Regular readers of this blog know that I would, as this headline suggests, resist strongly any attempt to force a copyright owner’s ability to manage his or her rights over her copyrights to a mere 12 months. But that’s what some in Congress have proposed with a well-meaning but ill-advised piece of legislation. A key [...]

Welcome back to my conversation with William Aicher, author of “Starving the Artist.” In yesterday’s post, Mr. Aicher shared his thoughts on how his work in the online music business led him to feel artists were not getting sufficient respect online. He also spoke about how copyright serves as an incentive to create, and that [...]

Recently I read a very compelling book titled “Starving the Artist.” (I enjoyed the Kindle version and now have a hard copy given to me by a colleague of the author I met recently at the Music Publishers Association meeting in New York). The thesis of the book — that technology has advanced in ways [...]

An mindset entirely unfriendly to artists and creators has emerged in recent years that contains an argument and a conclusion: (1) Copyright doesn’t work in the digital age. (2) Thus, as much as we might pretend to disapprove, infringement is a reality and the resulting forfeiture of rights by artists and creators should be accepted. [...]

Congratulations to Denis Seguin, Nick Kalish, and Spencer Maybee, winners of a film contest in which their very short entries describe in direct and engrossing terms why copyright is important to them as individual creators. The Reel Challenge Contest was sponsored by the Canadian Film Centre (CFC), the Copyright Collective of Canada (CCC), and the [...]

It’s been awhile since I’ve written about Shepard Fairey, the breaks-the-rules-and-boasts-of-it visual artist who is locked in a legal battle with the Associated Press over whether his use of an AP photo of Barack Obama to create the iconic red-and-blue image of the then-presidential candidate was copyright infringement. Well, the judge in the case has [...]

Copyright law gives authors exclusive rights to their works, except when it doesn’t. In other words, U.S. law places some limitations on copyright owners’ rights. Copyright is not perpetual. Folks can occasionally make use of a copyrighted work without permission or compensation (fair use). And some exceptions are made for libraries and archives, under Section [...]

WASHINGTON – The Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA) hosted an open workshop yesterday titled “Copyright Registration: Best Practices.” Three members of the U.S. Copyright Office were present and conducted the workshop to nearly 200 participants via a live and webcast audience. Ted A. Hirakawa, Acting Chief of the Literary Division; William Briganti, Assistant Chief [...]

Oh, deadlines. Yesterday was the new deadline for reply comments at the Federal Communications Commission in their proceeding examining the merits of imposing network neutrality regulations. (Note, being reply comments, it was unavoidable that filings at times reiterated comments in the first round.) As I’ve written before, copyright owners have an interest in how this [...]

Hello everyone—my name is Kathleen, and I am currently the spring intern at the Copyright Alliance. Yesterday was my first World IP Day hosted by the Institute for Policy Innovation (IPI), and I was humbled by the number of brilliant and impassioned individuals who attended. When I first arrived, the conference room was surprisingly empty, [...]