A YouTuber who used a royalty-free track supplied by YouTube itself has had all of his videos copyright claimed by companies including SonyATV and Warner Chappell. According to the music outfits, Matt Lownes’ use the use of the track ‘Dreams’ by Joakim Karud means that they are now entitled to all of his revenue. […] Read more about ‘Royalty-Free’ Music Supplied By YouTube Audio Library Results in Mass Copyright claims to all YouTube income by Sony – for using a sample from a 1956(!!!!) song[…]

The US office responsible for patents and trademarks is trying to figure out how AI might call for changes to copyright law, and it’s asking the public for opinions on the topic. The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) published a notice in the Federal Register last month saying it’s seeking comments, as spotted Read more about The USPTO wants to know if artificial intelligence can own the content it creates[…]

Startup insurance provider Lemonade is trying to make the best of a sour situation after T-Mobile parent Deutsche Telekom claimed it owns the exclusive rights to the color magenta. New York-based Lemonade is a 3-year-old company that lives completely online and mostly focuses on homeowners and renter’s insurance. The company uses a similar color to magenta — Read more about T-Mobile says it owns exclusive rights to the color magenta and the letter T. German court agrees.[…]

There are lots of reasons to patent something. The most obvious one is that you’ve come up with a brilliant invention, and you want to protect your idea so that nobody can steal it from you. But that’s just the tip of the patent strategy iceberg. It turns out there is a whole host of Read more about Why do tech companies file so many weird patents?[…]

YouTube is suing a Nebraska man the company says has blatantly abused its copyright takedown process. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act offers online platforms like YouTube legal protections if they promptly take down content flagged by copyright holders. However, this process can be abused—and boy did defendant Christopher L. Brady abuse it, according to YouTube’s legal Read more about Man sued for using bogus YouTube takedowns to get address for swatting – so copyright is not only inane, it’s also physically dangerous[…]

Going forward, copyright owners will no longer be able to monetize creator videos with very short or unintentional uses of music via YouTube’s “Manual Claiming” tool. Instead, they can choose to prevent the other party from monetizing the video or they can block the content. However, YouTube expects that by removing the option to monetize Read more about YouTube shuts down music companies’ use of manual copyright claims to steal creator revenue, troll block videos[…]

In July, members of the federal Senate Judiciary Committee chose to move forward with a bill targeting copyright abuse with a more streamlined way to collect damages, but critics say that it could still allow big online players to push smaller ones around—and even into bankruptcy. Known as the Copyright Alternative in Small-Claims Enforcement (or Read more about CASE Act Tackles Online Copyright Abuse by allowing copyright “owners” (trolls) to fine anyone they like for $15 – 30k, force immediate content take downs with no oversight[…]

One of the former attorneys behind dodgy copyright-demand factory Prenda Law has been sentenced to 60 months in prison. Yes, the same Prenda Law that seeded file-sharing networks with smut flicks it owned the rights to in order to extract eye-watering copyright infringement settlements from downloaders. Judge Joan Ericksen, of a US federal district court Read more about Prenda Law bosses in jail for seeding porn videos to d/l sites and then suing the downloaders[…]

YouTube, under fire since inception for building a business on other people’s copyrights and in recent years for its vacillating policies on irredeemable content, recently decided it no longer wants to host instructional hacking videos. The written policy first appears in the Internet Wayback Machine’s archive of web history in an April 5, 2019 snapshot. Read more about YouTube mystery ban on hacking videos has content creators puzzled, looks like they want you to not learn about cybersecurity[…]

China’s largest stock photo flinger has been forced to backtrack after it tried to put its own price tags on images of the first black hole and the Chinese flag. Visual China Group reportedly tried to hawk out the first-ever image of a supermassive black hole and its shadow, which was the painstaking work of Read more about Chinese stock photo pusher tries to claim copyright on Event Horizon pic, Chinese Flag[…]

The pledge by one of the world’s biggest automakers to share its closely guarded patents, the second time it has opened up a technology, is aimed at driving industry uptake of hybrids and fending off the challenge of all-battery electric vehicles(EVs). Toyota said it would grant licenses on nearly 24,000 patents on technologies used in Read more about Toyota to give royalty-free access to hybrid-vehicle patents[…]

