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 ...
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 ...
As a follow-up to my post from last week discussing the Copyright Office review of Section 512 of the DMCA, I’m going to shift from my usual format of the editorial essay to outright endorsement of grassroots efforts aimed at letting Congress know that artists and creators want to see change to obsolete aspects of US law that unfairly disadvantage ...
When most people discuss or debate copyright’s value in the contemporary market, they talk about the utility of the law—typically arguing the efficacy or rationale of specific contours like term length or enforcement—while generally overlooking the philosophical principles that led to the IP clause being written into the U.S. Constitution in the first place. This is of course not uncommon ...
By now, you know that the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP)—a really big-ass global trade agreement among twelve nations including the United States—is at this point pending delivery to Congress for debate and presumptive ratification. And this means we can expect to see various organizations and corporate interests dial up the rhetoric regarding key provisions in the deal. Although the TPP is a voluminous package ...
