Copyright

It was time for another Mickey Mouse Copyright Extension to keep Disney’s star property out of the public domain. Somebody’s nephew had a bright idea. Instead of telling Congress to add the standard twenty years to the length of copyright, why not go for the big time? Extend copyright by 500 years. Somebody’s niece added […]

It would appear that Sony has reached some kind of unpublicized settlement with the FTC? concerning their “RootKit” malware the corporation used in its music CDs last year, that was basically a virus that then left their victims open to more viruses. Sony agreed to pay a fine of $4.5 million and up to $150 […]

Stanford Center for Internet and Society Kahle v. Gonzales – In this case, two archives ask the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California to hold that statutes that extended copyright terms unconditionally — the Copyright Renewal Act and the Copyright Term Extension Act (CTEA) — are unconstitutional under the Free Speech Clause […]

The U.S. Copyright Office granted narrow, three-year exemptions to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) that permit circumvention of access-control technologies on electronic media if specific conditions are met. Under one exemption, professors of film and media studies can circumvent the access-control technology of DVDs in their libraries to use film clips in class. Another […]