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, ...

What do a bunch of puppies, a pretty woman, a dancing baby, Demi Moore, some Rastafarians, and 20 million books all have in common?  They all refer to prominent, copyright-related cases* from which a content creator could—if he has nothing better to do—learn something about fair use doctrine. But even if an independent artist were to study Rogers v Koons ...

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 ...

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