Policy Advocacy

A great creative project or business starts with a solid legal foundation. Come join us this Thursday May 12 at 5:30pm for a free legal workshop and Q&A at San Diego City College hosted by SD City RTVF - Open to all and will be held in room C211. Brought to you in partnership with the City of San Diego's Office of Economic Development.

On May 2, 2016, Executive Director Art Neill moderated a panel at the 2016 American Association of Law Schools clinical conference entitled "Community and Pedagogical Benefits of Developing Public Education Resources and Engaging in Technology Enhanced Representation."

Here's a detailed description of the panel:

In serving both our communities and students, as clinicians we oftentimes need to be creative about our methods of community engagement and litigation focus/case acceptance practices.  Traditionally clinics revolve around a live-client model of individual client centered representation.  But what happens when we as clinics need to make an impact for more than one individual at a time? Are there non-case related ways that we can create useful legal pathways for our current and future clients, and our community? 

Part 1 of this session will discuss the pedagogical benefits and successful approaches when working with students on creating public education resources.  Focusing on non-traditional resources including apps and video, we’ll discuss how this work advances pedagogical goals of doctrinal learning and client counseling. Specifically, panelists will explain how student work developing public education resources supports not only doctrinal learning by reinforcing concepts learned in the classroom, but also fundamental client counseling skills, such as being able to explain legal concepts to non-lawyers. Through open moderation and audience participation, panelists will discuss a variety of public education projects they have undertaken in their clinics, including the Fair Use Best Practices for Documentary Filmmakers and Online Video Creators, as well as the Fair Use App, and a variety of educational video series and written resources.

Part II of the session will introduce attendees to A2J, a software system with an authoring tool that creates graphical Guided Interviews, which walk self-represented litigants through a legal process.  Presenters will discuss the pedagogical model as implemented within clinics; present specific clinic project guided interviews; direct attendees to various teaching materials created by clinics using this software; and expose attendees to new pedagogical perspectives and tools generated by the professors who have taught in the Project.  Syllabi and sample interviews will be made available.  

The DMCA Section 512 is a critical protection for internet-based services large and small against copyright claims based on user infringement. However, Section 512 creates an easy, out of court process to remove speech from the internet through its notice and takedown provisions. This process is frequently abused to remove otherwise legal content from the internet. We recently proposed legislative reforms that would address key problems with section 512, and shared our firsthand experiences with clients dealing with section 512.

Following up on our recent comments requesting reform of section 1201 of the Copyright Act, last Friday April 1 NMR filed a reply comment with the International Documentary Association, Film Independent, Kartemquin Educational Films, and Indie Caucus. 

Section 1201 unecessarily restricts all kinds of otherwise legal reuses of content, including by filmmakers, consumers, and remix creators.  

This reply comment asks the Copyright Office to fix the ineffective section 1201 process, which does little to prevent actual copyright infringement. Our initial comment asks for a complete reform to section 1201 through legislative action. This is more focused on advising the Copyright Office of procedural changes it can make to section 1201’s rulemaking proceedings while we await legislative change.

Before the end of 2015 the Copyright Office issued a Notice of Inquiry and Request for Public Comment on Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). Section 1201 outlines the DMCA’s anti-circumvention provisions that make it illegal to bypass any technological protection measure (TPM) (also known as Digital Rights Management (DRM)) that restricts access to copyrighted content. But simply put, it is a broken and flawed area of copyright law.

The Notice of Inquiry was intended to assess the operation of section 1201, along with the triennial (every three year) rulemaking process established under the DMCA to adopt exemptions to the prohibition against circumvention of TPM’s. Based on our long history of advocating for DMCA exemptions, New Media Rights (NMR) participated in this effort by filing a public comment on March 1, 2016. The comment addressed several questions laid out in the notice of inquiry, drawing directly from New Media Rights’s experiences from working with clients navigate 1201 on a regular basis.

Thanks to your votes, New Media Rights is heading to SXSW interactive in Austin, Texas. On Tuesday March 17th at 2:00PM in room 5ABC of the Austin Convention Center we’ll be presenting our panel “Can We Just Play? The Legality of Let's Play Video”.

Let's play videos are more popular than ever, however, for many creators what's legally okay and what isn't is more unclear than ever. Come learn the basics of copyright and trademark law that you need to know to keep your videos and streams up. Also get a chance to hear from legal experts and video creators about hot topics like Easter Egg Videos, Esports and using in-game music.

Joining Art and Teri will be Wikimedia Legal Counsel and lifelong gamer Jacob Rogers, as well as Angelo Alcid attorney and writer of the Journal of Geek Law.

So if you'll be at SXSW come check it out! Don't have a badge? No worries! SXSW gaming is open to the public so if you happen to be in Austin and are willing to brave the SXSW crowds come on by! If you can’t make it, you can follow our panel on twitter using #NMR.