SOPA/PIPA Copyright Bills Also Target American Sites
By Marvin Ammori • December 30, 2011 at 9:00 pm
A healthy copyright system must balance the need to provide strong economic incentives through exclusive rights with the need to protect important public interests like free speech and expression. Fair use is foundational to that balance. It's role is to prevent copyright from stifling the creativity it is supposed to foster, and from imposing other burdens that would inhibit rather than promote the creation and spread of knowledge and learning.
The Fair Use Project (FUP) was founded in 2006 to provide legal support to a range of projects designed to clarify, and extend, the boundaries of fair use in order to enhance creative freedom and protect important public rights. It is the only organization in the country dedicated specifically to providing free and comprehensive legal representation to authors, filmmakers, artists, musicians and other content creators who face unmerited copyright claims, or other improper restrictions on their expressive interests. The FUP has litigated important cases across the country, and in the Supreme Court of the United States, and worked with scores of filmmakers and other content creators to secure the unimpeded release of their work.
By Marvin Ammori • December 30, 2011 at 9:00 pm
By Marvin Ammori • December 8, 2011 at 12:07 pm
By Zohar Efroni • November 24, 2011 at 12:51 pm
Per today's ruling, injunctions against European ISPs requiring them to apply filtering tools that monitor traffic to prevent copyright infringement officially violate EU law. The Scarlet decision puts a major stick in the wheel of wholesale copyright holders fighting against file sharing activities. With the expected implementation of the ACTA in mind, this ruling by the European Court of Justice (ECJ) will likely affect both prospective copyright legislation in Europe and offensive strategies of rights holders in their operations against intermediaries. Read more » about The ECJ's Scarlet Decision: No Broad Filtering Duty for European ISPs
By Julie Ahrens • November 16, 2011 at 3:13 pm
Today Congress held hearings on the latest IP legislation, the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). We are taking part in American Censorship Day to help spread the word and stop this bill. We’ve outlined five of the most important problems with SOPA.
1. SOPA violates due process. Under SOPA, any private copyright or trademark owner can cut-off advertising and payments to any website by alleging that the operator “avoid[ed] confirming a high probability” that “a portion” of its site is being used to infringe copyrights. Advertisers and payment companies (e.g. Visa, Mastercard, and PayPal) are then required to stop doing business with that site. It seems likely that content owners (or people merely claiming to be content owners) will often succeed in shutting down websites without ever going to court. The proposed legislation also gives the Attorney General and the Justice Department the power to shut down websites before they are actually judged infringing. Courts will be able to order any Internet service provider to stop recognizing an accused site immediately upon application by the Attorney General, after an ex parte hearing. By failing to guarantee the challenged websites notice or an opportunity to be heard in court before their sites are shutdown, SOPA violates due process. Read more: Letter to Congress from over 100 law professors techdirt explains that SOPA would create the Great Firewall of America.
Read more » about Stop Censorship: The Problems With SOPALetter to Congress explaining that proposed copyright legislation would violate the First Amendment and be struck down in court. Read more » about PROTECT IP Act (S.968) and Stop Online Privacy Act (H.R.3261)
Amicus brief filed in the Second Circuit on behalf of The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts urging the appeals court to reverse a district court decision that ignored established fair use principles that many artists rely upon in creating their work. Read more » about Cariou v. Prince - Amicus Brief
The Supreme Court certified two questions in Golan v. Holder: (1) Does section 514 of the Uruguay Round Agreements Act (“URAA”) violate the Progress Clause of the Constitution? (2) Does the URAA violate the First Amendment? This Essay argues that section 514 violates the Progress Clause’s requirement that copyright laws “promote the Progress of Science.” This is because the statute bequeaths copyright status without in return achieving any net increase in the creation or dissemination of creative works. Read more » about A Legitimate Interest in Promoting the Progress of Science: Constitutional Constraints on Copyright Laws
Supreme Court Reply Brief filed by Petitioners. Read more » about Golan v. Holder - Petitioners' Reply Brief
We filed an amicus brief in the Third Circuit on behalf of Brave New Films urging affirmance of the district court’s finding of fair use and rejection of plaintiff’s DMCA claims. Read more » about Murphy v. Millennium Radio Group, LLC, Craig Carton and Ray Rossi
We filed an amicus brief in the Fourth Circuit in support of the Baltimore Ravens and the NFL urging the Fourth Circuit to grant rehearing or rehearing en banc, after a divided panel ruled that the Raven’s incidental use of a copyrighted logo in historical game films was not a fair use. Read more » about Bouchat v. Baltimore Ravens and NFL, et al.
