Will A New Copyright Act Strip Artists Of Their Copyrights? And If So, Would It Really Be So Bad?

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An "orphan work" is a work of art whose owner is not known and not findable, thus making licensing or purchasing of the rights impossible. The new Copyright Act will ostensibly 1) encourage artists to register their works to avoid orphaning, thus decreasing monetary recovery if the work is infringed, and 2) force users to file a “notice of use” with the Copyright Office with a description of the work, a summary of the search they conducted to find the copyright owner, the source of the work, and a description of the how the work will be used in order to facilitate communication between owners and users. In large part, the Act would limit the financial liability of someone who infringed the work after making a good faith diligent attempt to find the owner.

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Why I Think Using Social Media To Call Out Infringers May Be A Good Idea After All

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You will be infringed at some point; it’s almost a statistical certainty, so you might as well know how to deal with it. There are many strategies you could employ to do that, but since none of you are paying me, I’m not giving them all away here. There’s one in particular, though, that I think is worth discussing here: using social media to rally public opinion around your issue to leverage your bargaining power. The internet can be a really amazing tool for change in that way.

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A Client Asked Me When Her Contracts Should Be In Writing And I Yelled At Her

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A little while back, a client asked me whether there were instances where she could avoid the rigamarole (and expense) of drafting up new agreements, whether her business could survive if she saved written contracts for the big projects, the ones that could bring in real money. I told her that I empathized with her position. As a business owner you have to make tough decisions about where to allocate your limited funds. Drafting contracts for small jobs didn’t seem to her like a good place to do that. I also told her that she could save money by reusing some boilerplate language from a contract I had previously drafted for her. That would cut down on costs. Then I yelled at her.

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In Brief: Taylor Swift Kicks Apple In The Nuggets, Is Proclaimed Savior Of Music By All [UPDATED]

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As everyone knows, Apple has a new Spotify/Tidal/Rdio/Pandora killer coming out this fall called Apple Music. In order to entice consumers, it will give everyone who signs up a free 3-month membership. But since Apple will receive no compensation in this time, neither will any of the artists featured on it. "That dog won't hunt," said Taylor Swift, probably.

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A Brief Review of Important Matters: Beastie Boys Legal Fees, Amazon vs. the FAA, and Trump vs. Young

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Amazon (among other large companies) is calling on Congress to limit restrictions on commercial drone flights so that it can continue to push forward it's harebrained drone-delivery system. The FAA's current proposed drone rule still carries pretty hefty limitations and would all but decimate Amazon's desire to fill the skies with box-carrying robots.

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A Brief Review of Important Matters: Artist Uses Social Media To Fight Infringer, Comcast's Terrible Deal, and James Bond Needs A New Home

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It will now be harder for victims of online harassment to pursue criminal actions against their tormentors. In a 7-2 decision that came down this month, the Court ruled in Elonis vs. United States that a person making a threat on social media has to possess an objective intent to threaten a victim. It's not good enough for the victim to believe the threat to be real. No, the threatener must also believe that the threat is real, even if they ultimately decide not to carry it out. While the idea of intent (or mens rea) has forever been a staple of criminal law, the actual effect, mainly on women, is hard to ignore.

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You Should Consider Licensing Your Work To Your Infringers

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When you find out that someone is using your work without your permission, the urge to satisfy your vengeance upon the infringer will feel overwhelming. Sending a threatening letter can be a powerful salve because it indulges your righteous fury. But you should fight that urge because I think being nice can often reap you greater benefits.

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A Brief Review of Important Matters: Copyright vs Actors, Godzilla vs Nacho, and DC vs Rihanna

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Toho Studios, the owner and creator of Godzilla, is suing Voltage Pictures over a monster movie it is producing starring Anne Hathaway. The film, entitled "Colossal," will feature Hathaway as a woman whose mind is connected to a giant lizard that is destroying Tokyo. Haha what??!! You kind of have to respect the audacity to run with an idea that sounds like it came from someone's drug-induced fever dream.

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Why Asking Nicely Works Or How Coke Got A Bunch Of Free Publicity And Mad Men Got The Ending It Wanted

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It's been my experience that when you want something - a discount, a favor, a deal - all you need to do is ask nicely. Obviously this isn’t applicable to all situations. High level deals don’t happen just because someone asked nicely and I’ll admit a certain degree of optimism (naïveté?) about peoples’ willingness to help. But in life and in business I have found this to be true more often than not

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A Brief Review of Extremely Important Matters: Sports Leagues Banning Live-Streaming Apps, Getty Wanting Amateurs, Hollywood's Gender Bias, and Other Miscellany

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A lot of people are unhappy about the Mayweather-Pacquaio fight, and not because Pacquiao lost. The fight of the century was rebroadcast on Periscope and Meerkat, the live-streaming apps, allowing people to watch the fight for free instead of ponying up the $100 pay-per-view fees. Now, the PGA and NHL are banning the apps outright and threatening any live-streamers with infringement suits.

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