Weekly Copyright Update

June 3, 2016

Respecting the Rights of Others Is Not a Burden

BY STEPHEN CARLISLE: A colleague sent me a link to an article posted on the website of “The Chronicle of Higher Education.” The post, titled “Colleges Shouldn’t Have to Deal With Copyright Monitoring” was written by Pamela Samuelson, a law professor at the Berkeley School of Law. The article bemoans the injunction being requested by the publisher Plaintiffs in the long running lawsuit against Georgia State, which I have written about before on this blog. 2 The case, now in its eighth year, pitted three textbook publishers against the Georgia State University. At issue was the practice of scanning portions of textbooks and placing them on an “e-reserve” system so they could be accessed by students. READ MORE…

Facebook Begins Tracking Non-Users Around the Internet

BY AMAR TOOR: Facebook will now display ads to web users who are not members of its social network, the company announced Thursday, in a bid to significantly expand its online ad network. As The Wall Street Journal reports, Facebook will use cookies, “like” buttons, and other plug-ins embedded on third-party sites to track members and non-members alike. The company says it will be able to better target non-Facebook users and serve relevant ads to them, though its practices have come under criticism from regulators in Europe over privacy concerns. READ MORE…

Music World Unifies Against YouTube, Seeks Change to Law

BY BEN SISARIO: A few years ago, the biggest enemy of the music industry was Pandora Media. Then Spotify became the target. Now it is YouTube’s turn. In recent months, the music world has been united to a rare degree in a public fight against YouTube, accusing the service of paying too little in royalties and asking for changes to the law that allows the company to operate the way it does. The battle highlights the need to capture every dollar as listeners’ habits turn to streaming, as well as the industry’s complicated relationship with YouTube. READ MORE…

Creative Commons Estimates Licensing Over 1 Billion Copyrights

BY RICHARD STOBBE: There are dozens of online photo-sharing platforms. When using such photo-sharing venues, photographers should take care not to make the same mistake as Art Drauglis, who posted a photo to his online account through the photo-sharing site Flickr, and then discovered that it had been published on the cover of someone else’s book. Mr. Drauglis made his photo available through a Creative Commons CC BY-SA 2.0 license, which permitted reproduction of his photo, even for commercial purposes. According to recent estimates, adoption of Creative Commons (CC) has expanded from 140 million licensed works in 2006, to over 1 billion today, including hundreds of millions of images and videos. READ MORE…

Bitcoin, Blockchain and Copyright

BY JONATHAN BAILEY: For almost as long as there’s been an Internet, there have been those who sought ways to prove that they created a particular piece of content on it. For the past decade, this role has been filled by copyright non-repudiation services and we’ve talked about many of them including Safe Creative, Myows and many, many more. However, these companies have largely failed to gain traction, especially in the United States where their usefulness is limited due to the U.S. Copyright Office due to its role as an official record keeper. READ MORE…

About Christian Copyright Solutions: CCS’s quest is to help churches and Christian ministries “do music right.” CCS is an expert on church music copyrights and our primary focus is providing licensing and clear educational resources to churches, as well as representation, administration and advocacy for copyright owners. Follow us on Twitter, Facebook and Youtube. The information contained herein is for informational purposes only, and is not legal advice or a substitute for legal counsel.