Fair Use

Ask a Law Professor Your Questions about Fan Fiction and Mash-ups

Rebecca Tushnet is a law professor at Georgetown and one of the founders of the Organization for Transformative Works, a nonprofit that promotes and supports fanworks. She’s here today to answer your questions today about fair use, fanworks, and the internet. Tushnet’s currently working on a project looking at the benefits and legal issues of…

io9 Ria Misra Nov 18

Google Wins the Right to Keep Scanning Millions of Books for Free

Nearly a decade after it started, the lawsuit between the Authors’ Guild and Google over its book-scanning program has been thrown out. This means that Google can keep digitizing millions of books for free distribution, and more importantly, that fair use is in the public’s best interest. On Thursday, U.S. Circuit Judge Denny Chin in…

Tech News Adam Clark Estes Nov 14

Watch All 6 Star Wars Movies At the Same Time on YouTube (It’s Confusing and Terrifying)

At first you think, This looks cool, all the intros side by side by side! And then you think, Waaaiiiit no these are the whole movies this is awful at least it will be taken down soon. And then: WAIT HOLD ON THIS HAS BEEN UP SINCE OCTOBER AND LUCAS HASN’T IMPALED ANYONE??? Yep, all…

Tech News Kyle Wagner Mar 25

Are fan fiction and fan art legal?

Fan fiction and fan art are both enormous components of our popular culture, a way we retell our favorite stories just as humans have always retold myths and legends. But sometimes creators, publishers, and studios claim that works of fan art and fan fiction violate their copyright. So is that Supernatural fanfic you’re working on…

io9 Lauren Davis Aug 12

If a Monkey Steals Your Camera, Who Owns the Photos?

You can’t forget those adorable self-portraits taken by a group of vain monkeys on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi. The shots are amazing, so amazing that a controversy is brewing over their copyright. https://gizmodo.com/vain-monkey-steals-cam-to-take-these-adorable-self-port-5818115 You see, the monkeys took the images using a camera owned by photographer David J Slater. They stole the camera which…

Tech News Kelly Jul 13

Is Flipboard Legal?

Social news app Flipboard was yesterday’s hot new app, despite—or perhaps because of—technical problems that prevented some features from working. But there might be a bigger snag: Is Flipboard scraping content it doesn’t have the rights to? Flipboard, the new iPad app that renders links from your Twitter feed and favorite sites in a beautiful,…

Tech News Joel Johnson Jul 22

Apparently, DVD Copying Software Is Illegal

Ruling against the RealNetworks in the trial of sooo last century, a federal judge said that it was illegal to sell or make DVD copying software under the DMCA. But what about actually ripping DVDs yourself? https://gizmodo.com/realnetworks-barred-from-selling-realdvd-ever-again-5060948 When it comes to making personal copies, U.S. District Court Judge Marilyn Hall Patel left that totally gray—that…

Tech News Matt Buchanan Aug 12

Obama’s iPod Gift to Queen Elizabeth II Is Tainted

The iPod that Obama gave Queen Elizabeth II loaded with show tunes might have been lame and declasse for another reason: It’s possibly illegal! https://gizmodo.com/president-obama-gives-queen-elizabeth-an-ipod-queen-on-5194233 It’s a sloppy gray area we’ve looked at before: When you buy digital content, do you really own it? With actual CDs or books, the first sale doctrine lets you…

Tech News Matt Buchanan Apr 3

RealNetworks Barred From Selling RealDVD Ever Again

Last week a judge put a temporary ban on the sale of RealNetworks’ DVD backup program RealDVD, claiming that it violated the DMCA. The court has decided to uphold the ban indefinitely, and judging by the tone and nature of the judge’s statements, it doesn’t sound like they’ll ever change their mind. The arguments centered…

Tech News John Herrman Oct 9

YouTube to Auto Block Content by Fall

While YouTube has already been running fingerprint technology in beta for companies like Disney, a Google lawyer said Friday that video filters should be in place by September, and if not then by fall. Automated technology is, of course, the only way to police vast amounts of uploaded material. But it’s disheartening to see Google…

Tech News Mark Wilson Jul 28

RIAA Boycott: “Fair Use” Bill Falls Short of Sweeping Digital Rights Reform

Yesterday we told you about this FAIR USE bill that’s been introduced in Congress, and we were pretty happy to hear about it. Now that people have had the time to really get into the guts of the bill, it looks like it might not be the savior we were hoping for. The experts at…

Tech News Adam Frucci Mar 1

RIAA Boycott: Congress Introduces “Fair Use” Bill; They’re Totally With Us

Click to viewWait a minute… could this be… good news on the DRM front? Really? Somebody pinch me. Reps. Rich Boucher (D-Va.) and John Dolittle (R-Calif.) introduced their “Freedom and Innovation Revitalizing U.S. Entrepreneurship” (or FAIR USE) Act today, one that aims to make crippled DRM illegal. Check it: “The Digital Millennium Copyright Act dramatically…

Tech News Adam Frucci Feb 28

HD DVD Copy Protection Only Partially Cracked

The Advanced Access Content System (AACS) Licensing Authority (the dudes in charge of HD DVD copy protection measures) has confirmed that the security measures of certain HD DVDs has been cracked. The hack, which is the work of a person posing as muslix64, doesn’t actually apply to all HD DVDs, though. In other words, muslix64’s…

Tech News Nicholas Deleon Jan 26

Freedom Rings: Cellphones Must Be Unlockable

Kind of good news coming out of the Library of Congress regarding our digital rights, especially relating to our cellphone use. Copyright laws were amended to allow customers to unlock the software on their cellphones so they can take their phones with them from wireless carrier to wireless carrier. The ruling is also good for..…

Tech News Nicholas Deleon Nov 24

Cablevision Caves In, Postpones Network DVR

We mentioned earlier that Cablevision was in some legal trouble regarding its planned network DVR. If you don’t remember, the network DVR differs from a regular DVR in that all of the content is stored on Cablevision’s servers rather than a local hard drive while retaining all of the normal DVR features, such as pausing…

Gadgets Nicholas Deleon Jun 9

Ask a Law Professor Your Questions about Fan Fiction and Mash-ups

Google Wins the Right to Keep Scanning Millions of Books for Free

Watch All 6 Star Wars Movies At the Same Time on YouTube (It’s Confusing and Terrifying)

Are fan fiction and fan art legal?

If a Monkey Steals Your Camera, Who Owns the Photos?

Is Flipboard Legal?

Apparently, DVD Copying Software Is Illegal

Obama’s iPod Gift to Queen Elizabeth II Is Tainted

RealNetworks Barred From Selling RealDVD Ever Again

YouTube to Auto Block Content by Fall

RIAA Boycott: “Fair Use” Bill Falls Short of Sweeping Digital Rights Reform

RIAA Boycott: Congress Introduces “Fair Use” Bill; They’re Totally With Us

HD DVD Copy Protection Only Partially Cracked

Freedom Rings: Cellphones Must Be Unlockable

Cablevision Caves In, Postpones Network DVR

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