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New Media Rights answers questions from the public and takes media inquiries regarding the law and technology. Please contact us if you have a question and we'll be glad to assist you. Our free legal and how-to resources, as well as our free public media studio and equipment, are supported by donations by individuals like you, so please consider donating today! Contact us with questions about your digital rights.

Are parents liable for children’s illegal filesharing?

Submitted by New Media Rights on Wed, 11/16/2011 - 12:02

If you’re reading this, you may be a parent who has received a notice that your Internet account has been flagged for alleged illegal filesharing, and your child has admitted to illegally uploading/downloading the music or movie in question. The extent that you as a parent are liable for the “copyright infringement” of your children is still up for legal debate. New Media Rights has created this guide for parents to along with the “Mass Copyright Lawsuit” guide to help you understand what you or your child may be accused of.

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Guide for defendants in mass copyright lawsuits (Bit Torrent Filesharing cases)

Submitted by New Media Rights on Mon, 10/10/2011 - 09:52

You may be a defendant, or may know a defendant involved in one of the “BitTorrent filesharing lawsuits.” These suits are also sometimes referred to as “Mass copyright lawsuits” because for the first time, hundreds and sometimes thousands of individuals like yourself have been implicated in lawsuits alleging “copyright infringement.” Indeed, as of September 2011, there are over 200,000 individuals involved in such lawsuits.

New Media Rights has drafted the guide below to provide you with basic, practical information regarding these lawsuits.
 

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September Newsletter: Success stories, challenging AT&T, and Blogworld 2011

Submitted by New Media Rights on Thu, 09/08/2011 - 09:40

Our September newsletter brings news of success stories fighting DMCAi abuse, a grant awarded by the California Consumer Protection Foundation, and our continuing efforts to stop the AT&T-Tmobile merger. 

You can also catch us in person at Media Law in the Digital Age in October, a conference coproduced by Harvard Berkman Center's Digital Media Law Project and the Center for Sustainable Journalism at Kennesaw State University, as well as Blogworld 2011 in LA in November.

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New Media Rights protects another blogger from censorship and DMCA abuse

art neill's picture
Submitted by art neill on Tue, 08/16/2011 - 16:30

New Media Rights recently protected blogger Michael Petrelis' speech and commentary regarding another blogger who pretended to be a gay Syrian woman living in Damascus. 

Mr. Petrelis is just one example of the hundreds of individuals who rely on New Media Rights daily.  His story reminds us that we have the right to criticize and comment on the culture that surrounds us.

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Youtube offers of one out of six Creative Commons licenses, sends mixed messages

Submitted by New Media Rights on Mon, 06/06/2011 - 15:51

New Media Rights offers legal help to creators on the use of Creative Commons licenses. We were interested to see how Youtube has recently begun to incorporate this progressive licensing structure into their video options. Although we welcome Creative Commons license inclusion into Youtube's service, the way that Youtube has rolled out its CCi license options raises serious questions about the future of the online video ecosystem and how "open" that ecosystem will be.

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Copyright Office decision supports cell phone jailbreaking, encourages educators and remixers

Submitted by Shaun Spalding on Thu, 07/29/2010 - 13:14

Regardless of how one feels about the Digital Millenium Copyrighti Act (DMCAi) as a whole, it’s clear that the Copyright Office's recent rulemaking process has appropriately further limited the DMCA's anti-circumvention provision. In February 2009, New Media Rights submitted comments in support of these changes that have now been enacted.

The Office's ruling attempted to clarify the DMCA's prohibition on “circumventing” digital rights management (DRMi) and “other technical protection measures” -- a prohibition that, up until now, has given Apple the theoretical right to intimidate iPhonei users with “jailbroken” phones with legal action. The Office ruled that this jailbreaking does not constitute violation of the DMCA. Although Apple has never prosecuted any iPhone jailbreaker under the DMCA, Apple did strongly object to any exemption to the anti-circumvention rule. This has led many general interest news sources to label these recent exemptions as a victory specific to iPhone jailbreakers which isn’t true.  The victory is a broader one, for cell phone users, video remix artists, documentarians, and educators, among others.

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Let the Wookie Win: A Short History of Star Wars Litigation

Submitted by Shaun Spalding on Tue, 07/20/2010 - 10:34

San Diego Comic Con has arrived again! Although New Media Rights provides assistance to creators and internet users nationally, we are firmly rooted in San Diego and supporting local San Diego arts and culture.

Every year, Comic Con brings Storm Troopers fraternizing with Bounty Hunters back to downtown San Diego, and grown women huddled up in Tauntaun sleeping bags back to the Convention Center’s hallways.

To celebrate Star Wars Day and Comic Con returning to San Diego, and to prove learning about the law can be fun (sometimes), we present to you a short history of Star Wars trademark litigation: two cases in which Lucasfilm took people to court over Star Wars and lost.

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Bros Icing Bros - A Case for Copyright Bullying by Overreacting Smirnoff Lawyers

Submitted by Shaun Spalding on Mon, 06/21/2010 - 16:26

"Smirnoff Ice" by Fernando Ariotti (Released Under Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.0 Generic )

On the morning of July 16, my bros on Twitteri noticed something totally un-chill: BrosIcingBros.com, the epicenter of the icing phenomenon, had been taken down. Instead of user-submitted photos of young brosephs and bro-ettes, on their knees drinking bottles of Smirnoff Ice, the website displayed an unceremonious, one-sentence farewell: "We had a good run Bros..."

At NewMediaRights, our pro-bono IPi attorney Art Neill regularly deals with individuals being bullied by large copyright/trademark owners into taking down their sites, even when those sites don't actually violate copyright and trademark law. To bring this practice to light, we wanted to publicly discuss how strong/weak Smirnoff's legal arguments to take down BrosIcingBros.com really are, and whether Smirnoff had good faith when chose to take the site down.

By the end of our analysis, we’ll conclude that

(A) Smirnoff’s arguments for both copyright and trademark infringement are weak at best;

(B) Even though Smirnoff did have good faith to send a cease and desist letter to BrosIcingBros for some instances of infringement, it was not within reason for Smirnoff to require that the entire site to get taken down.

(C) If BrosIcingBros was, in fact, taken down because of legal problems with Smirnoff, then this is a classic example of a large brand’s legal department overreaching with cease and desist letters and bullying individuals into compliance without sufficient legal arguments to back their claims up.

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Respecting the linking economy and information aggregators - part 1 of 3 online rights battles that need fighting this decade

art neill's picture
Submitted by art neill on Sat, 04/17/2010 - 08:52

"Rainbow" shared by Jakrome under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0Intuitively, if you use the Internet even sparingly as a means of connecting you to the broader world, you'll recognize that much of the activity that takes place on the internet involves humans (and automated search engines and other services) filtering and aggregating basic facts and information.  This is so fundamental to our daily Internet use it largely goes unnoticed.  A link from search engine, a tweet, or a status update from a social media service are just a few examples.  There is huge value in helping citizens sift through the wonderful oversaturation of information the Internet offers.

There are, however, real threats to our ability to find content and navigate in our vast information ocean.  This very cornerstone of the Internet is threatened by fear, misunderstanding, and overreaching from some traditional content owners.

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