BERLIN, GERMANY — Ideas, fortunately, cannot be copyrighted. Ideas, however, are very important in the debate over copyright. Stanford University Law Professor Lawrence Lessig knows that, and is back with yet another book urging the reduction of rights of creators. This self-appointed pied piper of copyright dilution has given us a preview of his new [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

On Wednesday night the Copyright Alliance hosted a one-year anniversary celebration in the breathtaking Lyndon B. Johnson room off of the Senate floor in the US Capitol. Our anniversary actually was in May, but this was when we could get the room, and that was worth postponing our celebration.

The room was appropriate; LBJ's protégé was of course Jack Valenti, who for many years championed copyright at the Motion Picture Association of America. Mr. Valenti had a vision for an organization whose membership would include all copyright industries, and he took many steps toward that goal. His successor, Dan Glickman, shared that vision and was at the front of the movement to create what we now know as the Copyright Alliance.

SAN JOSE, CA:  I'm here at Media Access Project's Innovation '08, the
first of three panels designed to craft tech policy regulations for the next
President. We're at eBay hq in its Town Hall; FYI, the walls and carpeting are
striped with the eBay log's red, blue, yellow and green. It's an interesting
look, but strikes me as more of a day care center than a major corporation.

William Patry, who usually is a bit more mature
about such things, has chosen twice
in the last
week to dedicate a lengthy blog entry criticizing the Copyright Alliance,
once comparing me to Joe McCarthy (he has since deleted that reference). It's
hard to know with him where his commentary ends and Google's begins, given he
is their senior copyright counsel. I'm choosing to believe he doesn't speak for
the whole organization, because his commentary doesn't reflect other, more
positive feedback I've heard privately from Google executives.