We defended a documentary filmmaker who was sued for copyright infringement for clips appearing in his documentary about Count Dante, an enigmatic, Chicago martial arts legend. Read more » about Aguiar v. Webb
We successfully defended Grammy-nominated American music producer, composer, and songwriter, Brain Transeau’s (better known by his stage name, BT), against spurious copyright infringement claims. Read more » about Vargas v. BT
The MPAA says that if an artist suing the league is victorious at an appeals court, it could raise problems for movies containing logos, signs, billboards and other copyrighted works. Read more » about Why Hollywood Studios Care About the NFL's Baltimore Ravens Logo
Julie Ahrens, an attorney for the amici, noted Tuesday that the MPAA, the International Documentary Association and Film Independent aren't always necessarily on the same side of the fair use issue. The fact that they all teamed up in this case testifies to the importance of the kind of uses that could be affected by the appeals court's ruling, as well as the well-settled state of the legal precedent in this area, she said.
“We don't want the Fourth Circuit to jeopardize that case law,” she told Law360. Read more » about Ravens Logo Appeal Threatens Filmmaker Rights, MPAA Says
""It's a terrible patent," says Daniel Nazer, a staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation and its exemplary Patent Busting Project. "It's a classic example of the patent office not doing a good job."" Read more » about EFF patent lawyer rates lawyer-rating patent ‘terrible’
“What I find troubling about it is that she keeps distinguishing Meltwater versus ‘legitimate’ online search tools, but it’s not really clear what that definition is,” Julie Ahrens, director of copyright and fair use for the Stanford Law School’s Center for Internet & Society, told MLex in an interview Friday.
Download PDF of Mlex article. Read more » about Comment: AP win in copyright ruling could put search startups at risk
Expected to Attend: Peter Jaszi (Glushko-Samuelson Intellectual Property Law Clinic, American University Washington College of Law), Julie Ahrens (Center for Internet & Society, Stanford Law School), Dan Satorius (moderator). Read more » about Protect Your Rights: Fair Use - NYC Documentary Film Festival
Come meet CIS and hear about our exciting work and ways to get involved. Read more » about Meet the Center for Internet and Society 2012
The Online News Association, in conjunction with the UNC Center for Media Law & Policy, the Stanford Law School Center for Internet & Society and the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, presents the Third Annual Law School for Digital Journalists, part of the Thursday Workshops at ONA’s 2012 Conference & Awards Banquet, Sept. 20-23. Read more » about ONA12 Law School for Digital Journalists
Has it really been 15 years? Time really flies when keeping up with Moore's law is the measure. In 1997, Jeff Moss held the very first Black Hat. He gathered together some of the best hackers and security minds of the time to discuss the current state of the hack. A unique and neutral field was created in which the security community--private, public, and independent practitioners alike—could come together and exchange research, theories, and experiences with no vendor influences. That idea seems to have caught on. Jeff knew that Black Hat could serve the community best if it concentrated on finding research by some of the brightest minds of the day, and he had an uncanny knack for finding them. Read more » about Smashing the Future for Fun and Profit
May 16, 2013
Three dimensional printing turns bits into atoms. The technology is simply amazing. These machines draw on programming, art and engineering to enable people to design and build intricate, beautiful, functional jewelry, machine parts, toys and even shoes. In the commercial sector, 3D printing can revolutionize supply chains as well. As the public interest group Public Knowledge wrote once, "It will be awesome if they don't screw it up."
Read more » about 3D Printing: Is the Law Ready for the Future?
May 10, 2013
Hosts: Denise Howell and Evan Brown
Prenda, Paramount product placement, technology legislation, and more.
Guests: Polk Wagner and Julie Ahrens.
Download or subscribe to this show at twit.tv/twil. Read more » about This Week in Law - Episode 210: Into the Prenda Darkness
March 13, 2013
CIS Affiliate Scholar David Levine interviews Dave Seubert, head of the University of California Santa Barbara’s Cylinder Digitization and Preservation Project. Read more » about Dave Seubert - Hearsay Culture - Show #181 - KZSU-FM
November 16, 2012
During late 2011 and January 2012, millions of people protested the passage of the controversial copyright bill the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in Congress. The protests culminated in the largest online protest in the history of the Internet, with web giant Wikipedia and thousands of other websites going black in a day of self-censorship. Read more » about Stopping SOPA - Copyright, Free Speech, and Popular Constitutionalism (Video)