Don’t fall for fair-use daredevil tactics. You might get hurt. I know Fair Use Week is technically over, but when I saw this video produced by Public Knowledge, I couldn’t, y’know…let it go. Remember how I’ve argued a few times that organizations have a habit of promoting fair use messages that can confuse people and potentially get well-meaning creators into ...

Photo by author. In my last post, I opined that the fair use interests of librarians and educators are not necessarily aligned with for-profit business ventures seeking to exploit creative works in ways that can harm authors.  For instance, in the case of Capitol Records v ReDigi, now on appeal at the Second Circuit,  Jonathan Band filed an amicus brief ...

In an effort to conflate president-elect Trump’s rhetoric on censoring the press with copyright protection, Mike Masnick at Techdirt accuses the News Media Alliance of seeking to “whittle down” fair use. He further says this will only leave journalists vulnerable to the kind of censorship Trump has threatened by amending libel laws.  There are too many holes in Masnick’s post to address ...

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 ...

In 2012, a report was published in the online journal LAWS entitled A Counterfactual Impact Analysis of Fair Use Policy on Copyright Related Industries in Singapore.  I know. Sounds like a real page-turner for the general reader, right? To be sure, most of us are not schooled in the arcana of statistical economic analysis, but suffice to say the report, ...

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