New Media Rights will be at the REC Innovation Lab at San Diego Miramar College on February 28th! 

Assistant Director Erika Lee and Student Fellow Emily Kirschenheuter will be speaking about copyright, contracts and other legal considerations that startups should be thinking about. We'll be focusing on common areas where it can be easy to make mistakes, and talk about ways that you can prevent some of these common missteps early on. We'll also talk about moments where it's probably time to reach out to a lawyer along the way. READ MORE

The United States Copyright Office recently published its final rule for implementation of the procedures that are to govern the initial stages of a Copyright Claims Board (CCB) proceeding. The CCB will be a new forum where copyright small claims disputes can be heard.

It will have a significant impact on creators and technology businesses. Disputes previously too costly to bring to federal court can now be brought to the CCB, which allows claims up to $30,000 (no more than $15,000 per work). Many creators will either face disputes brought against them as respondents, or consider using the process as an enforcement mechanism. 

The final rule establishes a process for bringing claims at the CCB, and directly cites New Media Rights’ comments, written by California Western School of Law 2L Mariana Perez, Executive Director Art Neill, and Assistant Director Erika Lee, multiple times. Our comments discussed law school clinic participation, concerns regarding how respondents receive adequate awareness of the claims against them, the need to collect data on CCB proceedings and revisit and improve CCB processes, and various grammar and typographical errors in the proposed rules. READ MORE

Every three years the Copyright Office meets to reconsider exemptions to the DMCA Anti-Circumvention provisions. These exemptions are critical to ensuring creators and consumers’ ability to bypass technological protection measures on copyrighted works, allowing them to make fair use of works in a variety of circumstances.  Continuing our participation every since 2009, NMR staff and California Western law students submitted worked on behalf of creators and consumers to maintain three key exemptions. These exemptions help ensure that documentary filmmakers and noncommercial video creators can access materials in fair use for their work, and that consumers can install the apps and software of their choice on their smartphones.

On October 27, 2021 the Copyright Office revealed the results of their 2021 Anti-Circumvention Rulemaking. All three of the exemptions NMR petitioned to renew have been renewed, and we are cited 8 times in the new recommendation.