If the Trans Pacific Partnership agreement (TPP) is signed at the end of this year, it may rewrite the rules of the global economy for the foreseeable future. That's because the TPP, currently being negotiated between the U.S. and eight Pacific rim countries, will likely remain open for other countries to join—as Canada, Mexico and Japan have already expressed interest in doing, even though they will not be permitted input into the agreement. Negotiating further bilateral trade agreements, a process that draws intense public scrutiny, could become altogether unnecessary for Washington. But as negotiators resumed TPP talks in San Diego yesterday, they were met by a coalition of labor, environmental and Occupy groups intent on stopping the mega-deal, glossed by its critics as “NAFTA on steroids.”
India's new copyright bill sounds like a pretty good piece of work: it declares private, personal copying to be 'fair dealing' (like US fair use) and limits the prohibition on breaking DRM so that it's only illegal to do so if you're also violating copyright.
The Adelphi Charter on Creativity, Innovation and Intellectual Property is the result of a project commissioned by the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures & Commerce, London, UK, and is intended as a positive statement of what good intellectual property policy is. The Charter was issued on the 13th October, 2005.
The 20th Century has gone, and now we live in the 21st Century, a digital century, but sometimes when we look around it feels like the same old world it always was. Cars, burning oil. Posters and adverts, neon and signage. Books made of paper. Some things change so slowly that the incremental differences go more or less unnoticed until we focus directly on them.
My copyrighted photo is now spreading around the world tagged as “Public Domain”, with no reference to me as photographer. Thanks to wikipedia. However the photo is still copyrighted by me, I did never change the license.
In the ongoing conflict between PRS for Music and YouTube over the takedown of all music related content in the UK, PRS for Music have created a new site, fairplayforcreators.com, exposing the views of the music writers impacted by the YouTube decision. I am not certain if these views have been editorially compromised, but by reading a few pages, it's clear to me that Music writers represented by PRS for Music are largely clueless about what the Internet and YouTube means to the music industry. Kind of explains why the music industry is in such a decline — and also why so much litigation takes place on the music writers' behalf.
Jimmy Wales and Heather Ford hosted an official “Heather and Jimmy 50 Party Club party” in San Francisco this past Friday, at which Jimmy and Larry Lessig announced that Wikipedia content would henceforth be licensed under Creative Commons. This was followed later by a celebratory karaoke performance of “I’ve Got You, Babe” which was one for the ages.
One day after Knol publicly launched Wil Reynolds noticed that a Knol page was already ranking. Danny Sullivan did a further test showing that 33% of his test set of Knol pages were ranking in the first page of search results. Danny was also surprised that his Knol was ranking #28 after 1 day. After citing it on his blog now that Knol page ranks #1 in Google!
"The UK opposition leader, David Cameron, says in a speech to the British Phonographic Industry that his party would work to extend the copyright term to 70 years and crack down on piracy. But in return, labels would have to agree to bear more 'social responsibility', which appears to translate into avoiding lyrics that glorify 'an anti-learning culture, truancy, knifes, violence, guns, misogyny'. He doesn't spell out how this would be achieved in practice. This follows the publication in December of a UK government report recommending that the standard copyright term in Europe remain at 50 years (and not be raised to 70 or 95 years)."
Welcome to QuestionCopyright.org. Our mission is to educate the public about the history of copyright, and to promote methods of distribution that do not depend on restricting people from making copies.