Right now, the U.S. Copyright Office is collecting information on the use of “standard technical measures” to address copyright infringement, as part of a longer effort that, we fear, will lead to filtering mandates. The Copyright Office is also holding… Read More ›
Tag Archive for ‘Fair Use’
It’s Copyright Week 2022: Ten Years Later, How Has SOPA/PIPA Shaped Online Copyright Enforcement?
We’re taking part in Copyright Week, a series of actions and discussions supporting key principles that should guide copyright policy. Every day this week, various groups are taking on different elements of copyright law and policy, addressing what’s at stake… Read More ›
YouTube’s New Copyright Transparency Report Leaves a Lot Out
YouTube recently released a transparency report on the status of copyright claims for the first half of 2021. It says it will release these numbers biannually from now on. We applaud this move towards transparency, since it gives researchers a… Read More ›
The Internet Archive Transforms Access to Books in a Digital World
In honor of Open Access Week, and particularly this year’s theme of structural equity, we wanted to highlight a project from the Internet Archive that is doing extraordinary work promoting access to knowledge. The bad news: that project is also… Read More ›
Why Companies Keep Folding to Copyright Pressure, Even If They Shouldn’t
The giant record labels, their association, and their lobbyists have succeeded in getting a number of members of the U.S. House of Representatives to pressure Twitter to pay money it does not owe, to labels who have no claim to… Read More ›
What Cops Understand About Copyright Filters: They Prevent Legal Speech
“You can record all you want. I just know it can’t be posted to YouTube,” said an Alameda County sheriff’s deputy to an activist. “I am playing my music so that you can’t post on YouTube.” The tactic didn’t work—the… Read More ›
Article 17 Copyright Directive: The Court of Justice’s Advocate General Rejects Fundamental Rights Challenge But Defends Users Against Overblocking
The Advocate General (AG) of the EU Court of Justice today missed an opportunity to fully protect internet users from censorship by automated filtering, finding that the disastrous Article 17 of the EU Copyright Directive doesn’t run afoul of Europeans’… Read More ›
Victory for Fair Use: The Supreme Court Reverses the Federal Circuit in Oracle v. Google
In a win for innovation, the U.S. Supreme Court has held that Google’s use of certain Java Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) is a lawful fair use. In doing so, the Court reversed the previous rulings by the Federal Circuit and… Read More ›
Free as in Climbing: Rock Climber’s Open Data Project Threatened by Bogus Copyright Claims
Rock climbers have a tradition of sharing “beta”—helpful information about a route—with other climbers. Giving beta is both useful and a form of community-building within this popular sport. Given that strong tradition of sharing, we were disappointed to learn that… Read More ›
Thank You for Speaking Against a Terrible Copyright Proposal
Last week was the deadline for comments on the draft of the so-called “Digital Copyright Act,” a proposal which would fundamentally change how creativity functions online. We asked for creators to add their voices to the many groups opposing this… Read More ›