In what may be the most aptly named copyright case in recent history, “Blurred Lines” (properly Williams v. Gaye) is generally viewed as a mistake that many composers and songwriters fear will have a chilling effect on the craft of music-making. The headline complaint is that the outcome thus far asserts copyright protection for musical style, and, if true, this ...
Attorney and journalist Charles J. Glasser published an editorial in The Daily Caller titled: Mind Manipulation? No, Censorship By Copyright is The REAL Threat to Elections. The irony of that misleading headline, which does not truly reflect the substance of Glasser’s article, is that it reinforces a general bias about copyright (i.e. that it is censorship) for the simple reason ...
When Black Panther opened last month and proceeded to set records at the box office, it just so happened to be 200 years, almost to the day, after Frederick Douglass was born into slavery in Tuckahoe, Maryland. The significance of this particular symmetry might be observed through any number of lenses, including those distorted by presentist emotions, which tend to ...
In Monday’s post (and quite a few others) I stated that certain parties have worked very hard to distort the character of the fair use doctrine until it no longer has any boundaries or meaning, and simply nullifies copyright’s protections. For the last two years, every time I’ve made that accusation, the case foremost in mind has been TVEyes v. ...
Today marks the start of the fifth annual Fair Use Week when library institutions, academics, and several anti-copyright organizations disseminate public-facing messages—from useful to whimsical—on the virtues of the fair use doctrine in copyright law. There is, of course, nothing wrong with highlighting the utility of fair use per se, but the mere fact that these parties devote so much ...
