New Media Rights Executive Director Art Neill will be speaking on a panel at the Alliance for Community Media Annual Conference on May 30, 2013 in San Francisco, CA.

The topic of the panel will be "Free Speech vs. Copyright: An Intersection or a Collision."

The panel will be an opportunity to give positive support to artists, showing them the ways the law can actually empower their creativity, how to avoid legal disputes in the first place, and how to move forward if you do face legal threats.

New Media Rights' consumer and internet user advocacy efforts were recognized this week with the appointment of to the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) Consumer Advisory Committee. The FCC committee works to serve the interests of consumers by soliciting their input during the regulatory process and working to improve consumer access to modern communications services.

New Media Rights, which often takes part in regulatory proceedings at the FCC and U.S. Copyright Office, looks forward to bringing our internet user, consumer-first approach to the Committee.

New Media Rights recently hit a dead-end in an attempt to resolved what seemingly should be a routine issue: a band of hobbyist musicians, Fortress of Attitude, had a Youtube video that got misflagged by an automated Youtube takedown system. They were unfairly accused of violating Youtube's terms of service. Below, Pat Stango of Fortress of Attitude describes the 3+ month process of attempting to get his video human-reviewed and reinstated. Like our work with Jonathan McIntosh, Pat's story highlights area where Youtube's technology, support, and legal department can improve its practices.

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Hello people of the internet,

My name is Pat Stango, and I’m a member of New York City-based comedy group/ rock band “Fortress of Attitude.”  Don’t worry, we're not here to plug our upcoming shows or sell you some band merchandise. (Though we DO still have a few hundred T-shirts with our name spelled wrong, if anyone is interested.) Instead we need to let you know about a very difficult situation we’re going through with YouTube/Google regarding a music video being taken down unfairly. WAIT! Don’t leave yet. This situation could totally happen to you too.

On Nov 17, 2012, we uploaded our newest Fortress of Attitude video to YouTube, entitled “PS Gay Car.” You can view a (lo-resolution) version of the video here at Funny or Die.

Read more here...

We're excited to announce we have a new position opening at New Media Rights as of today for a Staff Attorney Fellow!

In 2012, New Media Rights continued its non-profit work providing free and dramatically reduced cost one-to-one legal services in Internet, intellectual property, media, and technology law. We also renewed our mission to stand up to internet censorship and those who use legal processes to bullies independent creators and average internet users.