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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.

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

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

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 - 11:34

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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YouTube's victory over Viacom reinforces DMCA safe harbor protections for websites

Submitted by Sarah on Fri, 07/02/2010 - 12:34

On June 23, Viacom's claim for $1 billion in damages was shot down when the District Court for the Southern District of New York found YouTube and its owner Googlei not liable for copyright infringement in a much-anticipated decision. The two corporate giants have been at it since 2007, when Viacom joined with other plaintiffs including Paramount Pictures and sued YouTube, claiming that the online video service was legally responsible for copyright infringement when users posted clips of copyrighted material, including The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, owned by plaintiffs.

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Drumbeat San Diego: A Collaboration of Mozilla Foundation and New Media Rights

Submitted by New Media Rights on Thu, 07/01/2010 - 11:10

New Media Rights and Mozilla Foundation are working together to create a San Diego Drumbeat event. This event aims to bring together artists, filmmakers, musicians, citizen journalists, lawyers, software developers and other groups dependent on an open Internet. We are seeking input from those interested in participating on how we can make this an excellent event.

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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 - 17:26

"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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Mera Szendro Bok's picture

FCC gets an earful at Stanford public hearing on the need for diversity

Submitted by Mera Szendro Bok on Tue, 06/01/2010 - 11:01

Didn't make it to the latest FCCi hearing in Stanford, CA on media consolidation ? Here is a resource for a quick update.

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FCC coming to Stanford University. Tell the FCC what you think about media consolidation and the future of journalism.

Submitted by New Media Rights on Wed, 05/19/2010 - 09:59

Please see the following from our friends at Free Press regarding the upcoming FCCi meeting on media consolidation in Stanford, California. If you or someone you know will be in the area please share this with them.

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Mera Szendro Bok's picture

A citizen's update to Net Neutrality and an Open Internet

Submitted by Mera Szendro Bok on Mon, 05/17/2010 - 17:35

"Internet Forever" by Flickr user HotDiggityDogs under Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Sharealike 2.0 license.

The last few weeks saw many new developments affecting a free and open internet. Find out what has happened, where we came from, and what it all means for the movement to protect and ensure an open internet.

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New Media Rights files comments in FCC Future of Media proceeding

Submitted by New Media Rights on Mon, 05/10/2010 - 12:13

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.

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art neill's picture

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

Submitted by art neill on Sat, 04/17/2010 - 09:52

"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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