Copyright

Draft Bill Would Eliminate Fair Use On The Internet

December 22, 2020 Shiva Stella, Public Knowledge. Educate! Congress, Copyright, Free Speech, Internet

Today, Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) released a discussion draft of a bill that would “update” the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The language in this draft, if enacted, would radically overhaul the current copyright system for online content by centralizing unprecedented control of both content and digital platforms in the hands of the executive branch. The current draft text would significantly curtail online speech, subjecting every upload to mandatory content filtering while effectively eliminating fair use on the internet. The following can be attributed to Meredith Rose, Senior Policy Counsel at Public Knowledge:

Protests Across Europe Highlight Rifts Over Copyright Bill

March 24, 2019 By Deutsche Welle. Resist! Copyright, European Union (EU), Internet Freedom

European Union - Tens of thousands of people across Europe staged protests on Saturday against the European Union's planned copyright reform bill. In Germany alone, 40 rallies took place, alongside demonstrations in Sweden, Poland, Switzerland, Austria and Portugal. Munich police said 40,000 protesters turned out under the motto "Save our internet." Organizers said Berlin's protest (pictured above) drew 30,000, with participants walking past the center of Germany's collaborative Wikipedia online encyclopedia. Police put the number of protesters at 10,000.

Copyright versus Community

April 22, 2016 Theodora Kotsaka, www.transform-network.net Educate! Copyright

By Theodora Kotsaka for Transform - Richard Stallman launched the free software movement in 1983 and started the development of the GNU operating system in 1984. GNU is free software: everyone has the freedom to copy it and redistribute it, with or without changes. The GNU/Linux system (basically the GNU operating system with Linux added) is used on tens of millions of computers today.

TPP Leak: Countries Converging On Anti-User Copyright Rules

July 8, 2015 Jeremy Malcolm, www.eff.org Educate! Censorship, Copyright, Freedom of Expression, TPP

By Jeremy Malcolm in EFF - A draft of the Trans-Pacific Partnership's "Intellectual Property" chapter from May 11, 2015 hasrecently been leaked to journalists. This is the fourth leak of the chapter following earlier drafts of October 2014, August 2013, and February 2011. The latest leak is not available online and we don't have a copy of it—but we have been briefed on its contents. In most respects the chapter follows previous drafts pretty closely; for example, the text onDRM circumvention and copyright term are both largely unchanged. But there is one area in which significant progress has been made since the last draft, and this is in the text on intermediary liability rules.

How Copyright Law Is Hurting Culture

September 30, 2014 Mike Masnick, www.techdirt.com Educate! Copyright, Human Rights, Media, Music

As you may have heard, there's a new movie opening today about a transformative year in Jimi Hendrix's life, called Jimi: All Is By My Side. The story sounds pretty interesting, but there's one big element that's missing: Jimi Hendrix's original music. As we noted two years ago, the Jimi Hendrix Estate denied any and all attempts to license his music unless they could have some control over the production (which the producers felt was out of order), meaning that the movie is, in fact, lacking any original Hendrix music. Instead, the only thing you'll see Hendrix performing if you watch the movie, is cover songs of other bands, which the movie's producers were able to license. I'm just going to repeat what I said two years ago, because it still applies: This is, in many ways, ridiculous.

Open Letters Warn TPP Will Force ‘Policing’ Of Internet

July 12, 2014 Jeremy Malcolm and Maira Sutton, www.eff.org Organize! Copyright, EFF, Protest, TPP

Today, EFF and its partners in the global Our Fair Deal coalition join together with an even more diverse international network of creators, innovators, start-ups, educators, libraries, archives and users to release two new open letters to negotiators of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). The TPP, although characterized as a free trade agreement, is actually far broader in its intended scope. Amongst many changes to which it could require the twelve negotiating countries to agree are a slate of increased rights and privileges for copyright rights holders. With no official means of participating in the negotiations, the global community of users and innovators who will be affected by these proposed changes have been limited to expressing their concerns through open letters to their political representatives and to the officials negotiating the agreement.

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