The top ten YouTubers collectively earned $300m in 2021: is that good or bad?
It’s always interesting to see hard figures about how much individuals earn online from their activities there. For example, Forbes published an article recently that looked at the…
Google Drive’s automated monitoring system flags up the number 1 as a copyright infringement
Earlier this week, Dr Emily Dolson, Assistant Professor at Michigan State University, posted the tweet shown above. It’s a warning that one of Dr Dolson’s files violates Google…
Thanks to copyright maximalism, video game masterpieces are likely to be lost forever
Video games are undoubtedly an art form, arguably the quintessential art form of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. They combine graphics, video, music and interactive plotlines…
Copyright means you can’t tweak how a Web page appears on your screen, according to media giant
Advertising is one of the commonest ways of financing Web sites and services. There’s nothing wrong with that, at least in principle. But the fact that, according to…
Interview | Alex Sayf Cummings: Music Piracy, Alternative Remuneration Models, Blurred Lines, SOPA, and Out of Control Copyright Terms and Penalties
Alex Sayf Cummings is a historian of law, technology, labor, public policy, and American cities. A leading voice on pop culture and public history, she has published on…
How to make money from scarcity, in a world of digital abundance
The current crisis in the copyright world is being driven by the once-in-a-civilisation transition from an analogue world to a digital one. Initially the copyright industries fought the…
Rock star worth $450 million wins copyright case against widow who offered bootleg CD for €9.95
As the very first post on this blog pointed out, copyright is fundamentally unsuited to the digital world. It assumes that copying material is hard, and can therefore…
Guest post | How a politicians’ thesis could affect a country’s scientific culture
The president of the Colombian House of Representatives, Congresswoman Jennifer Arias, allegedly plagiarised parts of her master’s thesis. The Colombian Universidad Externado explained in a recent press release…
From paywalled academic publishing towards free, fast and frictionless sharing of knowledge
As a post back in November explained, copyright is key to the business model of academic publishing. By pushing researchers to assign their copyright to publishers, the latter…
What has copyright got to do with the Tiananmen Square massacre?
Hong Kong was supposed to enjoy a special “one country, two systems” approach for 50 years after it was handed back to China by the UK in 1997.…
Remembering Aaron Swartz, who died on this day, a victim of the copyright system
On this day in 2013, Aaron Swartz died by his own hand, at the age of 26. His short but full life as a hacker and activist is…
How the financialisation of music could lead to demands for perpetual copyright
Back in October, this blog noted the huge amounts of money pouring into music copyrights, largely driven by the global rise of online streaming. Since then, that trend…
Interview | Salvador Alcántar Morán: Mexican Copyright Unfit-for-purpose in the Digital age, the Public Domain as a Human Right, and the Need for a True Multistakeholder Approach and a Global Perspective on Copyright
Salvador Alcántar Morán is a lawyer, focused on digital copyright, educational technology and digital communications. He is the co-founder of Wikimedia Mexico and of Creative Commons Mexico. He…
It took a 15-year fight to be allowed to use an existing DRM exception: who still thinks copyright is fair?
In his Walled Culture interview, Cory Doctorow explains cogently why Digital Rights Management (DRM) is such a disaster. It’s also pointless: DRM can always be broken, and once…
Public Domain Day is here again: it should be an occasion for condemnation, not celebration
Once copyright’s walls come down, creative material enters the public domain. It is free for all to use, modify and build upon. It is part of the matrix…