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New Media Rights joins Nameless Coalition asking Facebook to fix its authentic name policy

This week New Media Rights joined with the Nameless Coalition as part of a broad global alliance of over 60 human rights, digital rights, LGBTQ, and women’s rights advocates to send an open letter (full text below) to Facebook asking them to rethink their authentic names policy.

Submitted by Teri Karobonik last modified Wed, 10/07/2015 - 12:36pm

California Western School of Law student brings Bitcoin knowledge to San Diego’s tech community

Imagine a world where you didn’t need a central bank to transfer money at a hefty markup. Enter Bitcoin, a new digital currency disrupting the banking industry.  Before he came to law school, New Media Rights Intern Emory Roane actively worked with this disruptive technology as a Bitcoin miner. Miners help to verify financial transactions in a giant public ledger. Recently Emory was asked to share his knowledge of Bitcoin on a panel called “Can Bitcoin Pay for the Internet of Things”; alongside Bitcoin and cyber security experts Bill Bonney, Justine Phillips, Paul Puey and Paul Boulanger. 

Submitted by New Media Rights last modified Tue, 10/06/2015 - 9:40am

New Media Rights to speak at SBEP Annual Community Outreach Meeting

New Media Rights is excited to announce that Executive Director Art Neill will be speaking at The City of San Diego Small Business Advisory Board’s Annual Community Outreach Meeting.  Art will be joining a panel of legal and marketing experts to talk about "Strategies to Promote & Protect Your Business"The meeting will also feature a panel about what small businesses can learn from startups and a keynote from Steven Cox, CEO of TakeLessons.com.

The meeting will take place Friday, October 16, 2015 from 8:30 a.m. - 11:15 a.m in the Downtown Central Library’s Shiley Special Events Suite. The event is free but the Business Advisory Board requests that you RSVP in advance. For more information about the event and to RSVP, check out their Eventbrite page here.

New Media Rights would also like to thank City of San Diego Economic Development Department for their continued financial support of New Media Rights.

Submitted by New Media Rights last modified Fri, 10/30/2015 - 12:11pm

September Newsletter:NMR students are front page news!

NMR students are front page news!

You may have heard about our fair use app…we hear its kind of a thing now. This summer California Western School of Law did a featured front page story all about our app and our amazing student interns who helped us create it.  You can check it out over on the CWSL site here.

Are you a student at California Western School of Law passionate about helping artists, entrepreneurs and internet users with legal issues brought about by the digital age? This spring we will once again be offering an opportunity to be a part of our clinic class, check out our intern page for more details on how to apply. Applications open September 9th and close October 9th.

Submitted by New Media Rights last modified Wed, 09/09/2015 - 9:57am

New Media Rights and KEI tell the US Trade Representative not to adopt measures that could expand the “20th­ century digital black hole"

Today New Media Rights joined the Authors Alliance, Creative Commons, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Knowledge Ecology International in calling for the US Trade Representative not to agree to measures in the Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement (TTP) that could greatly reduced our ability to make orphaned works more accessible to the public.

Submitted by New Media Rights last modified Wed, 09/09/2015 - 4:39pm

Today we join more than 90 organizations in asking President Obama to open up taxpayer funded educational materials to the public

Today, New Media Rights along with a broad coalition of more than 90 education, library, technology, public interest, and legal organizations, called on the White House to take action to ensure federally funded educational materials are made available as Open Educational Resources (OER) that are free to use, share, and improve!

Submitted by New Media Rights last modified Sun, 11/01/2015 - 8:58pm

New Media Rights supports critical protections for military whistleblowers

Speaking out on wrongdoing in the military can be particularly challenging for service members who are trained to stay in line and follow orders. The stakes could not be higher for military whistleblowers who speak out against fraud, waste, abuse, and sexual assault in the military. A recent report by the Government Accountability Office noted a number of deficiencies in the protections offered to members of the military who report wrongdoing, and far too often, those whistleblowers are unfairly punished for their efforts to bring accountability to the armed services.

This is why New Media Rights recently joined with a variety of organizations, including Project on Government Oversight, Government Accountability Project​, Public Citizen​, Sunlight Foundation​, Demand Progress​ and others, in sending a letter to Congressional leaders supporting critical protections f in sending a letter to Congressional leaders supporting critical protections for military whistleblowers.  We've worked with various filmmakers and creators who bring light to issues in our military. These have included working on an important film about the treatment of workers in U.S. bases overseas, and a recently launched podcast on Veteran's issues.

Submitted by New Media Rights last modified Wed, 09/02/2015 - 10:09am

New Media Rights’ final DMCA Anti-circumvention comments encourage the Copyright Office to protect fair use for all filmmakers

Today, New Media Rights submitted our final set of comments supporting exemptions that allow filmmakers to bypass encryption and technical protections measures for purposes of making fair use.

Specifically, following testimony in May, the Copyright Office requested definitions of a variety of terms including documentary, documentary-like, non-fiction, fictional, scripted, biopic, “inspired by,” imaginative, and “totally fiction” that were used in the proceeding.

In our responses to the Copyright Office's request, we explain that genre distinctions are not easily made, and that an exemption for all filmmakers is the best way to proceed. 

Submitted by New Media Rights last modified Mon, 06/29/2015 - 4:51pm

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