A recent study of people that download music from the internet found that 21% of the participants had also downloaded a feature film before. 9% had even downloaded a film in the past month. These are some fairly high numbers and point out that while everyone has been predicting what happened to music would eventually…

Once upon a time, Apple’s slogan “Rip. Mix. Burn.” meant “make as many copies as you want of your legally purchased music.” Now it means “make the limited number of copies we deem appropriate.” All that’s being ripped, mixed, and burned are fair-use laws Annalee Newitz writes about the current state of P2P and DRM…

At a conference focused on video games and the law presented jointly by the law schools of NYU and Yale, the legal grey area of intellectual property and ownership of in-game items by participants has been examined by numerous presenters. The sale of credits and items between players in virtual worlds is fairly common, though…

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit (in California) ruled yesterday that the Beastie Boys’ sampling of a three-note segment of James Newton’s composition to the song “Choir” did not infringe Newton’s copyright. The court ruled that the sample was a “de minimis” — or trivial — instance of copying and thus not…

There’s a great article by Tad Friend in this week’s New Yorker, entitled “Credit Grab.” The piece explains the (fairly arbitrary) arbitration process used to settle authorship disputes over big Hollywood movies and to award credit to screenwriters. The process is a mess, says Friend, in part because most Hollywood pictures, particularly those whose characters…

This post is the first in a series that will roll out, over the course of this week, potential innovations to our licenses for your review and comment. Mmm . . . Free Samples Right now, our menu of license options lets authors choose between prohibiting or encouraging a) commercial re-uses of their work, and…

“A Kafkaesque state of affairs has effectively closed off access to thousands of old movies, books and pieces of music because the copyright owners can’t be located.” From a nice article about Creative Commons and content licensing by Sarah Lai Stirland in the Seattle Times.

Sep 18, 2002 — www.creativecommons.org — Creative Commons today announced its newly formed leadership team, expanding its efforts to cultivate a vibrant public domain within the current copyright system. Founding Executive Director Molly Shaffer Van Houweling recently completed her long-planned transition from Creative Commons to become Assistant Professor at the University of Michigan Law School…