Copyright Week 2019. This week, the Electronic Frontier Foundation is hosting its annual Copyright Week to mark the anniversary of the SOPA/PIPA internet blackout. Be sure to check out and share new content surrounding free speech, digital ownership, public domain, safe harbors and automated content filtering.
Meet Jared Polin, New Creator & CEFRO. Re:Create profiled Jared Polin, who has transformed his lifelong passion for photography into a growing digital business and informative web platform. First started to generate new business leads, Polin’s Fro Knows Photo website is now a business hub that offers creative video guides and merchandise reviews with several employees. Emphasizing the importance of the internet to the creator community in forging free access to a wide audience of potential followers, Polin explained, “Without the internet, you’re going back to the ‘80s and early ‘90s when there were gatekeepers.” Now, however, “the keepers are gone…All the gates have been opened.”
Library Of Congress Celebrates Public Domain. On Wednesday the the Library of Congress hosted an event “The Public Domain: Celebrating the Lifecycle of Copyright,” in celebration of the hundred of thousands of works that entered the public domain on January 1, 2019. The event featured creators who presented how they use public domain works to make something new.
EFF Says Complaint Is For The Birds. In the latest action in a copyright dispute between e-scooter startup Bird and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) over a post by Boing Boing writer Cory Doctorow on scooter conversion kits, EFF lawyers penned a letter calling Bird’s copyright claims meritless. Bird claimed that Doctorow’s post violated the DMCA and encouraged illegal conduct by writing about how to remove the company’s proprietary hardware. EFF lawyer Kit Walsh wrote: “Journalists will continue to cover developments concerning Bird scooters, and Bird should not attempt to suppress coverage that it dislikes through meritless legal claims. Likewise, since the conversion kits do not appear to violate Section 1201, we hope that you will not seek to suppress the lawful distribution, use, or discussion of that technology.”