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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 for legal assistance at (619) 591-8870.

New Media Rights files comments in FCC Future of Media proceeding

San Diego, California - On Friday May 7th, 2010 New Media Rights submitted comments in the FCCi's Future of Media proceeding. 

New Media Rights' comments to the Commission draw directly on our experience providing one-to-one pro bono legal assistance as well as a free public media studio to creators of all types.  Our work has given us the opportunity to engage with a wide variety of media makers, advocates and citizens.  These comments are also intended to supplement a conversation held between New Media Rights, Free Press, Main Street Project, People's Production House, The Transmission Project and Mountain Area Information Network with the FCC's Steve Waldman on Thursday May 6th, 2010.

art neill's picture

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

"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.

art neill's picture

The AP is going stop bloggers from pirating content (or quoting in fair use for legitimate reasons)

The AP says it is taking aim at "wholesale theft" with new technology that is aimed at targeting reposting of "entire articles." The new technology is supposed to simply flag questionable articles for lawyers and paralegals to then review.

The question is will the new technology be so limited, or will the AP use the technology to follow the same path it took filing DMCA takedown notices falsely characterizing the law regarding the Drudge retort's postings as follows:

"...the use is not fair use simply because the work copied happened to be
a news article and that the use is of the headline and the first few
sentences only
."

How the law strangles creativity, an introduction to Creative Commons by Lawrence Lessig

Lawrence Lessig discusses remix culture and how the law strangles creativity.