Turns out Woody Guthrie lifted the melody of "This Land Is Your Land" essentially note-for-note from "When the World's on Fire," a song recorded by country/bluegrass legends, The Carter Family, ten years before Guthrie wrote his classic song. Here's a short snippet (380k mp3) of the song (the song...

A court decision today in a case against people accused of sharing copyrighted files on peer-to-peer networks brought some good news for those concerned about the way the recording industry is pursuing its litigation campaign.
In Sony v. Does 1-40, Judge Denny Chin denied (PDF) a motion to...

Bravo to the students @ Free Culture for today's spirited celebration of fair use in action. Check out the entirely legal art exhibit, served with a generous helping of much-appreciated levity:

Legal Notice:
Sorry Barbie, it's a free country and everything on this site is protected...

The two brothers who created the fantastic "This Land" parody -- sending up President Bush, Senator Kerry, and the current state of American democracy to the tune of "This Land is Your Land" -- have been threatened with a copyright lawsuit.
You see, the classic American...

Susan Crawford, responding to the Jonathan Krim article we mentioned earlier today about TiVo and the FCC's broadcast flag mandate (PDF):

The flag was supposed to be about indiscriminate online distribution. TiVo is trying to provide a device that allows 10 people within a personal network...

For a while there, it looked like TiVo could avoid (some of) the copyright battles that felled the competition by playing nice with the content industry. But as this MSNBC Washington Post article shows, sometimes even asking for permission to innovate isn't enough:

Hollywood studios and the National...

Now that the Supreme Court has upheld a preliminary injunction in the COPA case, it's time to turn our attention to another important obscenity case that has broad implications for the future of online anonymity.
Within the next year, a federal court in New York City will...