Well, this is interesting. Ordinarily, Public Knowledge is an organization that sows a lot of confusion—and sometimes outright falsehoods—about copyright law. As a rule, I group them among the “digital rights” activists who tend to promote their opinion of what the fair use doctrine should be rather than a more realistic description of what it is. So, it’s interesting that ...
Just in time for Christmas, it seems Google is up to its Grinchy tricks in the House of Representatives, allegedly the big gun behind an effort to undermine the anti-child-sex-trafficking bill FOSTA, which is the House version of the Senate’s SESTA. Because these bills propose to amend the liability shield in Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (1996), the ...
On Wednesday this week, the Democratic Caucus will vote to choose the new ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee in order to fill the vacancy left by the departure of Rep. Conyers. For those who don’t know, the House Judiciary Committee is where copyright law is made, specifically the IP subcommittee. The senior Member, currently holding the ranking position ...
G’Day! Since there’s so much gloomy news here in the States, I thought I’d take a moment to note that Australia did a couple of pretty cool things recently. They legalized same-sex marriage, so good on them for that. And on the 6th of this month, they introduced a safe harbors provision to their copyright law that would exclude platform ...
Today, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in the case Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, a.k.a. “the wedding cake case.” In 2012, baker and cake designer Jack Phillips of Masterpiece Cakeshop in Lakewood, CO informed David Mullins and Charlie Craig, that he would not make a new cake for their wedding due to his Christian belief that ...
