Photo by Tamagocha A couple weeks ago, a comment on the Illusion of More Facebook page proposed that the Walt Disney Company was able to get its start in the 1930s because the story for the studio’s first animated feature film Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was “in the public domain.” I don’t mean to pick on one particular comment ...
Last week, the Supreme Court ruled in a copyright case that addresses the principle of “separability.” This is one of those areas of IP that a colleague of mine would call the “metaphysics of law,” and that’s not a criticism. In fact, I happen to think the more subtle aspects of copyright—the ones that challenge judges to weigh esoteric ideas ...
Photo by onephoto If we merely politicize the issue of privacy, we’ll never have any. When my first kid was born, I didn’t even have an internet account yet. But somehow, multiple advertisers knew that there was a new baby because we were inundated with direct mail offers for every infant-related product under the sun. Within a couple of years, I joined millions ...
Photo by Nagornyi The Supreme Court has denied cert in the case of Capitol Records v Vimeo, leaving in place the holding of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals that video-hosting site Vimeo was shielded by the “safe harbors” of the DMCA when the service and its users made infringing use of sound recordings fixed prior to February 15, 1972. In general, ...
Photo by GlobalIP Okay. I’m not remotely surprised that the EFF & Co. don’t like the bill H.R. 1695 to make the Register of Copyrights a presidential appointee rather than an employee of the Librarian of Congress. And I’m way not surprised that they’ve written a post which only thinly veils this bill as a power grab by the Trump ...