Academic and scientific research needs to be accessible to all. The world’s most pressing problems like clean water or food security deserve to have as many people as possible solving their complexities. Yet our current academic research system has no interest in harnessing our collective intelligence. Scientific progress is currently thwarted by one thing: paywalls. Read more about Paywalls block scientific progress. Research should be open to everyone – how copyright enriches the big boys and kills the little ones all over again[…]

The last time the EU tweaked its copyright laws was in 2001, so the idea of updating regulations in the information age made a lot of sense. But critics became alarmed by two sections of the bill: Article 11 (aka the “link tax”) and Article 13 (aka the “upload filters”). In 2018, critics like Tim Read more about The EU Just Finalized Copyright Legislation That breaks the Web, despite EU country opposition[…]

The BitTorrent protocol has a decentralized nature but the ecosystem surrounding it has some weak spots. Torrent sites, for example, use centralized search engines which are prone to outages and takedowns. Torrent-Paradise tackles this problem with IPFS, a searchable torrent indexer that’s shared by the people. IPFS, short for InterPlanetary File System, has been around Read more about Torrent Paradise Creates Decentralized ‘Pirate Bay’ With IPFS[…]

Copyright activists just scored a major victory in the ongoing fight over the European Union’s new copyright rules. An upcoming summit to advance the EU’s copyright directive has been canceled, as member states objected to the incoming rules as too restrictive to online creators. The EU’s forthcoming copyright rules had drawn attention from activists for Read more about Europe’s controversial ‘link tax’ sent back after member states rebel – The Verge[…]

With Tumblr’s decision this week to ban porn on its platform, everyone’s getting a firsthand look at how bad automated content filters are at the moment. Lawmakers in the European Union want a similar system to filter copyrighted works and, despite expert consensus that this will just fuck up the internet, the legislation moves forward. Read more about Reddit, YouTube, Others Push Against EU Copyright Directive – even the big guys think this is a bad idea. Hint: aside from it being copyright, it’s a REALLY bad idea[…]

When the Internet Archive Forgets On the internet, there are certain institutions we have come to rely on daily to keep truth from becoming nebulous or elastic. Not necessarily in the way that something stupid like Verrit aspired to, but at least in confirming that you aren’t losing your mind, that an old post or Read more about When the Internet Archive Forgets[…]

Back in 2016, an ambitious group of fans began work on an Unreal Engine 4 “reboot” of role-playing, light-sabering classic Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic called Apeiron. The project has made impressive progress since then, but it emitted a tragic Wilhelm scream this week when Lucasfilm lawyers zapped it out of existence. As Read more about Star Wars: KOTOR Fan Remake Shutting Down After Cease And Desist From Lucasfilm[…]

Today, the EU held a routine vote on regulations for self-driving cars, when something decidedly out of the ordinary happened… The autonomous vehicle rules contained a clause that affirmed that “data generated by autonomous transport are automatically generated and are by nature not creative, thus making copyright protection or the right on databases inapplicable.” This Read more about EU hijacking: self-driving car data will be copyrighted…by the manufacturer – not to be released by drivers / engineers / researchers / mechanics[…]

Before there was Star Trek: Bridge Crew, Ubisoft’s game about piloting the original Enterprise, there was Star Trek Stage-9, a fan project recreating the Enterprise-D from The Next Generation in Unreal Engine. This week the project is no more, following a cease and desist demand by CBS. One of the leads on the project, who Read more about CBS Shuts Down Ambitious Fan Effort To Make A Virtual Starship Enterprise[…]

Internet users must ask for a photographer’s permission before publishing their images, even if the photos were already freely accessible elsewhere online, the European Court of Justice ruled Tuesday. “The posting on a website of a photograph that was freely accessible on another website with the consent of the author requires a new authorisation by that Read more about Online photos can’t simply be re-published, EU court rules[…]

A controversial overhaul of the EU’s copyright law that sparked a fierce debate between internet giants and content creators has been rejected. The proposed rules would have put more responsibility on websites to check for copyright infringements, and forced platforms to pay for linking to news. A slew of high-profile music stars had backed the Read more about Controversial copyright law rejected by EU parliament[…]