As you may have heard, the EU is debating a quite controversial proposal to reform its copyright laws. Now, a number of high-profile people, including the inventor of the World Wide Web himself, Tim Berners-Lee, has come out in opposition to the directive. So what’s going on? The problematic provision is Article 13 of the… Read more »
Last week, I wrote about the Music Modernization Act, a piece of legislation that is currently working its way through Congress and looks increasingly like it might pass. As you may recall, one part of that bill is controversial because of how it treats pre-1972 sound recordings. That part, called the CLASSICS Act, would grant a… Read more »
I’ve said in the past that I doubt Congress will pass major Copyright legislation anytime soon. And I still think that’s true. That said, it’s looking increasingly likely that we will see some important amendments to music copyright in the near future. You may remember that a few months ago I wrote about the Music… Read more »
It shouldn’t surprise me that there’s a lot of bad information out there on ye olde World Wide Web. Still, every time I read something false about copyright, I get a bit annoyed. Take this article from Fast Company, for example, entitled This Copyright-Flaunting Music Video Imagines “Star Wars” with Really Long Lightsabers. The article addresses… Read more »
The other day, I wrote about a decision in the 2nd Circuit holding that Robin Thicke and Pharell Williams copied Marvin Gaye’s Got to Give it Up when they wrote Blurred Lines. There have been plenty of interesting articles on this case since it came down. Here, I want to focus on one from Rolling Stone that discusses… Read more »
As you may remember from a couple years ago, Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams have found themselves in a bit of trouble over their (admittedly, quite catchy) song, Blurred Lines. Back in 2013, Thicke and Williams filed a lawsuit asking a federal district court in California to declare that their work was not a copy of Got… Read more »
As a huge Star Wars fan, I was super excited when I saw this on YouTube: That’s right, Star Wars: The Animated Movie. Hand-drawn by Jeronimus Dekker with “a monk’s sense of concentrating and dedication”, this short film is a 6-minute summation of the first Star Wars movie, A New Hope. And it’s amazing. Each frame… Read more »
Today, in this brief post, I want to point you to a story from the Electronic Frontier Foundation about a recent case from New York that could have serious implications for how we use images we find on services like Twitter. In this case, Goldman v. Breitbart, Justin Goldman claimed that news organizations like Breitbart,… Read more »
Today’s blog post comes from a USA Today article about a copyright issue over American Airlines’s new logo. The airline recently ran into a bit of a snag when it tried to register its logo with the Copyright Office. So let’s take a quick look. American Airlines adopted a new logo in 2013. As described… Read more »
I’ve said for a while that I doubt Congress will undergo major Copyright legislation anytime in the near future. Tho our aging law certainly needs some serious updates, our Federal government has more pressing things to do than deal with Copyright right now. That said, there recently has been some movement in both the House… Read more »
