European parliament votes for controversial copyright reform (yes, again)

The European Parliament has voted to pass a controversial reform of online copyright rules that critics contend will result in big tech platforms pre-filtering user generated content uploads. The results of the final vote in the EU parliament were 348 in favor vs 274 against. An amendment that would have thrown out the most controversial […]

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Scooter startup Bird tried to silence a journalist. It did not go well.

Cory Doctorow doesn’t like censorship. He especially doesn’t like his own work being censored. Anyone who knows Doctorow knows his popular tech and culture blog Boing Boing, and anyone who reads Boing Boing knows Doctorow and his cohort of bloggers. The part-blogger, part special advisor at the online rights group Electronic Frontier Foundation, has written […]

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A long and winding road to new copyright legislation

Dave Davis Contributor Dave Davis joined Copyright Clearance Center in 1994 and currently serves as a research analyst. He previously held directorships in both public libraries and corporate libraries and earned joint master’s degrees in Library and Information Sciences and Medieval European History from Catholic University of America. More posts by this contributor How AI […]

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Copyright compromise: Music Modernization Act signed into law

Musicians are celebrating as the Music Modernization Act, an attempt to drag copyright and royalty rules into the 21st century, is signed into law after unanimous passage through Congress. The act aims to centralize and simplify the process by which artists are tracked and paid on digital services like Spotify and Pandora, and also extends the royalty treatment to songs recorded before 1972.

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What you need to know ahead of the EU copyright vote

European Union lawmakers are facing a major vote on digital copyright reform proposals on Wednesday — a process that has set the Internet’s hair fully on fire. Here’s a run down of the issues and what’s at stake… Article 13 The most controversial component of the proposals concerns user-generated content platforms such as YouTube, and […]

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Wikimedia warns EU copyright reform threatens the ‘vibrant free web’

The Wikimedia Foundation has sounded a stark warning against a copyright reform proposal in Europe that’s due to be voted on by the European Parliament next week. (With the mild irony that it’s done so with a blog post on the commercial Medium platform.) In the post, also emailed to TechCrunch, María Sefidari Huici, chair […]

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How AI and copyright would work

 It’s easy (and tempting) to get wrapped around the axle when it comes to the prospects for AI programs and their creation of original works. When works created by self-running software applications become more common, the result is both more possibilities and more challenges to existing copyright law. But let’s consider what we know, then move on to what may soon be coming. Read More

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