A number of recent news articles ([1] [2] [3]) have mentioned a controversial 2011-12 legislative effort known as “SOPA” (which was short for the Stop Online Piracy Act bill introduced in the Hous

I’ve heard so much about legal deposit in the context of web archiving, and have been enthralled with what it represents: a recognition that born-digital sources are today’s documentary…

An index of circulars and factsheets

Best explanation of sound copyright I've yet seen.

Charles Levy - Wikimedia Commons     There once was a time when proposed inaugural Copyright Board tariffs were virtually bankable assets...

The Copyright Board of Canada delivered a devastating defeat to Access Copyright on Friday, releasing its decision on a tariff for copying by employees of provincial governments. Access Copyright had initially sought $15 per employee for the period from 2005 - 2009 and $24 per employee for the period from 2010 - 2014. It later reduced its demands to $5.56 and $8.45. The board conducted a detailed review of the copying within government and the applicability of the Access Copyright licence. Its final decision gives Access Copyright pennies rather than dollars: 11.56 cents for 2005-2009 and 49.71 cents for 2010-2014.  The financial loss for Access Copyright in the case is obvious as it expected to earn millions from the tariff. With roughly 120,000 full time employees covered by the tariff, Access Copyright's initial ask would have brought in $9 million in the first five years and another $14.4 million in the second five years for a total of almost $25 million (even its reduced ask envisioned nearly $9 million in revenues). Instead, the Board estimates that the total value of the tariff for the entire period will be $370,000, which is unlikely to cover Access Copyright's legal and administrative costs (it also does not include revenues from the Province of Ontario, which struck an incredibly bad deal in 2011 by agreeing to pay $7.50 per year per employee).

This week, Stan Muller launches the Crash Course Intellectual Property mini-series. So, what is intellectual property, and why are we teaching it? Well, intellectual property is about ideas and their ownership, and it's basically about the rights of creators to make money from their work. Intellectual property is so pervasive in today's world, we thought you ought to know a little bit about it. We're going to discuss the three major elements of IP: Copyright, Patents, and Trademarks.

Using a little-known copyright rule and a trove of baseball-related trivia, an MIT economist figured out how current copyright laws specifically affect one online community.

Rights reversion.

I got to attend the most awesome presentation, and since there really isn’t a better place to write about it, y’all are just going to have ...

The Entertainment Software Association doesn’t want anyone to restore the functionality of older videogames that are no longer supported by their publisher, because, says ESA, this is “hacking,” and

A friend of mine in college used to refer to the Discovery Channel as the “What’s Eating the Gazelle Today” station. If you paid attention to the proud majestic carnivores, you go…

The problem The following question was emailed to me by Jim Fowler: “I’m a professor at Ohio State and I sit on the committee which is drafting a new IP policy for faculty work. I&#8217…