “Happy Birthday to You” song has been free of copyright restrictions for decades. The story reports that the current copyright holder collects an estimated “$2 million a year for the…

The Library Copyright Alliance filed a response to the U.S. Copyright Office’s Notice of Inquiry on Copyright Protection for Certain Visual Works, focusing largely on the importance of fair use and the detrimental effects of the current lengthy copyright term in the United States. The response opens by pointing out, In the past, the difficulty of identifying or locating the…

Today, Public Knowledge sent a letter to United States Trade Representative Michael Froman urging him to protect the rights of American consumers of intellectual property goods. Public Knowledge remains concerned that provisions in the secretive Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement could harm Americans by weakening exceptions and limitations available under U.S. law, including fair use. The following can be attributed to…

This post is the second installment of #CopyrightwithCourtney, a series from Courtney Duffy on the copyright challenges faced by artists in various disciplines. Courtney, who is the Robert W. Deutsch Arts & Technology Policy Fellow at Public Knowledge, focused on authorship in her first post. Today she begins a two-part post for the series on filmmaking. You’ll find her on…