photo by tomasmikula Because today is the five-year anniversary of “Blackout Day,” the day millions of users were suckered into doing the internet industry’s bidding for no good reason, the always-relevant BuzzFeed offers us a missive published by the organization ReCreate Coalition called “12 Things You Can Do Because Congress Protected Internet Freedoms,” by which they mean backed off the passage of ...
Amicus briefs were filed recently in the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals in the case of BMG Rights Management v Cox Communications. In November of 2014, BMG sued Cox (an ISP) for contributory copyright infringement, and a US District Court found for the plaintiff in December of 2015, awarding $25 million in damages. The suit was based on evidence that ...
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 ...
