Copyhype

Wow, I can’t believe it’s been nearly two months since I began this blog!

Today’s post will be brief. I want to welcome all the new readers and subscribers who have found this site over the last few weeks. I hope to continue to provide the same quality of content that brought you here in the future.

Since this is a relatively new site, there are still a few wrinkles. For example, the commenting procedure is still on the WordPress default mode, meaning I have to manually approve all comments before they appear. The good news is, I believe that once you’ve had a comment approved, future comments are automatically approved. For now, I have it this way to keep out spam comments, and even a new site like this attracts quite a bit of spam! But bear in mind that if you’re a first time commenter, your remarks won’t show up immediately.

Also, be sure to check out the sites on my Blogroll if you haven’t already: the 1709 Blog, Copyright Litigation Blog, Copyrights & Campaigns, Music Think Tank, Plagiarism Today, and The Cynical Musician – they all consistently provide excellent articles about copyright and the content industries, from a variety of perspectives. The list will likely be growing in the  next couple weeks as there are plenty of great sites out there.

I did want to point out a couple of new – and “new to me” – sites that may be of interest to my readers:

Clannco: Art and Law is a blog devoted to exploring the relationship between art and law written by Sergio Muñoz Sarmiento, an artist and a lawyer. I originally came across the site after seeing Sergio’s response to my piece on artistic expression, the first amendment, and copyright law. The rest of the site provides an insightful look at issues and topics which don’t often garner much attention on other sites.

Copygrounds is an “academic discussion forum” maintained “through the collective effort of Brett Caraway and students from the Department of Radio-Television-Film at The University of Texas at Austin.” The site is set apart by its attraction of some notable guest bloggers so far. Be sure to check out the latest posts from Matt Oppenheim, former VP at the RIAA and plaintiff’s attorney at the Joel Tenenbaum trial, discussing the Tenenbaum trial and statutory damages in P2P cases.

John Degen, Literature Officer for the Ontario Arts Council, has a personal blog I recently came across. He’s one of many Canadians who have noticed that online discussion of Canadian copyright law is heavily dominated by one particular law professor; his blog covers a variety of issues from a creator’s perspective.

What other good sources of information about copyright and the digital world are there? And what topics would you like to see covered here?

Let’s make this an “introduce yourself” slash “open thread” entry. Plug yourself, plug your work, or just say “hi” in the comments. I’d like to hear from everyone reading!