Members of the European Union’s parliament ignored dire warnings that they’re heading down a path toward massive online censorship and have passed legislation that will hold online platforms financially liable for copyright violations by users and would require search engines and social media platforms to get licenses from media companies to share even snippets of […]
Historic Photos Predating Israel Set Free by Wikimedia…
28,000 public-domain photos extracted from public and private archives in Israel are now available on Wikimedia Commons, the media sharing platform operated by San Francisco-headquartered nonprofit The Wikimedia Foundation Inc., which also operates Wikipedia. The released photos include images documenting the early days of the Jewish settlement in what later became the state of Israel. […]
You Don’t Own What You’ve Bought: Apple Disappears Purchased Movies…
Once again, copyright and the digitization of everything means you no longer “own” what you’ve “bought.” I thought we’d covered all this a decade ago when Kindle owners discovered that, even though they’d “purchased” copies of the ebook of George Orwell’s 1984, their books had been memory holed, thanks to Amazon losing a license. After […]
After More Than a Decade of Litigation, the Dancing Baby Has Done His Part to Strengthen Fair Use for Everyone…
Litigation can always take twists and turns, but when EFF filed a lawsuit against Universal Music Group in 2007 on behalf of Stephanie Lenz, few would have anticipated it would be ten years until the case was finally resolved. But today, at last, it is. Along the way, Lenz v. Universal contributed to strengthening fair […]
After Massive Cable Industry Lobbying And Disinformation Effort, The FCC Is Forced To Weaken Its Cable Box Reform Plan…
Back in February, the FCC approved a new plan to bring some much-needed competition to the old cable box, resulting in better, cheaper, and more open hardware…
Getty Makes Nonsensical Statement On Photographer Carol Highsmith’s Lawsuit For Falsely Claiming Copyright…
We just recently wrote about photographer Carol Highsmith’s copyright lawsuit against Getty Images, for falsely claiming copyright in her images (and demanding she pay to use her own images…)…
Led Zeppelin Didn’t Steal Music for ‘Stairway to Heaven,’ Jury Decides…
Rock giant Led Zeppelin did not lift music that formed the basis for their iconic hit “Stairway to Heaven,” a jury found Thursday…
This Is Bad: Court Says Remastered Old Songs Get A Brand New Copyright…
Whoo boy. Did not expect this one. For a while now, we’ve noted a variety of lawsuits over pre-1972 sound recordings, due to a quirk in copyright law…