The version of the iconic character from “Steamboat Willie” will enter the public domain in 2024. But those trying to take advantage could end up in a legal mousetrap. From a report: There is nothing soft and cuddly about the way Disney protects the characters it brings to life. This is a company that once Read more about Mickey’s Copyright Adventure: Early Disney Creation Will Soon Be Public Property – finally. What lawsuits lie in wait?[…]

Many of you are likely to be familiar with WWDC, Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference. This is one of those places where you get a bunch of Apple product reveals and news updates that typically result in the press tripping all over themselves to bow at the altar of an iPhone 300 or whatever. The conference Read more about Apple Vanquishes Evil YouTube Account Full Of Old Apple WWDC Videos[…]

“Microsoft’s GitHub Copilot is being sued in a class action lawsuit that claims the AI product is committing software piracy on an unprecedented scale,” reports IT Pro. Programmer/designer Matthew Butterick filed the case Thursday in San Francisco, saying it was on behalf of millions of GitHub users potentially affected by the $10-a-month Copilot service: The Read more about Microsoft’s GitHub Copilot Sued Over ‘Software Piracy on an Unprecedented Scale’[…]

[…] if you’ve been paying attention over the last couple of years, anti-cheat software is quickly becoming the new DRM. Access to root layers of the computer complaints, complaints about performance effects, complaints about how the software tracks customer behavior, and now finally we have the good old “software isn’t letting me play my game” Read more about Anti-Cheat Software Continues To Be The New DRM In Pissing Off Legit Customers[…]

There are a number of different tools out there that let you download YouTube videos. These tools are incredibly useful for a number of reasons and should be seen as obviously legal in the same manner that home video recording devices were declared legal by the Supreme Court, because they have substantial non-infringing uses. But, Read more about Judge Ruling That YouTube Ripping Tool May Violate Copyright Law goes nuts on argumentation[…]

[…] George Washington University libraries have put out an alert to students and faculty that Wiley, one of the largest textbook publishers, has now removed 1,379 textbook titles that the library can lend out. They won’t even let the library purchase a license to lend out the ebooks. They will only let students buy the Read more about Book Publishing Giant Wiley Pulls Nearly 1400 Ebook Titles From GW Library Forcing Students To Buy Them Instead[…]

On Friday, we wrote about hundreds of authors signing a letter calling out the big publishers’ attacks on libraries (in many, many different ways). The publishers pretend to represent the best interests of the authors, but history has shown over and over again that they do not. They represent themselves, and use the names of Read more about Publishers Lose Their Shit After Authors Push Back On Their Attack On Libraries, start fake newsing[…]

A group of authors and other creative professionals are lending their names to an open letter protesting publishers’ lawsuit against the Internet Archive Library, characterizing it as one of a number of efforts to curb libraries’ lending of ebooks. Authors including Neil Gaiman, Naomi Klein, and Cory Doctorow lent their names to the letter, which Read more about Neil Gaiman, Cory Doctorow And Other Authors Publish Letter Protesting Lawsuit Against Internet Library[…]

Last year, I tried to create a “test suite” of websites that any new internet regulation ought to be “tested” against. The idea was that regulators were so obsessively focused on the biggest of the big guys (i.e., Google, Meta) that they never bothered to realize how it might impact other decently large websites that Read more about Subreddit Discriminates Against Anyone Who Doesn’t Call Texas Governor Greg Abbott ‘A Little Piss Baby’ To Highlight Absurdity Of Content Moderation Law Designed for White Supremacists[…]

The EU Copyright Directive contains one of the worst ideas in modern copyright: what amounts to a requirement to filter uploads on major sites.  Despite repeated explanations of why this would cause huge harm to both creators and members of the public, EU politicians were taken in by the soothing words of the legislation’s proponents, who even went Read more about Study Shows That Copyright Filters Harm Creators Rather Than Help Them[…]

“Creators aren’t getting paid,” says Cory Doctorow. “That’s because powerful corporations have figured out how to create chokepoints — that let them snatch up more of the value generated by creative work before it reaches creative workers.” But he’s doing something about it. Doctorow’s teamed up with Melbourne-based law professor Rebecca Giblin, the director of Read more about Cory Doctorow Launches New Fight against Copyrights, Creative Chokepoints, and Big Tech’s ‘Chokepoint Capitalism’[…]

Michael E. Karpeles, Program Lead on OpenLibrary.org at the Internet Archive, spotted an interesting blog post by Michael Kozlowski, the editor-in-chief of Good e-Reader. It concerns Amazon and its audiobook division, Audible: Amazon owned Audible ceased selling individual audiobooks through their Android app from Google Play a couple of weeks ago. This will prevent anyone from buying Read more about Enjoy Digital Ownership And Public Libraries While You Still Can – the rental model is coming for you[…]

[…] Mickey Mouse will enter the public domain in the year 2024, almost 95 years after his creation on 1 October 1928 – the length of time after which the copyright on an anonymous or pseudo-anonymous body of artistic work expires. Daniel Mayeda is the ​​associate director of the Documentary Film Legal Clinic at UCLA Read more about After 95 years, will Disney finally lose copyright to Mickey Mouse? Or will they find another way to extend the right to do nothing but make money for it?[…]

A recent IPO consultation found many experts doubted AI was currently able to invent without human assistance. Current law allowed humans to patent inventions made with AI assistance, the government said, despite “misperceptions” this was not the case. Last year, the Court of Appeal ruled against Stephen Thaler, who had said his Dabus AI system Read more about UK decides AI still cannot patent inventions[…]

The Software Freedom Conservancy (SFC), a non-profit focused on free and open source software (FOSS), said it has stopped using Microsoft’s GitHub for project hosting – and is urging other software developers to do the same. In a blog post on Thursday, Denver Gingerich, SFC FOSS license compliance engineer, and Bradley M. Kuhn, SFC policy Read more about Open source Fundamentalists SFC quit GitHub, want you to follow – because GitHub charges for Copilot feature[…]

There’s a story in the Daily Mail that underlines why it is important for people to make copies. It concerns the re-surfacing of rare recordings of the Beatles: In the summer of 1963, the BBC began a radio series called Pop Go The Beatles which went out at 5pm on Tuesdays on the Light Programme. Each Read more about Fan’s Rare Recordings Of Lost 1963 Beatles’ Performances Can’t Be Heard, Because … Copyright[…]

YouTube’s copyright claim system has been repeatedly abused for bogus takedown requests, and Bungie has had enough. TorrentFreak reports the game studio has sued 10 anonymous people for allegedly leveling false Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) claims against a host of Destiny 2 creators on YouTube, and even Bungie itself. The company said the culprits Read more about Bungie lawsuit aims to unmask YouTube copyright claim abusers[…]

One of the central “justifications” for copyright is that it is indispensable if creativity is to be viable. Without it, we are assured, artists would starve. This ignores the fact that artists created and thrived for thousands of years before the 1710 Statute of Anne. But leaving that historical detail aside, as well as the Read more about Copyright Is Indispensable For Artists, They Say; But For All Artists, Or Just Certain Kinds?[…]

To tackle climate change we need good data. This data exists; it is published by the International Energy Agency (IEA). But despite being an institution that is largely publicly funded, most IEA data is locked behind paywalls. […] In 2020 we launched a campaign to unlock this data; we started on Twitter (one example), last Read more about The IEA wants to make their data available to the public – now it is on governments of the world’s rich countries to make this happen[…]