Last week the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) sent a mailer encouraging its members to challenge groups that “promote Copyleft in order to undermine our Copyright.” Such groups include Creative Commons (CC), Public Knowledge, and Electronic Frontier Foundation. On Wednesday, Eric Steuer, Creative Director for Creative Commons responded via the CC website. [...]

you thought we wouldn’t notice is a site “dedicated to pointing out those things that give you that feeling of ‘haven’t I seen that somewhere before?’” YTWWN encourages artists and others to post examples of egregious copyright infringement. Visit YTWWN (Thanks, Susan Beth!)

BBC news reports that the Swedish anti-copyright group which founded The Pirate Bay has disbanded. The Piracy Bureau, or Piratbyrån website states, “STÄNGT FÖR EFTERTANKE” which means “closed for reflection” in English. The announcement follows the recent death of co-founder Ibi Kopimi Botani. Apart from launching the infamous BitTorrent tracker The Pirate Bay in 2003, [...]

Playboy is suing rapper Drake for the unauthorized use of Fallin’ in Love by Hamilton, Joe Frank & Reynolds (1975) in his break out single Best I Ever Had (2009). Recognizing the “enormous commercial success” of the EP, according to The Boombox, Playboy seeks to destroy all remaining copies of the work and collect damages. [...]

In spring 2009, Shepard Fairey, Steven Johnson, and Lawrence Lessig sat down at the New York Public Library to discuss balancing artistic freedom and copyright law. Lessig mentions Viacom’s policy toward remixing, noting that the media giant will not remove videos with transformative elements in order to encourage creativity. In light of the recent Viacom [...]

In 2007, Viacom filed a $1 billion lawsuit alleging Google is liable for the intentional infringement of thousands of copyrighted works on YouTube. On Wednesday, U.S. District Court (SDNY) Judge Louis Stanton granted summary judgment in favor of Google. Viacom argued the search company had actual knowledge of infringing activity on YouTube or was generally [...]

On Tuesday, U.S. Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator, Victoria Espinel, released the Joint Strategic Plan to Combat Intellectual Property Theft. In a blog post, Espinel notes the importance of balancing enforcement and creativity via fair use, “The Obama Administration has always embraced the free flow of information, online collaboration, and fair use by average citizens, which [...]

Walking On Eggshells is a project by Jacob Albert, Ryan Beauchamp and Brendan Schlagel for the seminar Intellectual Property in the Digital Age at Yale University. From the filmmakers: Walking on Eggshells is a 24-minute documentary about appropriation, creative influence, re-use and intellectual property in the remix age. It is a conversation among various musicians, [...]