Way more than an everyday interest in IP
The Fair Dealing-Fair Use war has been raging in Australia since antiquity. The Fair Users fondly yearn for the green pastures of American-esque copyright law. They imagine a vast nation where creative works are freely and peacefully disseminated as Fair Use, their benevolent sovereign, smiles on creators and consumers with equanimity and impartiality. The Fair read more...If copyright lawyers hadn’t already had a busy enough year in 2015 with the introduction of the Copyright Amendment (Online Infringement) Act 2015, they were in for a special holiday treat when the Department of Communications and the Arts released some more interesting draft amendments to the Copyright Act 1968 (Cth) (“the Act”) for public comment read more...Posting a cringeworthy meme can often cost you a few Facebook friends. But what if the next meme you post costs you almost $900? German blog Geeksisters found out the hard way when Getty Images asked them to pay €785.40 in back licensing fees for posting the famous Socially Awkward Penguin meme to their website. read more...Yesterday, the Government announced that it has commissioned an economic analysis of some of the recommendations made by the Australian Law Reform Commission in its Copyright and the Digital Economy Report. The ALRC’s report, which was publicly released in February 2014, made a number of recommendations for reform of Australian Copyright law. One of the read more...That selfie stick might actually be a wise investment – after all, your next Instagram post could be worth thousands. US artist Richard Prince’s latest exhibition, ‘New Portraits’, is a series of printed screenshots of other people’s Instagram photos. The going price for each piece? A cool US$90,000 (roughly A$115,000). The amount the original Instagram read more...On 14 November 2013, Judge Denny Chin of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York found that Google’s “Library Project”, under which it has now scanned tens of millions of books (many of them under copyright) without permission from the rights holders, and made them available in “snippet form”, constituted read more...Everybody loves those ‘funniest faces/dresses/animals’ slideshows, right? There’s no denying there are some classic photos online, and there’s nothing wrong with having a quiet giggle at them over your morning latte. What might not be OK is when those images are copyrighted and unfairly used without permission- but what does “fair” actually mean? On June read more...
