How can New Media Rights help you?

Keep up with NewMediaRights.org by following us on Twitter!

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!

Copyright

Public Interest Internet, Intellectual Property, and Media Law Internships

Interested in being an intern? Check out our requirements and apply !

Best Practices for Creative Commons attributions - how to attribute works you reuse under a Creative Commons license

Find out how to site or source creative commons work. Creative commons work allows you to share, remix and reuse legally, just make sure to check out what license it is under.

“creative commons” by Flikr user libraryman used under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 license

art neill's picture

How service providers deny users the right to counternotify for content removed by DMCA takedown notices

DMCA pic

New Media Rights recently heard from a blogger who received notification that a takedown notice was sent to their service provider, a website that hosts individuals blogs, and that the user’s content was removed.  However, the blogging service didn't

1) Identify the individual who requested the information be taken down OR

2) Specifically identify the infringing material

What's the problem?  This essentially destroys a users right to counternotify, allowing overreaching large content companies to control and remove Internet speech at will. 

Learn about the problem here, and learn how to fight back if you have content removed by a DMCA takedown notice.

A New Leistungsschutzrecht? Say It's Nicht So!

It's tough being a publisher these days.  Of course, no one is having much fun in the current economic downturn, but publishers were up against it even before the slowdown.  Circulations have been down across the board for years now, which in turn has slashed the advertising revenues that print publications have always relied upon to survive.  It's just a bad time to be publishing newspapers and magazines, at least while using the classical publishing business model.

RIAA Asks Schoolkids To Assist With Propaganda

Last week, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) announced an update to Music-Rules!, its flagship "curriculum" for teaching copyright law to schoolkids.

New Media Guides Legal and How-to guides

Welcome to our Legal and How-to resource center.  We hope these guides will help you, the user/creator,  to learn about

  • Rights and laws on the Internet
  • How to use new technologies and social media in your own life
art neill's picture

Youtube puts ads on videos without permission

Youtube's filtering technology may be causing advertisements to appear on content without permission.  Besides the possible contract violations, the ads create catch 22's when uploading openly licensed (ie. Creative Commons) content to Youtube.   Youtube could have a significant effect on the future openly licensed video content.  This is appears to be a slap in the face to open content and step in the wrong direction.

art neill's picture

RIAA wins $1.9 million judgment in retrial of alleged filesharer Jammie Thomas

A retrial of Jammie Thomas, who has been unique in her refusal to settle with the RIAA's filesharing gestapo, has ended with an even greater jury verdict against her. This time, instead of $9,250 per song allegedly shared on Kazaa, the jury found her guilty of "willful" infringement at $80,000 per song. As if you weren't already scratching your head at the current state of copyright law (think the failure of the DMCA to account for fair use, copyright term of 70 years plus life of the author)

michael donahue's picture

Is the DMCA the weapon of choice for Internet bullies?

Internet bullies are taking matters into their own hands by trying to use the "safe harbor" provisions of the DMCA to wrongfully intimidate others. It is crucial for all Internet service providers, website operators, bloggers, etc. to fully understand the state of the law in order to avoid unneccesary harassment. 

Section 512 of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) creates "safe harbor" provisions for online service providers who allow user generated content. Under these provisions, online service providers are granted some protection against copyright infringement claims as long as certain procedures are followed. Generally, a copyright holder must send a "take down" notice to the service provider, and the service provider will inform the user the content has been taken down. In response, the user may reply with a "counter notice" letter to try and have the content re-posted.

Syndicate content