One of the most important copyright cases in the country landed at the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in December of 2015. Appellants TVEyes and Fox News Network filed opening briefs, each seeking new rulings after the Court for the Southern District of New York held a split decision last year that satisfied neither party.  In July of 2013, Fox ...

Image from Pond5 I read several complaints on Twitter and in various blog posts from OSP representatives and copyright critics that last month’s USCO-hosted discussions in San Francisco about Section 512 were not very productive and that the rights holders are not being reasonable.  I cannot comment on tone or details as I was not there.  But I do think ...

I saw it again the other day. In a sarcastic tweet that flew by. A familiar theme. Without naming names, it said something like this: As if creativity didn’t exist before 1709. There was no Shakespeare. For one thing, this is the kind of pugnacious statement that I can’t believe ever informs the copyright debate. Because I don’t know anyone who ...

Last week, I stumbled on a tweet by a staff member at the Electronic Frontier Foundation warning California citizens to “take action” in protest against the passage of Assembly Bill 2880.  The linked article on the EFF website written by Ernesto Falcon begins by asserting in its headline, subhead, and first paragraph that California will be venturing into brand new ...

I was told by a colleague who attended the Section 512 round tables in San Francisco that a consistent response from representatives of the OSPs was that anecdotes about harm to rights holders from piracy or YouTube-style infringement are not sufficient.  “We need data,” was apparently an oft-repeated imperative.  This is funny because that same crowd loves anecdotes about abuse ...

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