#Copyright225 — Last Sunday marked 225 years since George Washington signed the first US Copyright Act into law. Take a look at some of the benefits it has provided since then.
The Copyright Office for the Digital Economy Act — A discussion draft of legislation that would take the first step toward modernization of the US Copyright Office was introduced by Reps. Judy Chu and Tom Marino on Thursday. The primary function of the bill would be to shift the Office to an independent agency outside the Library of Congress, where it currently resides.
Copyright Office Modernization — And in case you want all the background on Copyright Office Modernization, what it is, what issues are involved, and why it’s necessary, be sure to check out this handy list of resources.
Orphan Works and Mass Digitization — The Copyright Office Thursday released its long anticipated report covering orphan works—an issue it has studied for over a decade—and mass digitization, a related issue that has come to the forefront more recently. The Office recommends legislation to limit remedies for users of orphan works following a good faith diligent search for the copyright owner. The Office also proposes a system of extended collective licensing to help facilitate nonprofit mass digitization projects for education and research purposes. It recommends starting with a limited “pilot program” for a small number of classes of works as well as soliciting public comments on various issues concerning the scope and administration of any extended collective licensing program.
The Effectiveness of Site Blocking as an Anti-Piracy Strategy: Evidence from the UK — “[O]ur results showed that when 19 sites were blocked simultaneously, former users of these sites increased their usage of paid legal streaming sites by 12% on average, relative to the control group. The blocks caused the lightest users of the blocked sites (and thus the users who were least affected by the blocks, other than the control group) to increase their use of paid streaming sites by 3.5% while they caused the heaviest users of the blocked sites to increase paid streaming visits by 23.6%, strengthening the causal inference in our result.”
Five years later, why this “stupid Gay†fights piracy — Ellen Seidler: “How can we change the status quo? We speak out. The good news is that we are. Artists across the spectrum have begun to focus frustration into action. We’ve begun to speak out and formed coalitions, demanding with one voice that our representatives in Washington take action to better safeguard creative work (and livelihoods) in the digital age.”
Down the Rabbit Hole: Why Inside Out is Unlike any other Pixar Film — “Their story creation process at Pixar is notoriously labor intensive and exacting. The men and women behind these films craft their narratives for years (and years), until they are satisfied they are telling the best version of that story possible…”