Yesterday we shared indie filmmaker Ellen Seidler’s new video effort to educate people about the impact of online piracy and those who profit from it. Another filmmaker is taking a different approach and has posted a plea on the Pirate Bay web site, directly confronting would-be downloaders and asking them not to illegally download his [...]

It is troubling – though perhaps unsurprising – how quickly efforts to maintain a safe and lawful internet have drawn out apologists for online anarchy and the usual accompanying misinformation and predictions of dire outcomes. While the ink is not yet dry on legislative recommendations issued by the Obama Administration’s Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator, and [...]

Public Knowledge, for all its claims to be looking out for the future, appears in its rhetoric to be stuck in the 80s. An oddly gratuitous swipe at the movie industry this week about studios “coming to recognize that technology is not your enemy” left me asking, simply: Seriously? The notion that the creative world [...]

A Harvard Crimson editorial published today addressing unauthorized file-sharing on university networks is tagged “A Sensible Compromise.” The compromise itself? The university working with copyright owners and their agents such as the MPAA in reducing infringement on university networks. What else is “sensible” is the entire editorial, which gives lie to the notion that everyone [...]

To holiday shoppers, Cyber Monday is when you use your work computer to do a bit of online shopping, hoping for some good savings. Thank you to the U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (its Immigration and Customs Enforcement division) for providing their own spin on Cyber Monday — a [...]

Attention songwriters and musicians — there’s a college student out there who actually respects your rights. Thanks to Dean Kay, I’ve come across an editorial written by a University of Illinois student named Charles Tabb. The title of his piece is “Respect musicians’ work: Put an end to illegal file sharing.” The title really says [...]

If you’re a regular follower of the Copyright Alliance, you’ll know of our Creators Across America video series that we launched this past Spring. Through these short video interviews, artists all across our country are speaking up for their rights. They tell a little bit about who they are, what their craft entails, and how [...]

LimeWire has been ordered to shut down permanently, a mere five-and-a-half months after the site was declared illegal, four years after it was first sued, and five years after the Grokster decision made clear that sites inducing copyright infringement were not in fact legal. It’s also been two years since LimeWire’s CEO basically acknowledged to [...]

On the heels of the Future of Music Policy Summit and the recent introduction of the Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act (COICA) by Senator Leahy, I keep mulling over in my mind what the true value of music, books, and the visual arts is, and how this value – whether actual or perceived – [...]

The headline above is a point that is made repeatedly on this blog and is self-evident — copyright encourages both production and distribution of creative works — but the point now has been articulated in a detailed and compelling way by Daniel Castro of the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation. Mr. Castro takes aim at [...]