Long overdue, but good to see: Germany’s new copyright exception for pastiche applied for first time
Although overall the EU Copyright Directive is bad news for the digital world because of things like its need for the use of automated upload filters, it does…
Germany wants to include copyright infringement as an example of “digital violence”
The hyperbolic rhetoric that is a feature of the copyright industry, which tries absurdly to characterise making an additional digital copy as “theft”, can lead to some serious…
No big deal: calling the publishers’ bluff on high-price access to publicly-funded research
This blog has written a number of posts about open access, and its difficulties. One important impetus for the move towards open access was the increasing use by…
Bad news: copyright industry attacks on the Internet’s plumbing are increasing – and succeeding
Back in October 2021, Walled Culture wrote about a ruling from a US judge. It concerned an attempt to make the content delivery network (CDN) Cloudflare, which is…
Copyright means you may need permission to put photos of your own furnished room online
One of the life’s certainties is that copyright maximalism will continue to encourage absurd rulings by complaisant courts. Here’s a rather spectacular case from Germany. It involves a…
Publishers seem to believe their outsized sense of entitlement should trump democracy
One of the striking features of the copyright industry is its insatiability. No matter how long, broad and strong copyright becomes, the copyright world wants it to be…
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…
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…
Yet another move to funnel money to big copyright companies, not struggling creators
When modern copyright came into existence in 1710, it gave a monopoly to authors for just 14 years, with the option to extend it for another 14. Today,…