Mygazines is for sharing magazines online.
posted on Jul 22, 2008 - View this thread

Copyright, copywrong, copyleft, copyWHAT?! Peter Hirtle is no stranger to the questions surrounding copyright and the use of public domain materials. He has been thoroughl in researching and referencing other's work in this area. Peter's handy little chart could not have been more timely; it was really long overdue. But it really just gets overwhelming sometimes ... I blame it all on that d*m**d mouse!
posted on Jul 16, 2008 - View this thread

"For U.S. books published between 1923 and 1963, the rights holder needed to submit a form to the U.S. Copyright Office renewing the copyright 28 years after publication. In most cases, books that were never renewed are now in the public domain. Estimates of how many books were renewed vary, but everyone agrees that most books weren't renewed. If true, that means that the majority of U.S. books published between 1923 and 1963 are freely usable." How do you know? The renewal copyright records have traditionally been scattered and hard to access, but Google - with the help of Project Gutenberg and the Distributed Proofreaders painstakingly typed in every word - has just released a single database as a freely downloadable XML file.
posted on Jun 25, 2008 - View this thread

Mashup artist Gregg Gillis, aka Girl Talk, is another artist to try the 'pay whatever you want' Internet release model. However, his 55-minute album consists of over 300 samples from other artists, with many current and past hits. No stranger to current controversies in copyright, Gillis also appeared in the documentary Good Copy Bad Copy. Previously.
posted on Jun 20, 2008 - View this thread

"Happy Birthday to You" is the best-known and most frequently sung song in the world. Many - including Justice Breyer in his dissent in Eldred v. Ashcroft - have portrayed it as an unoriginal work that is hardly worthy of copyright protection, but nonetheless remains under copyright. Yet close historical scrutiny reveals both of those assumptions to be false. [Full pdf here.] [via]
posted on Jun 19, 2008 - View this thread

RestoftheMovie.com will probably be taken offline pretty soon, since it seems like they show full (screener) versions of current movies (like Kung Fu Panda and Ironman) in streaming format, so you'll probably want to check it out sooner rather than later.
posted on Jun 12, 2008 - View this thread

YouTomb MIT project that tracks youtube file deletions for aledged copyright infringement. They do not host the deleted files, fyi.via wired
posted on May 21, 2008 - View this thread

In the spirit of those who have patented living organisms, the State of Oregon Legislative Counsel Committee is demanding $30,000 from Justia.com for the right to publish Oregon Revised Statutes -- the laws of Oregon -- on their website for two years.
posted on Apr 23, 2008 - View this thread

Illustrators up in arms. Darren De Lieto, owner of Little Chimp Society, recently received word that his work and the work of 93 other illustrators has been used without permission in a dubious 350-page book entitled Colorful Illustrations 93ºC, being sold online and in bookstores for $100. With the rise of copyright-shaky China and the revitialization of the Orphan Works Act, are artists rights becoming more precarious? (Via Drawn!)
posted on Apr 19, 2008 - View this thread

What the IFPI tries to conceal about its origins in fascist Italy IFPI is the global version of the RIAA
posted on Apr 8, 2008 - View this thread

"In a possibly historic ruling, a federal judge Wednesday determined that the heirs of Superman co-creator, Jerry Siegel, are now the rightful owners of one-half of the copyright of Superman, and have been since 1999."
posted on Mar 28, 2008 - View this thread

An associate professor and former librarian is collecting education copyright infringement cases in a database.
posted on Mar 27, 2008 - View this thread

The leader of the Swedish Pirate Party explaining how the US went bankrupt in 1971, and has been covering it up through an accelerating whack-a-mole borrowing frenzy that is bursting right now.
posted on Mar 22, 2008 - View this thread

Most well known for his "Obey Giant" street posters, Shepard Fairey has carefully nurtured a reputation as a heroic guerilla street artist waging a one man campaign against the corporate powers-that-be. Infantile posturing aside, Fairey’s art is problematic for another, more troubling reason - that of plagiarism.
posted on Mar 18, 2008 - View this thread

Stage 6, recently linked in a popular FPP, has announced it will shut down today. Rumors about why include their battle against UMG to a "ridiculous battle of egos."
posted on Feb 28, 2008 - View this thread

In trademark style, Lawrence Lessig today announced the creation of a congressional exploratory committee. If in the next few days he decides to officially enter the race, he'll be running in the special election on April 8th to fill the CA-12 seat recently vacated by the death of Tom Lantos. A run by Lessig would likely be seen as a new front the the technocratic, post-partisan movement Barack Obama is attempting to catalyze; Lessig was a colleague of Obama at the University of Chicago law school, helped to draft Obama's technology plan, and is describing his potential run (his first attempt at public office), and the larger Change Congress project he also announced today, as an attempt to save Congress as an institution from the corrupting influence of money.
posted on Feb 19, 2008 - View this thread

