Reps. Rick Boucher and John Doolittle's FAIR USE Act [PDF] would remove some of the entertainment industry's most draconian anti-innovation weapons and chip away at the Digital Millennium Copyright Act's (DMCA) broad restrictions on fair use. Take action now and tell Congress to help restore balance in...

Call it the Universal Law of Bad Laws: the more problematic a proposed
piece of legislation is, the keener its advocates are to rush it through. When
that happens, it's often those in the system who call for delay that saves us
all from its unintended consequences.
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Fantastic news from Stanford Law School's Fair Use Project: documentarians who follow the Center for Social Media's Documentary Filmmakers' Statement of Best Practices in Fair Use can now get "errors and omissions" insurance from Media/Professional Insurance. The key was cementing a promise of pro bono...

WIPO's Provisional Committee on Proposals Related to a WIPO Development Agenda is meeting in Geneva this week to continue discussions about establishing a Development Agenda for WIPO - a set of proposals for measuring the impact of WIPO's work on social and economic development in its member states. Two years...

The major record labels are sending thousands more copyright nastygrams to colleges regarding student file sharing this year. Of course, file sharing continues unabated, and these P2P-related notices will simply push fans to use other readily-accessible technologies that the RIAA can't easily monitor -- copying music through iTunes...

Free Congress!Coders gather to open up more of the legislature's
deliberations.
Republicans, Democrats Spat Over IP Rights in Congress TVAfter Speaker of the House Nancy Polosi is accused of
"pirating" C-SPAN, the TV service reiterates that it has no
copyright interest in the video.
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Whistleblower Mark Klein will get some well-deserved acknowledgement when he receives a James Madison Freedom of Information Award next month. The award could hardly find a more deserving recipient — Klein is the former AT&T technician who exposed the extent of the government's warrantless wiretapping program.
In early...