More people are watching video over the Internet than ever before. It is becoming increasingly easy to stream online video on your television, bringing the lean-back and lean-forward technologies together in a pleasant way. We want this to continue, right? There are two challenges facing the growth of a legal online video market. One is [...]

Next week two important Subcommittees in the House and Senate are holding hearings on the proposed acquisition of 51% of NBC Universal by Comcast. Comcast Chairman and CEO Brian Roberts is expected to testify at that hearing. This morning he gave a sneak preview of his testimony in a Q&A with Alan Murray The Wall [...]

This has been a good week for artists speaking out for their rights. I highlighted earlier this week a number of independent artists on an indie label who spoke out against infringement of their creative works. There have been other positive voices as well, nicely summarized by my friend Chris Castle on his blog. One [...]

I’ve seen a fair amount of dismissal in the digital-utopian crowd of the nearly 12,000 individual artists and creators who signed our letter to President Obama and Vice President Biden asking that their rights over their works be respected online. If you’re acquiring or giving away someone else’s creativity and labor without their authorization or [...]

Kudos to the House Judiciary Committee for holding a hearing Wednesday acknowledging a growing threat to copyright owners’ ability to produce and distribute high-quality entertainment; largely for-profit sites providing real-time streaming of copyrighted works without authorization from or payment to rightsholders. Chairman John Conyers (D-MI) and Ranking Member Lamar Smith (R-TX) began the hearing by [...]

In rhetoric, there’s an old trick — begin with a true statement, and then follow with an argument that does not naturally follow from the true statement. When challenged, ignore the criticism of the argument and instead defend the true statement. Here’s an example. True statement — “We’ll always have copyright infringement. You can never [...]

On a panel discussion on copyright on Monday, I noted how in 1995 — when few folks had heard of the Internet and they probably thought it meant the walled garden of AOL — I had my own web site, where I posted for free and distributed to a fan list full text of a [...]

We write a lot on this blog about the puzzling ability of those who are able to rationalize their acquisition of a creator’s work without permission or compensation. Some of those logic-twisting rationalizations are debunked in our piece, “Critiquing Copyright Canards.” We’re not the only ones who have observed this, and picked up on how [...]

This blog was written by Michelle Gagnon, a crime fiction writer. The blog was originally posted on The Kill Zone, and is reprinted with permission from the author. I received a Google alert last week for a website called, “Plunder.com.” I clicked on it, and lo and behold, it led to a file sharing site. [...]

Do I have a right to obtain music by The Beatles in any format I want? That is the question that one needs to ask when deciding how to view the decision by the remaining Beatles and key rightsholders to rule out certain forms of digital distribution. L. Gordon Crovitz has a nice overview of [...]