In an effort to conflate president-elect Trump’s rhetoric on censoring the press with copyright protection, Mike Masnick at Techdirt accuses the News Media Alliance of seeking to “whittle down” fair use. He further says this will only leave journalists vulnerable to the kind of censorship Trump has threatened by amending libel laws. There are too many holes in Masnick’s post to address ...
In the current political climate, I imagine many artists, authors, and journalists will continue to speak up about a wide range of civil rights. While they’re at it, they should not forget their own rights. For five years now, I’ve written in defense of copyright as a civil liberty—as a property right, a labor right, and a force for strengthening ...
On Monday, the Internet Association, which represents most of the major online platforms, sent a letter to the president-elect asking that his administration show support for the the status quo of the CDA and the DMCA in order to sustain “innovation and free expression” online. But for the date and the name Trump, the letter is a boilerplate industry position ...
On October 25, four days after the unprecedented removal of the Register of Copyrights from her office, the Electronic Frontier Foundation released a post on its Deeplinks Blog asserting rather stridently that the Copyright Office never would have reviewed the FCC “set-top-box” proposal if not for the urging of the MPAA. I think we can now say that there is ...
Creators, copyright advocates, and many policymakers were taken aback by last Friday’s announcement that the new Librarian of Congress Dr. Carla Hayden removed Maria Pallante from the position of Register of Copyrights. The decision was officially described as a reassignment for Pallante to the role of senior advisor for digital strategy, which Pallante has declined. Associate register Karyn Temple Claggett ...
