Photo by Pond5. Christopher Zara, writing for Backchannel, offers an excellent discussion about Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996. He provides historical context and a balanced presentation of the challenges that have arisen from the differences between the law’s intent and its application. “Given how often Section 230 is championed, cited, and showered with superlatives, you ...
Online service providers (OSPs) are generally shielded by two major statutes from liabilities that may stem from the content uploaded by users of their platforms. Section 512 of the DMCA (1998) provides the conditions under which an OSP may avoid liability for copyright infringement, and Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (1996) covers just about every other kind of ...
I know I just wrote about the Copyright Office. But right after publishing Friday’s post, I saw that Librarian Hayden did a rather inscrutable thing. She had the LOC publish a three-question survey, using Survey Monkey, seeking public comment on the ideal qualities for the next Register of Copyrights. Writing as a member of the public, and one who knows ...
On December 8th, the House Judiciary Committee announced its first policy proposal since beginning its review of the copyright law in the Summer of 2013. Among these early recommendations is that the Copyright Office should operate independent of the Library of Congress while remaining part of the Legislative Branch. Not surprisingly, copyright critics have already complained about this proposal, including ...
As a follow-up to my last post, I see that the Electronic Frontier Foundation has (not surprisingly) also accused the News Media Alliance (NMA) of petitioning the incoming administration to “weaken fair use doctrine” and, by extension, threaten press freedom itself. Granted, in contrast to Mike Masnick’s ad hominem style on Techdirt, when EFF obfuscates, they usually write a more ...
