Policy Advocacy

Our latest work on media policy and intellectual property policy.

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Things you can do to be #PrivacyAware on Data Privacy Day 2018

safeguarding consumer data

New Media Rights has joined the National Cyber Security Alliance for the fourth year in a row in its international effort to support privacy awareness: Data Privacy Day. Each January 28th, hundreds of organizations and individuals collaborate to generate awareness about the importance of respecting privacy and safeguarding data.
 
For our part during the year, each year we respond to 500+ requests for legal services. Many of those assistance requests relate to either helping consumers deal with potential privacy violations or helping businesses/non-profits/creators understand and avoid violating user privacy in their projects.
 
Since Data Privacy Day is this Sunday, it's a time to bring focus our efforts to both prevent privacy violations before they happen as well as provide clarity and next steps to those who have suffered violations. 
 
We've found many privacy-related legal issues can be avoided if the projects responsible for the violations -- the startup companies, app developers, and nonprofits who are collecting, tracking, and publishing user data -- start with a well-thought out game plan before collecting any data.
 
That said, formulating that game plan is expensive because it requires (a) access to expert knowledge that only a few attorneys are trained to provide and (b) a large time commitment from those attorneys who have to interface with the technical developers, managers, and key-decisions makers related to the project. READ MORE
 
New Media Rights partners with University of California on adaptation of our Fair Use App for UC staff and faculty

We are pleased to announce a new partnership between New Media Rights and the University of California. Craig Bentley, a Managing Instructional Technologist at UC San Diego, is working with New Media Rights to adapt the Fair Use app into a system to help train UC faculty and staff system wide on copyright and fair use matters. “In designing educational videos for the University of California system, all of our campuses are constantly faced with questions about fair use.  The foundation of the Fair Use app developed by New Media Rights should help us deal with fair use issues much more effectively in the future,” said UCSD's Bentley.

#CopyrightWeek 2018: Accessible Legal Services Are Part of Building A Better Copyright System

Happy Copyright Week! We respond to over 500 requests for legal services every year, and over two thirds of these relate to copyright law.  Copyright law protects the work of creators, but it also controls how the culture around us can be reused and commented upon. It's our mission to make sure that copyright related legal services are available to all regardless of ability to pay. This way copyright law can be used as a tool for responsible enforcement, not trolling and bullying. This week a community of awesome organizations are offering our visions of a balanced copyright future.  

Each day there will be posts on a specific theme.  Since much of what we do day in and out is copyright law, we're going to link you to some of our best resources, new and old, on copyright law for the given topics.

Copyright Week image photo credit - EFF under a CC-BY 3.0 license

Tyler Reddy
Catherine Ghipriel
Nicholas Aliquo
Claudette Villicana
Brigitte Ann Castro
New Media Rights Legal Resource Library
New Media Rights Joins The EFF And OTW In Petition For An Improved Video Excerpt 1201 Exemption

New Media Rights recently filed a petition with the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Organization for Transformative Works to the Copyright Office requesting that the office provide better protection for the right of educators, libraries, filmmakers, remix artists, and others to use video excerpts under fair use through Section 1201 exemptions. Section 1201 outlines the DMCA’s anti-circumvention provisions that make it illegal to bypass technological protection measures (TPM) (also known as Digital Rights Management (DRM)) that restrict access to copyrighted content, unless specifically exempted through this rulemaking which takes place every three years. The strangest part about the anti-circumvention laws is that you may be making a fair use of material, but if you've circumvented, you could still be violating federal law. 1201 is broken, and we're working to fix it.