British internet users face ban for illegal downloads. A draft copy of a Green Paper produced by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport was leaked to The Times newspaper which detailed how the government was considering introducing legislation that would require ISPs to take action against users who access pirated material.
posted on Feb 12, 2008 - View this thread

Edward Samuel's Illustrated History of Copyright A fascinating illustrated historical tour, looking at how different technologies have shaped how we think about copyright and intellectual property.
posted on Jan 31, 2008 - View this thread

A proposal for the monetization of the file sharing of music from the Songwriters and Recording Artists of Canada. "Most Canadians are aware that the Internet and mobile phone networks have become major sources of music. What they may not know is that songwriters and performers typically receive no compensation of any kind when their music is shared or illegally downloaded... We believe the time has come to put in place a reasonable and unobtrusive system of compensation for creators of music in regard to this popular and growing use of their work."
posted on Jan 29, 2008 - View this thread

CASH is the Coalition of Artists & Stake Holders, a project conceived and initiated by musician Kristin Hersh. CASH is "read-write" — more than consumption; a collaborative online effort — helping make music ownership more of an interactive affair facilitated through Creative Commons licensing.
posted on Jan 5, 2008 - View this thread

Steal this album. "In the dying days of the music business as we once knew it, record labels are waging war on leaks—only to discover that many of the saboteurs come from within the industry itself." It's easy to arrest a geek or lay draconian fines on a single mom; what happens when their witchhunt leads to their own offices? Animal Collective won't always be around to get the culprits off the hook.
posted on Jan 2, 2008 - View this thread

"Zuda takes the Web publishing aspect out of the creators' hands, freeing them up to focus on writing and drawing the story. But to get Zuda to publish your comic, you first have to win a competition..." A major player enters into the fray of web comics publishing, previously populated mostly by independents. Is this a good thing or a bad thing?
posted on Dec 28, 2007 - View this thread

An obscure 1911 British law requires a copy of every published book, journal, newspaper, patent, sound recording, magazine etc.. to be permanently archived in at least one of five libraries around the country. The British Library has the most complete collection and is currently adding about 12.5km of new shelf space a year of mostly unheard of and unwanted stuff. A new state-of-the-art warehouse is being constructed with 262 linear kilometers of high-density, fully automated storage in a low-oxygen temperature controlled environment. It is not a library, it is a warehouse for "things that no one wants." BLDG Blog ponders on what it all means.
posted on Dec 4, 2007 - View this thread

djb releases code to public domain, including qmail.
posted on Nov 30, 2007 - View this thread

Dear Rockers. Guilt ridden music lovers get to feel better about themselves.
posted on Nov 26, 2007 - View this thread

Infringement Nation: Copyright Reform and the Law/Norm Gap. [pdf]
posted on Nov 26, 2007 - View this thread

TV-Links website shut down, site creator arrested. Says David Rock, who awaits charges, "It was just a hobby."
posted on Nov 7, 2007 - View this thread

Google has announced plans to implement a filter for copyrighted works on youTube. They have been receiving criticism from all sides.
posted on Nov 6, 2007 - View this thread

Dakou ("Saw Gash") CDs are shipped to China to be dumped in landfill sites. As you might expect, they don't always make it to the tip.
posted on Oct 31, 2007 - View this thread

Oink.busted
posted on Oct 23, 2007 - View this thread

They stole an image of my son and just had to pay $4000. About a year ago I was surprised when I saw an image of my son in an ad for a shop called “Vinderen Elektriske”, selling electronics.
posted on Oct 9, 2007 - View this thread

Viacom used my video without permission on their commercial television show, and now says that I am infringing on THEIR copyright for showing the clip of the work that Viacom made in violation of my own copyright! Writer, film-maker and "somewhat renegade Christian thinker" Christopher Knight (No, not the Brady Bunch kid. And yes, I'm as disappointed by that as you are.) fights back via his blog, with links to his original material. The show in question is Vh-1's Web Junk 2.0, and the clip in question was removed from YouTube, but preserved for posterity by Political Soup (A .wmv file here).
posted on Aug 31, 2007 - View this thread

Many a music fan out there in MeFitown and beyond was delighted with and intrigued by that now-vanished website, Dylan Hears a Who! It featured backing tracks that captured, with an astonishing believability, both the sound and the feel of Highway 61-era Bob, not to mention an uncannily good Dylan vocal imitation. And of course, as is now legend, "Dylan" was singing lyrics straight out of the wonderful works of the good Dr. Seuss. Well, back in April Salon magazine broke the story of the very, very talented individual who put the whole thing together. Those for whom this is old news please forgive me, but it's news to me, and I can't find any notice of it here at MeFi, so, here it is.
posted on Aug 28, 2007 - View this thread

