On September 12 the European Parliament decided to ignore expert advice and adopted a version of the new Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market (DSM) that contains troublesome issues, which have been discussed extensively in this blog and many other places. The Parliament took three particularly troublesome actions Read more…
This is a short post to bring together a few resources about the important vote taking place at the European Parliament on the proposed Copyright in the Digital Market Directive. I’ve written about the issues I have with the proposed new publisher right (Article 11) here: “this is a misguided Read more…
In the last blog post we talked about the nefarious article 11 in the proposed new Copyright Directive, and why most experts agree it is a terrible idea. It is now the turn to look at yet another bad proposal in the Directive, and it is Article 13. We now Read more…
I don’t know about you, but whenever I see a new meme (such as the fantabulous “Karma’s a bitch“) I don’t think about how it became popular, who created it, or even if it is appropriate. My first thought is always “what are the copyright implications”? Yes, I need help. Read more…
Back in the 90s, copyright law was concerned about the issue of linking to content, in some quarters it was considered that linking to content required some sort of permission because it would be an act similar to that of making the work available to the public. In early cases, Read more…
I have just listened to the latest episode of the excellent podcast “This American Life”, which dealt with the story of a monkey that took a selfie in the jungles of Indonesia, and David Slater, the photographer who made the portrait famous around the world. The podcast recounts the story Read more…
So, the long-running legal saga starring a photographer, a monkey and an animal rights organisation has finally come to an end when both parties (not the monkey) have reached a settlement. While it is not common to learn the particulars of such an agreement, lawyers for PETA have said that Read more…
Shutterstock Andres Guadamuz, University of Sussex When a group of museums and researchers in the Netherlands unveiled a portrait entitled The Next Rembrandt, it was something of a tease to the art world. It wasn’t a long lost painting but a new artwork generated by a computer that had analysed Read more…
The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) has made a very important decision in the case of Stichting Brein v Ziggo (C‑610/15), which involves blocking access to The Pirate Bay (TPB) and the legal nature of torrent files. This case follows a CJEU decision on multimedia players containing Read more…
The newspaper industry in in disarray because of the Internet, old business models are no longer working, and media empires need to contest with a changed environment. There are two ways of addressing the challenges ahead, to change business models, or to hire an army of lobbyists and lawyers to Read more…