Policy Advocacy

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At New Media Rights we get quite a few questions about how to find out who owns a copyrighted work. In this new guide we’ll talk about:

• Whether or not you need to get permission to use the work.
• How to get permission if the creator is still alive.
• How to get permission of the author is dead.
• Orphan works and what happens when you can’t find the author.

Today YouTube announced a new program to help its users stand up to bogus copyright threats from content bullies. Under the program YouTube will offer select users, with strong fair use cases, who have a video taken down under the DMCA two options:

• Option 1: Users can follow the current process of filing a counter notice and have the video put back up worldwide in 10-14 days as required by law.
• Option 2:  Under the new option, users will be able to keep the video up in the US. Google will also provide a vetted list seasoned copyright litigators and up to one million dollars to help with legal fees if they are sued.

While we wish the program didn’t make users choose between keeping the video up worldwide or just in the US, we understand that much of it is a result of the messy state of international copyright law. And we hope that as the program iterates it will be able to expand its scope and hopefully make some great case law reinforcing the legal consequences of sending a bogus takedown in the process. We also like the idea of having a "demo reel" of fair use examples to help YouTubers learn about fair use. You can see the first class of videos YouTube has selected for their fair use program over on YouTube here.

Whether you’ve joined us as a Student or an Open Internet Defender we're stronger than ever thanks to support from individuals like you!

If you haven't become a Supporter, we need your support more than ever this year.  Please consider joining our community of supporters by making a donation and help us continue to fulfill our mission to:

• Provide free and dramatically reduced fee one-to-one legal services to underserved creators and innovators that need specialized help with Internet, intellectual property, media, and technology law
• Defend the Open Internet and push for badly needed copyright reform.
• Create high quality legal educational materials and to educate the next generation of lawyers.

This Giving Tuesday, December 1, New Media Rights will be running a one-day, 24-hour fundraiser where your donations will be matched dollar for dollar up to $40,000! We need your support more than ever this year. Please pledge an amount to support@newmediarights now, and then donate on December 1 help us leverage our biggest match opportunity ever!

We’ll also be competing with all of the other wonderful programs at California Western School of Law for that $40,000 match on a first come, first matched basis. In order to maximize your impact we are asking donors to give as close as possible to 12:01am PST on December 1st! As an added bonus the first person to donate on December 1st will get a video thank you from the NMR Team!

Need a reminder? Send the dollar amount you would like to pledge to support@newmediarights.org by Monday November 23 and we'll send you a reminder email at 12:01AM on Giving Tuesday! Even if you're not a night owl, your early bird donations can have a huge impact!

Every three years the Copyright Office meets to reconsider exemptions to the DMCA Anti-Circumvention provisions. These exemptions are critical to ensuring creators and consumers’ ability to bypass technological protection measures on copyrighted works, allowing them to make fair use of works in a variety of circumstances.  As we did in 2012, New Media Rights submitted extensive comments and testimony, working on behalf of creators and consumers to maintain and expand on the exemptions currently in place.

On October 27, the Copyright Office revealed the results of their 2015 Anti-Circumvention Rulemaking. Many of our recommendations were adopted, and we were cited repeatedly in the rulemaking.

This is usually the part where we say we’re proud to have been a part of making sure these vital exemptions were granted and expanded.  We are proud of our contributions and we’ll highlight those below, but we also need to take amount to keep it real.  The DMCA Anti-circumvention rulemaking is broken.

This October Art Neill and Teri Karobonik delivered a talk entitled “Office of the Fair Use Wizard: Creators, Technology and Fair Use in the Digital Age” as part of The Center for Intellectual Property at Whittier Law School’s Fall Colloquium and Distinguished Speaker Series. The lecture covered the basics of copyright and fair use as well as covering some of the emerging fair use issues of the digital age.

Video of the talk will be posted here as soon as it becomes available.

The first annual TwitchCon was held this September in San Francisco.  New Media Rights rounded up some of our favorite video game fans for an awesome panel called “Can We Just Play? The Legality of Let's Play Video and Streams.” The panel addressed the basics of copyright and trademark law that Twitch Streamers and Video Creators need to know to keep their videos and streams up. Our thanks go out to our awesome panelists (listed left to right) Angelo Alcid, Art Neill, Jonathan McIntosh and Teri Karobonik.

Missed out on TwitchCon this year? No worries!  Check out the archive of our panel after the jump!