Category Fingerprinting
Copyright Office’s Section 512 Report Finds the Balance Askew
Five years ago, the U.S. Copyright Office commenced a study on Section 512 of the copyright law, the section that defines limitations of copyright liability (“safe harbors”) for online service providers, arguably the most important part of American copyright law in the digital age. Last week the Office released the results of the study in […]
Wiley Reaches Detente with Academic Social Network ResearchGate
Academic and scientific researchers have their own social networks. One of the biggest differences between these services and LinkedIn or Twitter is that researchers are interested in other researchers’ content as much as they are in social interactions. This has led academic social networks to find ways of getting users to post their papers and […]
EU Article 13 (Now Article 17) Passes After More Changes, Making Copyright Filtering More Likely
The European Union’s copyright directive finally passed last week, with 56% of the European Parliament vote, after several rounds of significant changes to the text. On its way to final passage, the controversial Article 13 — now Article 17 — went through yet another round of changes that are worth discussing here. Two issues in […]
EU Parliament Approves Watered-Down Copyright Directive
This past Tuesday, the European Union Parliament approved a heavily amended version of the copyright reform legislation that has been generating much controversy over the past couple of years. We’ve been looking specifically at Article 13 of the proposed Directive, which has generated the most controversy for its inclusion of provisions that would require online services […]
Would Article 13 Give Copyright Owners What They Want?
Last week, the European Parliament moved the EU’s new Copyright Directive along in its legislative process; it passed out of the Legal Affairs Committee and is due for a plenary vote in September. One of the most controversial provisions of the new Directive is the forbodingly-named Article 13. Article 13 would require online services to […]
Copyright Alert System Shuts Down
Last Friday, the Center for Copyright Information quietly issued a brief statement that the Copyright Alert System (CAS), the American ISP copyright monitoring scheme that started in 2013, is ceasing operations. The CAS was a graduated response scheme of a different sort from the ones that launched in countries like France, South Korea, and New Zealand. […]
Facebook Faces Copyright Issues Amid Video Explosion
It’s fairly well established by now — thanks to court decisions like Viacom v. YouTube and UMG v. Veoh — that online service operators have no legal duty to proactively police their services for potential copyright infringement. But that doesn’t mean that some services don’t do it anyway. The biggest example is Google’s Content ID system for YouTube, […]
European Commission Proposes Copyright Filtering for Online Services
The European Commission published a briefing document last week that marked progress in its initiative to establish a legal framework for a “digital single market” for Europe. This briefing described a proposed directive with several provisions to streamline the use of digital content and promote copyright protection across the EU. The proposed directive itself was published […]
Of Hammers, Nails, and Blockchains
The phrase “If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail” originated with Abraham Kaplan in his seminal 1964 work on behavioral science. He applied it — as many parents have done ever since — to young kids. These days, blockchain technology is a hammer. An excellent illustration of how this applies […]
New Research to Be Presented at January Conference
I am excited to announce that Copyright and Technology NYC 2016 will feature a special presentation of new research: Notice and Takedown in Everyday Practice: Robots, Artisans, and the Fight to Protect Copyrights, Expression and Competition on the Internet. This is a landmark study on how the Notice and Takedown provisions of Section 512 of U.S. […]
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