for everyone

Judge Howard Lloyd of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California dismissed a copyright infringement case against Veoh, a video sharing site, ruling that the DMCA does not require such sites from reviewing the content they host for potential infringement. The judge said, “The DMCA was intended to facilitate the growth of [...]

Erick Schonfeld at Techcrunch proposes a “Digital Bill of Rights” with: The Right to Use and Reuse Content: Consumers know that digital copies of songs, words, and videos are qualitatively different than physical copies, yet copyright law treats them the same way. When the economics of scarcity no longer apply, consumers start to behave differently. [...]

Last week the EFF achieved a victory against Universal Music when a judge ruled that Universal should have considered fair use before filing a DMCA take-down notice for the infamous Prince/baby-dancing video. Because Universal Music reviewed the baby-dancing video in order to identify “Let’s go crazy” playing, the judge noted “that it wasn’t any sort [...]

I’m starting this blog to examine the increasingly complex world of copyright, fair use, and electronic publishing — and how it all relates to the general public (like me) and business. I am of course writing from my own perspective, not that of my employer, and I hope to disseminate the key ideas that influence [...]