On Friday, March 28, the FCC’s Consumer Advisory Committee approved an important recommendation to modernize and improve the way we bring high-speed broadband to classrooms and libraries around the county.  New Media Rights Executive Director Art Neill, and Legal Interns Marko Radisavljevic and Kyle Welch were directly involved in the research, drafting, and proposal of this recommendation.

New Media Rights’ Executive Director Art Neill is a member of the CAC, and co-chair of the Broadband Working Group. 

New Media Rights conducted an extensive review of the FCC’s E-rate program, including analyzing a vast amount of input on the program from a variety of stakeholders. Based on this research, New Media Rights’ staff and interns helped lead the efforts to draft a recommendation encouraging the FCC to modernize and improve the 18 year old E-rate program for the 21st century.  The recommendations include both general priorities as well as specific process priorities that will improve the E-rate program. 

We continue to fulfill our non-profit mission to provide free and dramatically reduced fee one-to-one legal services to underserved creators and innovators that need specialized help with Internet, intellectual property, media, and technology law.

We're committed to helping individuals, nonprofits, and startups use their time to create and innovate, rather than fighting unnecessary legal battles.  We continue to stand up to internet censorship and those who abuse the system to bully independent creators and internet users.  Below is a list of accomplishments from 2013, and our plans for 2014.

We can't do this kind of work without your help.

Support us with a tax-deductible donation and help us start 2014 on the right foot!

We need your support to make sure hundreds of creators, innovative new media projects, and internet users like you will get the quality legal help they need to keep creating and avoid lawsuits. We are grateful for any donation in whatever amount is appropriate for you, but have 2 special levels for donors this year.

$250 - Founder (Individiual)

$500 - Founder (Organization)

$1000 - Champion

You can donate now by clicking here!

In return for a donation of $250 or more, we will place your name, or your organization’s name, as well as a link to your website, on our Founders page on our website (unless you choose to give anonymously).  You'll also get a custom postcard signed by the NMR team. If you give $1000 or more, we'll also feature you prominently as a Founder & Open Internet Champion and you'll get all of the above.

Please share this page on Facebook and Twitter and let the world know you support New Media Rights!

Read more about our 2013 accomplishments, and how you can level up with a donation to support our work.

We're thrilled to announce that one of our clients, the Dark Mod Team at Broken Glass Studios, recently launched the standalone version of their wildly popular open source game, the Dark Mod! Here's is a testimonial from the Dark Mod Team about how New Media Rights helped them launch their game. The Dark Mod is a completely open source, free to download and play game created by hundreds of dedicated volunteers all over the world, and bills itself as "Stealth Gaming in a Gothic Steampunk World."

It's an example of the best kind of collaborative creativity the internet enables, bringing to together, artists, designers, and programmers from across the planet to create something for the public.  Here's a quote from the Dark Mod

"In our case, they went into significantly more detail in gathering all the information and aspects of our specific issues, doing hard research on all the legal issues potentially raised, and then packaging it all into a weighty brief that not only answered our most pressing questions, but also was written in a practical way we could actually use as working developers.

NMR is in the business of assisting digital artists in getting their creations to the world in the right way. There are so many complex issues out there, that by itself the simple desire to do things legally and properly isn't enough. We need guidance. And as my original searches confirmed, I couldn't find any other group that was even looking at the questions we needed answered except NMR, to say nothing of a group willing to offer free assistance in meeting our goals, to say nothing of going to the great lengths NMR went to do it. NMR did all of these things."

Click here to read their full story of how New Media Rights helped the Dark Mod.

Today New Media Rights joined 17 other organizations in asking the United States Patent and Trademark Office to extend the amount of time the public has to reply to the request for comments on the Department of Commerce green paper, “Copyright Policy, Creativity, And Innovation In The Digital Economy.”  The Green Paper extensively outlines the current challenges regarding copyright enforcement in the new media age. The request for comments outlines five critical areas for comment including: the law around remixes; the first sale doctrine in the digital age; the reform of statutory damages in file sharing cases; the possibility of government organized licensing and improvement of the DMCA takedown system. Each of these topics deserves extensive discussion and asking stakeholders to provide comments on 5 broad areas of copyright law within 2 weeks is unrealistic. The initial comments period proposed only allowed 2 weeks before the first public hearing.  New Media Rights is hopeful the request for changes to comment period and public meeting schedule will be granted. You can find the full text of the letter below.

New Media Rights is looking forward to continuing to be a vital part of the discussion surrounding the modification of copyright law for the new media era.  We offer insight from front line work with independent creators and internet users whose perspective is too often missing from policy debates.  We’re hope that reforms in the coming years can radically decrease the legal uncertainty around remixing and increase independent creators’ ability to stand up to content bullying.

SXSW movie from New Media Rights on Vimeo

UPDATE: Voting for SXSW is now closed. Thank you so much for your votes!

New Media Rights wants to teach you how to “Stand Up To Content Bullies, Know Your Copy Rights” at SXSW Interactive this year. We know copyright laws are complicated, and they're often the reason why your videos, mobile apps, and other content may get taken down. "Fair use" is complicated, but it's often the reason you can get your content back up. Our panel will teach real-world best practices to use the law, Youtube's rules, and practical steps to fight back against content bullies.