Copyright has been one of life’s certainties: but will it always be?
Copyright seems to be a fixture of our legal, economic and social systems. For 300 years, it has formed the backbone of the structures used to incentivise and…
PlayStation reminds people that digital ownership is vanishing, by removing films they had bought
Last month, we wrote about the imminent death of digital ownership. In case some people didn’t get the message, Sony’s PlayStation division has just made it crystal clear…
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…
The film industry effectively solved the problem of unauthorised downloads; now it is “unsolving” it…
Copyright companies frequently invoke “piracy” when they demand new legislation or stronger enforcement of existing laws. Usually, they have a free hand to claim what they like about…
Technological progress + outdated copyright laws = huge swathes of our cinematic culture lost forever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…
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…