So, it turns out it’s Copyright Week. I had no idea, and it’s already Copyright Hump Day. What with the government shutdown, the Barr confirmation hearings, the litany of breaking stories in the Russian-interference investigations, I just didn’t notice. But then I saw a post by the Electronic Frontier Foundation recognizing Copyright Week, including an obligatory “SOPA lead” as recommended ...
Picking up on one of the big copyright themes of the month—the re-opened public domain*—scholars James Boyle and Jennifer Jenkins were hosted last week by Joshua Johnson on his show 1A, produced by public radio station WAMU in Washington, D.C. Boyle and Jenkins are leading members of the Center for the Study of the Public Domain at Duke University Law, ...
Some news hit the fan late last week that certain parties tried to embarrass newly-elected congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez by sharing a video of her dancing with college friends on a Boston rooftop, riffing on the 80s film The Breakfast Club to the tune by Phoenix called “Lisztomania.” Why anyone imagined this would shame Ocasio-Corez is a mystery to me, but ...
Should auld creative works be forgot,And never brought to mind? There may be any number of reasons to feel anxious about the coming year, but at least we can take comfort in the fact that the song “Yes! We Have No Bananas” will be entering the public domain. Sure, this may seem like clinging to a bit of floating timber ...
VidAngel. TVEyes. ReDigi. Copyright interests might view these enterprises as the unholy trinity of tech ventures that have attempted in recent years to strain statutory limitations to such extremes that their interpretations would actually vitiate copyright protection itself. In August of 2017, the Ninth Circuit denied VidAngel’s crusade to push the fair use doctrine beyond any meaningful scope; in ...
