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 [...]

Some readers will remember Spy vs. Spy, which originally was featured in Mad Magazine and then later in its spinoff TV show. Each episode, the two spies would seek to destroy the other, and invariably no one was ever really the winner.
Could we be looking at the same futile battle among recording artists? Hank Williams [...]

We talk about a digital divide in this country, but there is a very real one in the Arab world, with only an estimated 5 million Arabs online. So how do you reach 300 million Arabs across 22 countries? With a satellite channel, as Wagdy Sawahel reports in IP Watch.
A new satellite channel based in [...]

What’s the right rate for [fill in the blank] music service? Should we trust the Copyright Royalty Board? Should we let Congress decide? And if we let Congress decide, which Senate bill properly determines what is fair?
The fact is, there is no perfectly right answer to these questions. A lot of heat was generated today [...]

Rights are worthless if they aren’t enforced. When copyright owners and creators see their rights as having meaning through enforcement, all of society wins through creation of new works. We also benefit from more jobs and more tax revenues and investment in the US economy, benefits that cannot be understated given this country’s current economic [...]

You find a range of opinions on orphan works legislation in Congress, including among Copyright Alliance members. But I believe all out there who care about copyright and creators’ rights agree that nothing good will come of an artist being denied their rights even when they are making efforts to ensure their works can be [...]

It is admirable when someone spends a quarter-century examining every strip of bark on every single tree; they can be an accomplished arborist that way. But that can make it very difficult for that person to see that in fact a forest is comprised of those trees.
I never claim to be a copyright lawyer. I’ve [...]

Well, we’ve been down this road before.
What is fair use? According to the American University Center for Social Media, fair use can be defined as follows:
Fair use is the right, in some circumstances, to quote copyrighted material without asking permission or paying for it.
Okay, we’re already off on the wrong foot. Most of that [...]

You know the cliche in movies and TV shows where one character distracts another by looking aside and saying “What’s that?” only to punch the other character while he’s distracted? I see that a lot in the comments sections of news columns and blogs dealing with copyright.
In this BBC News column, for example, Darren Waters [...]

If you have any questions about the definition of copyright, what it supports, or how it affects our society through jobs or economic growth, you can now get an eight minute tutorial on the Copyright Alliance’s website.
The video takes you from the perspective of our founding fathers on rights of authors to the impact of [...]