Once again, the OTW and EFF persuaded the copyright office to grant vidders (and other makers of noncommercial remix video) a DMCA exemption! The Librarian of Congress 1) renewed the existing exemptions (which allow us to circumvent DRM on DVDs and digital downloads) and 2) added Blu-Ray.

You can read the EFF's account or read the ruling itself\o ( Read more... )

I'm sitting in on this morning's DMCA hearings (along with Rebecca Tushnet, Francesca Coppa, and Corynne McSherry); we'll be testifying this afternoon. If you're interested in the proceedings, I strongly recommend reading Professor Tushnet's (terrifyingly comprehensive) notes on the hearingsIn the meantime, I note without comment that earlier this ( Read more... )

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You know you've been working on your DMCA statement about video specs too long when you glance at the section on interlacing and realize that it begins "From the point of view of remix artists, interlacing-or, for those who don’t know the technical term, “that weird comb effect”-is perhaps best defined as the devil’s work ( Read more... )

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I'll be doing a livecast Google hangout this afternoon, a conversation about the DMCA sponsored by the Daily Dot and the National Alliance for Media Arts and Culture.

Rebecca Tushnet and I will be talking about our roles in the fight for the recent DMCA exemption for vidders and other remix video artists; you can read more about us and the other ( Read more... )

I just read Rebecca Tushnet's "Judges as Bad Reviewers: Fair Use and Epistemological Humility," a fascinating and highly readable analysis of the ways in which copyright fair use cases turn on judges' willingness to acknowledge that texts can be interpreted in many ways; Tushnet uses vids as case studies. (Full disclosure: I'm cited in it! That is ( Read more... )

The U.S. Register of Copyrights has recommended that the noncommercial remix exemption from last time around be a) renewed, and b) expanded to include online services (iTunes, Amazon Unbox, etc). Rebecca Tushnet has posted about it here, and
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On Monday, June 4, I testified in this year's hearings about exemptions to the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA). Rebecca Tushnet is doing her usual comprehensive write-ups of panels and has already posted her notes from our panel. What I'm posting here are my own notes from which I spoke; as usual, I sort of riffed as I went, so the official ( Read more... )

Vidders and vidwatchers! If you want to help renew the DMCA exemption we won in 2010, now's your chance: submit your comments in support of the exemption proposal by February 10th, 5pm Eastern Time.

You can send comments to OTW's Legal or Vidding committees, or you can send them directly to the Copyright office. If you're submitting directly, be ( Read more... )