It is a chronically repeated theme—and therefore a widely held misconception—that the DMCA is solely a mechanism for rights holders to unilaterally and unequivocally remove content from the Web “without due process.” In fact, this belief is so deeply ingrained that just citing the acronym by some journalists and bloggers is sufficient to denote censorship for many readers. We encounter ...

Embed from Getty Images A couple weeks ago, I scorned the righteously flamboyant PETA for trying to sue a British photographer named David Slater for copyright infringement on behalf of an Indonesian macaque whom the animal rights group calls “Naruto”.  I mocked this monkey-pre-trial proceeding because, well, it’s pretty mockable; but as Tom Sydnor writing for TechPolicyDaily, points out, it ...

Remember when I posted A Guide to Critiquing Copyright in the Digital Age?  Quite a few people read it and seemed to enjoy it, which is cool.  And most recently, it seems that Joshua Lamel, executive director at Re:Create, wrote an article for the Huffington Post about prospective revision to the DMCA, in which he appears to have followed this ...

With few exceptions, a short film has almost no market value today.  Certainly, a short can be the occasional prelude to work that might have market value—either as a calling card for the filmmaker or as a “proof-of-concept” draft for a would-be feature.  But in general, most of the best short films are in a category of their own—conceived and ...

Embed from Getty Images In the Fall of 1977, just weeks before gay rights activist Harvey Milk won a seat on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, the English rock band Queen released the album News of the World. The LP included a short, heavily-rhythmic single called “We Will Rock You”, which typically segues into the anthemic “We Are the ...

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