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 SOPADays after anti-piracy legislation stalled in Congress, the U.S. Department of Justice coordinated an unprecedented raid on the Hong Kong-based website Megaupload.com. New Zealand law enforcement agents swooped in by helicopter to arrest founder Kim Dotcom at his home outside of Auckland, and seized millions of dollars worth of art, vehicles and real estate. Six other Megaupload employees were also arrested. Meanwhile, the Justice Department seized Megaupload's domain names and the data of at least 50 million users worldwide. Read more » about Megaupload.com Indictment Leaves Everyone Guessing - Part 1
Daily/Journal Op/Ed
The first part of this article outlined the mechanics of the Megaupload website, and the novel questions of criminal inducement on which the government's indictment is premised. Here, we explore two more extensions of existing law on which the indictment is based, and the impact this prosecution is likely to have on Internet innovators and users alike. Read more » about Megaupload Indictment Leaves Everyone Guessing - Part 2
It is now received wisdom that a properly functioning democracy requires transparency and accountability — information shared with the public that allows the public to know what its government is doing. It is equally uncontroversial to say that social media allows for an unprecedented amount of informal but structured dissemination and analysis of information. Despite these two basic points, U.S. freedom of information law has failed to harness the power of these new social media networks and, more importantly, formats in a way that amplifies public knowledge of government information. Read more » about The Social Layer of Freedom of Information Law
This is the third in a series of articles focusing on the experimental economics of intellectual property. In earlier work, we have experimentally studied the ways in which creators assign monetary value to the things that they create. That research has suggested that creators are subject to a systematic bias that leads them to overvalue their work. Read more » about Valuing Attribution and Publication in Intellectual Property
Meltwater News ("Meltwater") is a search engine and research tool that allows users to search for and obtain information about news items that have been made publicly available on the Internet. Read more » about Associated Press v. Meltwater
We filed an amicus brief 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
The FUP filed this suit on behalf of a University of Denver conductor and others, challenging Congress’s restoration of copyright to works that had entered the public domain. Read more » about Golan v. Holder
We filed an amicus brief on behalf of the Electronic Frontier Foundation asking the First Circuit to affirm the district court’s reduced damages award in Sony v. Tenenbaum, a file-sharing case in which a jury originally ordered a college student to pay $675,000 for infringing copyright in 30 songs. Read more » about Sony v. Tenenbaum
"The justification for creating temporary monopolies through patents and copyrights is that they encourage creative activity that would not otherwise take place. But Raustiala and Sprigman argue that imitation -- which music labels and movie studios often consider theft -- frequently stimulates creativity rather than discouraging it." Read more » about The Knockoff Economy: How Imitation Sparks Innovation
The Electronic Frontier Foundation hired Daniel Nazer as a staff attorney, the San Francisco-based digital rights advocacy group said in a statement. Read more » about Microsoft, Nokia, Black Rain: Intellectual Property
""It's not something you're legally required to do," says Daniel Nazer, a resident fellow at Stanford Law School's Fair Use Project. "There's a big distinction between the culture of the content industry and the law."" Read more » about Is That A Budweiser In Your Hand?: Product Placement, Booze, And Denzel Washington
"Fair use is a "very gray area," says Julie Ahrens, who runs the Fair Use Project at Stanford University's Center for Internet and Society. "There are lots of things that are not clear."" Read more » about Famed quotation isn't dead -- and could even prove costly
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
February 29, 2012
STLR Symposium 2012 - Co-Hosted by the Center for Internet and Society
February 28, 2012
STLR Symposium 2012 - Co-Hosted by the Center for Internet and Society Read more » about Taking Forgetting Seriously - 2012 STLR Symposium - First Amendment Challenges in the Digital (Video)
February 28, 2012
STLR Symposium 2012 - Co-Hosted by the Center for Internet and Society
February 28, 2012
STLR Symposium 2012 - Co-Hosted by the Center for Internet and Society Read more » about Taking Forgetting Seriously - 2012 STLR Symposium - First Amendment Challenges in the Digital Age (Audio)