How Technology Is Changing Visual Art — “No doubt these tech tools make it much easier to create artwork, just as the high-quality cameras that come with today’s smartphones have turned us all into ‘photographers.’ But I believe you still need certain artistic skills to become an illustrator. You need to have a discerning eye and to be able to communicate by creating a visual vocabulary that’s uniquely your own. As an illustrator, you have to establish your point of view to solve problems and to go beyond just tracing a picture.”
Copyright and a Free Press — The US Copyright Office’s Brad Greenberg writes, “Our founding fathers saw copyright as a crucial vehicle for creating a free press. In England, the 1710 enactment of the Statute of Anne—the matriarch of copyright laws—unshackled publishers from the restrictions of a system that limited publishing to those who had received printing privileges from the Crown. Copyright law helped curb government censorship and at the same time provided new voices with economic incentives.”
FCC Asks Amazon & eBay to Help Eliminate Pirate Media Box Sales — Torrentfreak reports, “FCC Commissioner Michael O’Rielly has written to the heads of Amazon and eBay with a request to eliminate sales of pirate media boxes which illegally display the FCC compliance logo. In a letter to Devin Wenig and Jeff Bezos, O’Rielly seeks the total removal of such devices, noting that their fraudulent labeling is exacerbated by the effect they have on the entertainment industries.”
Jay-Z Triumphs in “Big Pimpin” Appeal as Egyptians Can’t Enforce Moral Rights — A long running suit appears to come to an end, as the Ninth Circuit held that the heir of an Egyptian composer could not sue Jay-Z “based solely on the fact that Egyptian law recognizes an inalienable ‘moral right’ of the author to object to offensive uses of a copyrighted work.”