“Phil Ringnalda points to the new Yahoo Creative Commons search engine and notices that because the engine is relying purely on links to CC licenses to pull out content that is supposedly licensed as CC, there is going to be a lot of confusion related to what is, or is not, CC licensed.”

“The high cost of getting permission to use archival footage and photos threatens to put makers of documentaries out of business.”

“Chris Cohen has been on a roll analyzing whether various derivative works are satires or parodies. The difference can mean one is legal and the other isn’t under a fair use analysis. The basic rule is that a parody, which critiques the work borrowed from, is okay. Satire, which critiques something other than the work borrowed from, is not fair use. I tend to take a much broader view regarding whether something is parody (Parody of a Parody), so read on for some of my responses…”

“he law firm of Leventhal Senter & Lerman provides a PDF file that describes the marketing rules for the big game in Houston: Broadcasts and Promotions Related to Super Bowl XXXVIII.”

“Senator Orrin Hatch and his colleagues on the Senate Judiciary Committee have introduced the Inducing Infringements of Copyright Act (’The Induce Act’) this week. They want us to think the Act is no big deal, and that it targets only the bad guys while leaving the good guys alone. They say that it doesn’t change the law; it just clarifies it. But they’re wrong. And this legal complaint is the proof.”

“Yesterday, as C|Net News reported, Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT) officially introduced the INDUCE Act to the public (Senate bill bans P2P networks)… In introducing the bill, Hatch provided extensive justifications and arguments on behalf of the bill. Eight pages worth: Before the United States Senate on Introduction of the ‘Inducing Infringement of Copyrights Act of 2004′ S. 2560. Since it looks like this bill will move quickly in Congress, opponents will have to get up to speed quickly. Thankfully, Hatch provided an excellent guide to the talking points proponents will use. Consequently, I’ve decided to go through Hatch’s introduction and extensively annotate it. However, this is just a response piece and many arguments against the bill won’t be here. The annotation is long, but I think there are definitely some valuable nuggets of information, such as, towards the end, Hatch makes clear he wants criminal enforcement of the Act. My comments are in brackets, bold and italics.”

“It’s producers vs. pirates vs. consumers, from Silicon Valley to Shanghai. A 10-page special Infoporn on the global battle between liberty and control.”

“Tim [Wu] runs down the history of cable versus broadcasters, and other copyfights down through the ages. He does so clearly and engagingly, in ways that non-lawyers and non-historians can readily grasp… If you want to understand the P2P fight, read this ó it is the most concise, thorough and engaging text on the subject to date.”

“But what’s really interesting is that as more and more artists use Creative Commons to tell the world that it’s OK to copy, distribute, and build on their work, the first glimpses emerge of an economy based on the free exchange of digital content. The ’sharing economy’ is built on a supply-and-demand equation wholly alien to traditional media companies”

“If everyone’s a criminal, maybe the law is wrong. That’s the contention of Lawrence Lessig, who you might just say is DJ Danger Mouse’s patron saint. Lessig, a professor at Stanford University Law School, is one of the leading advocates for changing copyright law. Via his popular blog, as well as in various books and media appearances, Lessig promotes the view that any system that makes criminals out of millions of otherwise law-abiding citizens ó like the more than 100,000 people who have downloaded Danger Mouse’s ‘The Grey Album,’ a groundbreaking but illegal mix of the Beatles’ ‘The White Album’ and Jay-Z’s ‘The Black Album’ ó is a broken system. The law must be updated to reflect the new digital reality, Lessig contends. But in that brave new digital world, how will artists pay their rent? Enter Internet pioneer Ken Waagner, who oversees all things online for the Chicago band Wilco. When a record label rejected Wilco’s ‘Yankee Hotel Foxtrot’ three years ago, Waagner and the band decided to put a streaming version of the entire album on the Wilco Web site. Commercial suicide, said music-industry conventional wisdom.”

“Here we’ll explore the nexus of legal rulings, Capitol Hill policy-making, technical standards development and technological innovation that creates ó and will recreate ó†the networked world as we know it. Among the topics we’ll touch on: intellectual property conflicts, technical architecture and innovation, the evolution of copyright, private vs. public interests in Net policy-making, lobbying and the law, and more.”

“When Eric Eldred’s crusade to save the public domain reached the Supreme Court, it needed the help of a lawyer, not a scholar.” By Lawrence Lessig

“Note that this is an essay about copyright myths. It assumes you know at least what copyright is — basically the legal exclusive right of the author of a creative work to control the copying of that work. If you didn’t know that, check out my own brief introduction to copyright for more information. Feel free to link to this document, no need to ask me. Really, NO need to ask.”

“The laws governing ‘intellectual property’ have grown so expansive in recent years that artists need legal experts to sort them all out. Borrowing from another artwork — as jazz musicians did in the 1930s and Looney Tunes illustrators did in 1940s — will now land you in court. If the current copyright laws had been in effect back in the day, whole genres such as collage, hiphop, and Pop Art might have never have existed. The irony here couldn’t be more stark. Rooted in the U.S. Constitution, copyright was originally intended to facilitate the exchange of ideas but is now being used to stifle it. The Illegal Art Exhibit will celebrate what is rapidly becoming the ‘degenerate art’ of a corporate age: Art and ideas on the legal fringes of intellectual property. Some of the pieces in the show have eluded lawyers; others have had to appear in court.”

Just what it says. Brough to you by Martin Schwimmer. “Martin focuses on international and domestic trademark and domain name counseling, prosecution and litigation. He has supervised worldwide trademark and domain name protection programs in a variety of industries.”