iDon’tLike: why, for the copyright industry, enough is never enough
As Walled Culture noted when it was launched, copyright permeates everything we do online. And yet much of copyright’s workings remain hidden. The laws and court cases may…
Moving beyond dysfunctional copyright: true fans, and a new middle class for the creator economy
It’s easy pointing out that copyright is deeply dysfunctional: there are new examples of the profound mismatch between this 18th-century law and 21st-century creativity coming to light every…
An unprecedented loss of digital culture looms thanks to copyright; here’s how to avoid it
A few weeks ago, we wrote about copyright’s absurdly long term, which typically lasts for 70 years after a creator’s death. That it makes it hard for other…
Will publishers try to shut down the free General Index of 107 million scientific journal articles?
One of the exciting possibilities opened up by the digital world is that access to all human knowledge could be made freely available to everyone with an Internet…
Interview | Rebecca Giblin: Reversion Rights, Out-Of-Print Books And How To Fix Copyright
ARC Future Fellow and Associate Professor within the Melbourne Law School, an expert on e-lending, and co-author of “What if we could reimagine copyright?,” Rebecca Giblin talks about…
Billions of dollars pour into music copyright “assets”: how much will the creators ever see?
A few weeks ago, this blog reported on the spectacular 45 billion euro valuation of Universal Music Group (UMG) when it went public on Amsterdam’s Euronext exchange. It…
A good copyright ruling from a wise judge means you still don’t need to care what a CDN is or does
Many people are unaware of what a “Content Delivery Network” (CDN) is, or does, even though they probably make use of one hundreds of times a day. And…
An artist’s messy divorce shows why copyright shouldn’t be regarded as a kind of property
One of the key themes of Walled Culture is the tension between the 18th-century idea of copyright, and the 21st-century digital world where we spend an increasing proportion…
Technological progress + outdated copyright laws = huge swathes of our cinematic culture lost forever
Physical books can be bought, shared, and accessed in libraries quite easily. Films in a physical form, on the other hand, are hard to acquire, share or view…
Copyright law discriminating against the blind finally struck down by court in South Africa
Most people would agree that those who are blind or visually impaired deserve all the help they can get. For example, the conversion of printed materials to accessible…
Why copyright’s absurdly long term is no big friendly giant to creators and their public
As this blog noted last week, nowadays copyright in a work can easily last more than a century. A recent piece of news shows what that can mean…
Interview | Mirela Roncevic: Open Access, Open Science, Scholarly Monographs, E-Book Lending
Scholar, writer, editor, content developer, and publishing and library consultant, Mirela Roncevic talks about the long journey of open access and open science, how to pay for scholarly…
Longer copyright protection means fewer books are available, and they cost more
As we mentioned a couple of weeks ago, the standard copyright term of life plus 70 years makes no sense: a promise that they’ll be paid after their…
Widespread copyright anxiety, leading to copyright chill, means something is deeply wrong
Thirty years ago, copyright law was boring. It was the province of specialised lawyers, and had very little direct impact on ordinary people’s lives. The Internet changed all…