Public Domain

The top 10 legal issues today’s Journalists, Creators, and Entrepreneurs share

“For too many journalists, one lawsuit could bankrupt them or their newsroom.” -Josh Stearns, GR Dodge Foundation

In our 9 year history providing legal services on over 1400 individual matters, we’ve tracked a significant convergence in the legal needs of journalists, creators and entrepreneurs. This convergence is the result of the rise in the importance of nonprofit and independent projects and the common use of the internet as the means of distribution. As a result, a common set of core legal issues has emerged among journalists, creators, and early stage tech entrepreneurs.  We share the top 10 areas of convergence below.

Photo credit: "A Bridge to Nowhere" by Paolo Crosetto on Flickr, used via Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 license

Submitted by Art Neill last modified Mon, 06/17/2019 - 10:06am

Copyright & Fair Use Workshop for Filmmakers and Video Creators - A Doculink sponsored event in Los Angeles Saturday November 8

New Media Rights' Executive Director Art Neill is speaking in the Los Angeles area Saturday November 8, 2014 about Copyright, Fair Use, Music Licensing, and Creative Commons.  If you're in the LA area come on out and say hello!  The event is sponsored by Doculink and the Glendale Library, Arts and Culture Department.

Click for more details about the event!

Submitted by New Media Rights last modified Thu, 01/22/2015 - 7:47pm

NMR to speak on fair use & copyright law at the Alliance for Community Media Western Region Conference, October 23 in Ventura, CA

New Media Rights Staff Attorney Teri Karobonik will be speaking on a panel at the Alliance for Community Media Western Region Conference on October 23, 2014 in Ventura, CA

The topic of the panel will be "Intellectual Property, Copyrights, and Fair Use in Media"

Technology has made it increasingly challenging to navigate the world of intellectual property, particularly in media and arts. This panel will address common questions journalists and creators face such as:

  •  What kind of rights do you need to secure?
  • What is Fair Use and can anyone explain whether it applies? 
  • How do you navigate the legal issues inside of platforms like YouTube? 
  • Where can rights be obtain if needed?
  • What are a producer’s liabilities?
  • Can local bands play cover tunes?
  • Can you fight a take-down notice?
  • How much trouble can our organization be in? 

The panel will be an opportunity to give positive support to journalists and artists, showing them the ways the law can actually empower their creativity, how to avoid legal disputes in the first place, and how to move forward if you do face legal threats.

Submitted by New Media Rights last modified Tue, 10/21/2014 - 4:14pm

September Newsletter: Standing up for the Open Internet at the FCC!

We want to thank all of our supporters who made our #Oneof1000 celebration a success this summer.  It was nice to celebrate all we’ve accomplished as a community in person and online, and we hope to enjoy your company for some delicious tacos again soon!

 

Despite taking a moment to celebrate with clients and supporters like the San Diego based nonprofit Green Neuroscience Lab (pictured above left with their newest scientist!), our team has been standing up for the Open Internet at the FCC; writing to the President about the importance of copyright reform and an Open Internet to 21st Century innovation; appearing on This Week in Law; releasing new educational guides (here, here, and here); delivering educational workshops, and answering your legal questions.  Here’s are the highlights of what we’ve been up to!

Submitted by New Media Rights last modified Wed, 10/01/2014 - 2:28pm

NMR joins USA Doing Archives' discussion of copyright and the law surrounding digital archive projects

Ever wondered how copyright and other laws affect the work that archivists do? Here at NMR we’ve helped our fair share of archivists; so we were happy to participate in Doing Archives first Hang out On Air at New England Archivists Spring 2014 meeting.  We joined Christopher Felker, creator of Doing Archives as well as Henrik Mondrup from Aalborg University Copenhagen and Heather Nodler a law student at Georgetown and former archivist for an informative discussion on the current state of archives and the law.  Missed the live hangout? No worries, you can find a recording of the entire thing above.

Also if you an archivist, academic or scholar; New Media Rights is here to help with your legal questions. For more information, check out our “Services We Provide Page” we made especially for you!

Submitted by New Media Rights last modified Wed, 04/02/2014 - 6:09pm

The Public Domain shouldn't cost $165 an hour.

At New Media Rights we work to make the public domain more accessible. We feature guides to help you figure out when something falls into the public domain and we have a great guide that will help you find public domain and openly licensed works to use in your own creative works. We also have several YouTube videos that help answer commonly asked questions about the public domain.


At New Media Rights we think the public domain is something to be particularly concerned with since no new works will enter the public domain until 2019. That’s why the work New Media Rights does to bring awareness to the problems surrounding the public domain is so critical. Work like this blog post explaining how expensive it is to find out if some works are in the public domain.


If you have a question about the public domain you can contact us here. And if you’d like to support our work you can donate here. You can also follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and Youtube.  You can also sign on to support Copyright Week’s 6 principles, including the importance of building a robust public domain, through the EFF here.

Submitted by New Media Rights last modified Tue, 01/13/2015 - 2:04pm

Pages

Learn about our legal services for: App Developers, Artists & Graphic Designers, Bloggers & Journalists, Clothing Designers, Entrepreneurs, E-commerce Business People & Startups, Filmmakers & YouTube creators, Public Broadcasting producers,Game Developers, Internet users & Smartphone users, Makers, Musicians, Non-Profits, Photographers, Scholars, Researchers, and Writers and Publishers.