Tech industry to FTC: stop studios from giving consumers scary, inaccurate copyright warnings.
posted on Aug 1, 2007 - View this thread

"The [textbook] industry charges outrageous prices for new textbooks while simultaneously doing everything it can to make older versions unusable or obsolete. There is simply no reason that a new calulus textbook should cost $157. The study of calculus, at least the type of calculus that most of us need to study in high school or undergraduate programs, has not changed significantly in decades." - Textbook Revolution.
posted on Jul 24, 2007 - View this thread

The Man Who Could Kill YouTube. Bob Tur is the little guy who is suing one giant (Google) to do what another giant (Viacom) probably never will -- shut YouTube down
posted on Jul 16, 2007 - View this thread

A games and economic theory argument against intellectual property. Watt's on first in academic paper.
posted on Jun 21, 2007 - View this thread

A Great Idea Lives Forever. Shouldn't Its Copyright? (NYT) In this op-ed, novelist Mark Helprin argues that copyrights should be extended indefinitely. On his blog, Lawrence Lessig suggests using a wiki page to craft a collective rebuttal. More discussion here and here.
posted on May 21, 2007 - View this thread

A Fair(y) Use Tale ^{Single link YouTube}
posted on May 19, 2007 - View this thread

The non-profit group, Public.resource.org, are challenging the Smithsonian Institution by downloading all 6,288 (mostly) public domain photographs from the very restrictive Smithsonian Images site and reposting them to Flickr. [more: here, here] {via Ramage}
posted on May 18, 2007 - View this thread

Gonzales pushes plan to criminalize copyright infringement, making it punishable by life imprisonment; to increase wiretaps; and to require Homeland Security to notify the RIAA in certain circumstances. "To meet the global challenges of IP crime." I'd comment on this, but I'm afraid that someone might think I was copying someone else. The Intellectual Property Protection Act (official press release) appeared previously in a speech (2005) and as a draft (2006) - now the Justice department is pushing Congress to bring it forward. [newsfilter]
posted on May 15, 2007 - View this thread

An impressive array of anti-RIAA articles, mostly from people within the music industry.
posted on Apr 24, 2007 - View this thread

Stanford's new Copyright Renewal Database makes searchable the copyright renewal records of books published from 1923-1963, previously very difficult to do. Between those dates, a renewal registration was required to prevent the expiration of copyright, so books not renewed are now in the public domain. Publishing scanned books on Internet Archive.
posted on Apr 6, 2007 - View this thread

Two students sue Turnitin for copyright violations. "All of these kids are essentially straight-A students, and they have no interest in plagiarizing," said Robert A. Vanderhye, a McLean attorney representing the students pro bono. "The problem with [Turnitin] is the archiving of the documents. They are violating a right these students have to be in control of their own property." (via) (obligatory link to the Best. Thread. Ever)
posted on Apr 2, 2007 - View this thread

Jonathan Lethem's Promiscuous Materials Project invites playwrights and screenwriters to adapt his work for stage or screen. In an essay for Harper's, he explains that, "few of us question the contemporary construction of copyright. It is taken as a law, both in the sense of a universally recognizable moral absolute, like the law against murder, and as naturally inherent in our world, like the law of gravity. In fact, it is neither. Rather, copyright is an ongoing social negotiation, tenuously forged, endlessly revised, and imperfect in its every incarnation." NPR reports he is also giving away the option to turn his novel You Don’t Love Me Yet into a film, with some caveats. For those of us who aren't filmmakers or playwrights, many of the available stories are posted for our reading pleasure.
posted on Mar 18, 2007 - View this thread

The Indie Band Survival Guide: A fantastic, free, 101 pages collection of useful information for musicians - covers topics such as recording, copyright, major label contracts, commercial radio, promoting your music, band websites, distribution, filesharing and live shows.
posted on Feb 25, 2007 - View this thread

Can photographers be plagarists?
posted on Feb 8, 2007 - View this thread

While Courtney pulled an Albini, Jeff handed out the bread. Are the peasants acting like emperors, or do they still want something shiny, aluminum, plastic, and digital? Debacle or cage, something's got to give (pdf). Alternatively, you can just roll your own.
posted on Feb 4, 2007 - View this thread

Fox goes after YouTube pirates. Fox takes a new approach to fight copyright infringers who post illegal content on YouTube. Going after the user who uploaded the copyrighted material instead of forcing YouTube to pull it from the web site should prove a more effective deterrent.
posted on Jan 25, 2007 - View this thread

A list of sites with public domain images was just posted by a DailyKos user and seems very useful.
posted on Jan 20, 2007 - View this thread