In contemporary discussion and debate about copyrights in the digital-age, the parties who argue in favor of revision of the law so that it may “conform to the 21st century,” like to pick on William Shakespeare and Vincent Van Gogh quite a bit. References to The Bard tend to be made most often in the context of derivative works—that his ...
Attorney and blogger Chris Castle writes in The Huffington Post that it is the government’s responsibility to define the intent of safe harbor provisions in the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Arguing common-sensically that these safe harbors could not have been designed to shield massive and repeated infringements, like the volume that exists on YouTube, Castle says that it is ...
“Shorter copyright will encourage artists to keep on creating new work, will allow new art forms (such as mash-ups) and will stop big businesses from relying on large back-catalogues rather than investing in new content.” — The Pirate Party UK — The above statement by the UK Pirate Party, which is not alone in advocating a ten-year copyright term, is ...
View image | gettyimages.com Among the premises commonly stated to argue that we must “rebalance copyright for the 21st century,” we find two widely spread and oft-repeated generalizations, both of which are false. The first generalization is about access, which proposes to speak for the consumer and implies—or explicitly declares—that copyright acts as a barrier to the diffusion of cultural ...
There are several aspects to this week’s 9th Circuit Court ruling in the “Dancing Baby” case a.k.a. Lenz vs UMG. Some of the language used by the court will cause a stir among legal experts as to whether or not this decision lays a foundation for rewriting fair use doctrine. But we have a long way to go on that ...
