Social Media

Data portability policies to ensure and open and competitive internet - an idea whose time has come?

Data Portability Icon - CC-BY 2.0

I recently shared the concept of developing data portability policies, standards, and best practices as a potential project for New Media Rights' Drumbeat San Diego event, and as project that could fit within Mozilla's larger Drumbeat initiative fostering projects that celebrate and ensure and open web.

This project begins with the concept that user choice, and user control over their experience, should remain a distinguishing feature of the open internet.

To maintain a healthy competition amongst online services heavily reliant on user-submitted data, it will become increasingly important to make sure user data is easily portable. This will help ensure that popular services make changes according to the interests of their users, and that new services can compete on the basis of their merits and usability, without artificial barriers to competition. Keeping data in the hands of users, rather than allowing confusing legal and technological techniques to lock upconsumer data, will help ensure an open and competitive internet.

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

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 Google 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.

New Media Rights files comments in FCC Future of Media proceeding

San Diego, California - On Friday May 7th, 2010 New Media Rights submitted comments in the FCC'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.

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

"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.

Legal guide to video releases & the use and publication of Audio and Video Recordings

This guide deals with the use and publication of recordings. Once you've lawfully obtained a video or audio recording, how you intend to use and publish the recording can effect your legal liability.

This guide addresses the question of whether or not a release wavier may be needed for certain uses of a recording you have made.

Legal and How-to Guides for Independent Creators, Internet Users, nonprofits, and small businesses

Our educational guides are organized by category and title below. We also have the Fair Use app and 150+ video guides available.  You can check out our video legal guides by clicking here!  You can also buy our new book Don't Panic, a plain language legal guide that every creator and business should have when starting a project.

New Media Rights Guides are available to browse, read and learn from. They are organized by category and title.

Webtreats Glowing Neon Social Media Icons by Flickr user webtreats used under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 license

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

Find out how to cite or attribute Creative Commons work. Creative commons licenses allows you to share, remix and reuse the work legally, just make sure to check out the conditions of the license!

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.

Pages