Is our so-called “remix culture” really a new Renaissance of learning and cultural progress? Certain thinkers such as Lawrence Lessig and Yochai Benkler knock vigorously on that door but are wise enough not to walk through. Plenty of bloggers and blog commenters, however, show no fear in ecstatically breaking through that thought barrier. In this [...]

Some of the critics of those of us who believe in creators’ rights sometimes argue we believe that title, and occasionally, when I’m really frustrated with the incredible arrogance and hypocrisy of some of those critics, I might even think that myself. But before you light up the comments field, I am not seriously positing [...]

New York, NY The National Music Publishers Association (NMPA) held its annual membership meeting on June 17, 2009 at the Marriott Marquis hotel in Manhattan. The Association, with over 700 members, exists to “Protect, promote, and advance the interests of music‘s creators”. The small ballroom quickly filled with intellectual property lawyers, publishers and songwriters. The [...]

I don’t exactly think of The Huffington Post as a host of constructive dialogue, given their hosting of a recent attack on a revered civil rights leader and congressional stalwart. And I didn’t exactly welcome its founder’s recent testimony before Congress, in which she somewhat sanctimoniously dismissed a century’s worth of investigative, breaking-news and community [...]

It is an unfortunate fact of communications on the Internet that conversation often devolves to the lowest common denominator, with attacks wildly disproportionate to one’s person or argument. I can remember on an X-Files Usenet board in the early 1990s being called someone who likes to do inappropriate things with one’s mother because of a [...]

Both the House and Senate in recent weeks have held hearings on the future of newspapers, and the fact that the future — and present — for newspapers is bleak is no surprise to readers of this blog. There is of course a larger issue here, and that is the future of journalism. The back-and-forth [...]

When one thinks of MySpace or Facebook, one’s first thoughts are not of copyright. Not even by me. Some think of keeping in touch with friends, or being fans of great organizations (be friends with the Copyright Alliance on Facebook!). Some think of risks to kids. Some think of ways to find good music or [...]

U2′s Bono is unlikely to be the most sympathetic spokesman for online music theft, because in our society it seems we have anointed ourselves with the right to determine the “appropriate” level of a creator’s compensation. Bono admits in USA Today that he is in fact not the right spokesman “because people think people like [...]

John Conyers, first and foremost, is a great friend to artists and creators. He is also a great man who has accomplished marvelous things in his many decades as a public servant. But just the other day he was attacked by two people who in a better world would correctly view him as a compatriot [...]

Today’s guest blog is from Don Rath, Jr., a composer and Copyright Alliance one voi©e member. Without going into what one must do to secure a registered Copyright or to discuss Copyright Law, as a Composer of music, I wanted to write about what it means to me to have the rights and privileges afforded [...]