Today’s guest blog is written by David Israelite, President and CEO of the National Music Publishers Association.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation Wednesday arrested a man in Los Angeles for posting nine unreleased Guns N’ Roses songs on his web site earlier this year.
I applaud Director Robert Mueller and the FBI for recognizing the seriousness [...]

Yes, a lot has been written about Radiohead’s brief flirtation with allowing free (although they had a cup out for donations) downloading of their album “Chasing Rainbows” last year. I’m not going to add to that. I wanted to point out, however, a nice overview and perspective on the episode in DRM Watch by Michael [...]

Did you know that thanks to the digital age, we can all share in a great collective, enjoying each other’s creative works without concern as to whether they’re produced because the motive is one of receiving praise from the collective? (See Benkler 2006 and numerous other works by kibbutz-minded professors.) When a commercial creative work [...]

There are some out there who like to say something like this: “Digital technology enables anyone and everyone to be an artist and an innovator - to produce music, to create cutting edge films and videos, and to reach new audiences.” That is in a literal sense a true statement. It is also true that [...]

We often point out here at the Copyright Alliance that while different business models work differently for different creative goods and different consumers, ultimately there are similar forces at work in everything from selling a motion picture to an illustration — you need to find your audience. This is true for the vast array of [...]

The mainstream media has focused on the substantive foreign policy credentials of Senator Joseph Biden (D-DE), recently chosen by presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama to be his vice presidential candidate. This is appropriate, as it clearly is a major factor in Obama’s decision.
I view all things through a very parochial lens, however, copyright. And [...]

The slogan “art for art’s sake” was adopted in the early 19th century to signify the philosophical belief that art should be able to stand on its own, void of any specific moral, religious, or utilitarian function. Artists sought to redefine the value of art, testifying that art was important because it was art, not [...]

I’m enjoying seeing Olympians compete in Beijing. I’m not happy with the way the Chinese government has been conducting itself during the Games, particularly when it promised upon receiving the 2008 Games to adhere to international standards on human rights.
In short — as the Olympics progress, crackdowns on dissidents in China appear to actually be [...]

There’s a lot of information circulating on fair use in our society, some of it more reliable than others. Here at the Copyright Alliance, we believe fair use is an important safety valve allowing new creators and educators to make modest use of copyrighted works, but we also recognize that fair use has important limitations.
We’ve [...]

I’ve written before about how it’s not just music and movies that suffer piracy online; anything that can be digitized is vulnerable, and any creative work can be digitized. The latest, as many reports have indicated, is the magazine industry.
Piracy isn’t new to the magazine world; there’s a reason why the Magazine Publishers of America [...]