Reuters is reporting that, "Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter said he has negotiated a proposed bill with the White House" regarding the NSA's illegal spying program. This bill has not been made public yet. The draft bill seen by EFF (which is likely similar if not identical...

The Hollywood Reporter Esq. (a new publication aimed at entertainment industry lawyers, but interesting to cyberlaw types, as well) asked me to write a short piece describing YouTube's relationship to copyright law. Many people have wondered whether YouTube may be on the same rocky copyright path that Napster...

A week after criticizing the entertainment industry for not "giv[ing] users the control and freedom to consume that make file-sharing networks so attractive," the LA Times hits a home run with today's editorial, "We aren't all pirates." Taking on the broadcast flag, audio flag, and...

Want to hear the latest news on Congress' bad copyright bills? If you live in San Francisco, check out the monthly Creative Commons Salon this Wednesday, July 12, from 6-9pm at Shine, (1337 Mission Street between 9th and 10th Streets). Jason Schultz and I...

In a follow-up to its story last month on the NSA's illegal spying, USA Today backed off claims about BellSouth and Verizon, but confirmed its claims about AT&T, reporting that, "Five members of the intelligence committees said they were told by senior intelligence officials that AT&T participated in...

Professor Jason Mazzone at Brooklyn Law School has just published an interesting article on "copyfraud"--the common practice of putting false copyright notices on public domain materials.
Copyfraud is everywhere. False copyright notices appear on modern reprints of Shakespeare's plays, Beethoven's piano scores, greeting card versions of Monet's Water...

For most of day 2 of this week's meeting on the WIPO Development Agenda, we counted. We heard statements from Brazil, Chile, Uruguay, and South Africa about the importance of protecting the public domain, balancing intellectual property rights with human rights, and the very real problems facing developing countries ....