News

Over two years ago when we submitted comments in the United States Department of Commerce, United States Patent and Trademark Office and National Telecommunications and Information Administration copyright reform proceedings and again in our roundtable testimony, we advised a cautious approach that avoided the collateral damage that can come with hasty reforms. The final report takes a cautious balanced approach and shows support for many of the points we emphasized including:

• The importance of developing a flexible criterion to help judges and juries determine the amount of statutory damages awarded. Particularly criteria that: consider whether the defendant use was non-commercial, had reasonable fair use argument and the financial means of the infringer. With flexible standards Copyright Trolls are much less likely to be able to exploit small-scale defendants’ lack of sophistication and resources to extract inappropriate settlements from them. (see pg 75 of the report for some of our thoughts)
• The need for more public education on matters of copyright law, including fair use, to promote creativity.
• The creation of easy to read fair use best practices developed within specific creative communities by creators, lawyers and other practitioners working in that specific area to help creators make informed decisions about fair use.
• Recognizing the importance of having a small claims copyright court to help independent creators resolve disputes that doesn’t sacrifice important copyright safeguards, like fair use, in the process.(see pg 78 of the report for some of our thoughts)

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.

Imagine a world where you didn’t need a central bank to transfer money at a hefty markup. Enter Bitcoin, a new digital currency disrupting the banking industry.  Before he came to law school, New Media Rights Intern Emory Roane actively worked with this disruptive technology as a Bitcoin miner. Miners help to verify financial transactions in a giant public ledger. Recently Emory was asked to share his knowledge of Bitcoin on a panel called “Can Bitcoin Pay for the Internet of Things”; alongside Bitcoin and cyber security experts Bill Bonney, Justine Phillips, Paul Puey and Paul Boulanger. 

New Media Rights is excited to announce that Executive Director Art Neill will be speaking at The City of San Diego Small Business Advisory Board’s Annual Community Outreach Meeting.  Art will be joining a panel of legal and marketing experts to talk about "Strategies to Promote & Protect Your Business"The meeting will also feature a panel about what small businesses can learn from startups and a keynote from Steven Cox, CEO of TakeLessons.com.

The meeting will take place Friday, October 16, 2015 from 8:30 a.m. - 11:15 a.m in the Downtown Central Library’s Shiley Special Events Suite. The event is free but the Business Advisory Board requests that you RSVP in advance. For more information about the event and to RSVP, check out their Eventbrite page here.

New Media Rights would also like to thank City of San Diego Economic Development Department for their continued financial support of New Media Rights.

Today New Media Rights stood with 14 other groups to tell TPP Trade Officials to include copyright safeguards critical to users and creators in the revised TPP IP chapter.