“Der Spiegel” on the “Explosion of Knowledge” in 19th Century Germany
The impact of copyright regulation on economic development in general and innovation in particular is not the primary topic discussed in this blog, even though it is the issue that feeds most of the...
View ArticleNo National Leeway? Copyright Reform Proposals in Brazil and the Czech Republic
When discussing national copyright legislation with lawyers, most discussions end relatively quickly with reference to the inherent necessities of international treaties. Legalize non-commercial...
View ArticleTagged Tabs (1): Copyright, Human Rights, License Compatibility and Irony of...
Every day I keep adding open tabs to my browser with interesting articles on issues related to governance across borders, hoping to find the time to blog about them; only rarely, I actually manage to...
View ArticleCrazy Copyright Cartoon: The YouTube Copyright School
Right on time before flying to Leuven for the upcoming ESF Workshop “Consuming the Illegal“, Google/YouTube published the copyright cartoon perfectly illustrating what the workshop will be about: The...
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Anonymous Attacks German Collecting Society GEMA
A few days ago, the German collecting society GEMA was criticized by CEOs of leading music labels such as Universal or Sony Music for not being able to negotiate an agreement with Google, the owner of...
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The Dark Side of Copyright’s Force: LucasArts v. YouTube v. Greenpeace v. VW...
In their book “Information Feudalism” (2002), Peter Drahos and John Braithwaite argue that the “danger of intellectual property lies in the threat to liberty” (p. 3). Also Jamie Boyle, in his open...
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Shifting Baseline in Assessing Copyright Regulation? IP as Conceptual Pac Man!
Starting this week and ending in October, I am visiting researcher at the Social Science Research Center Berlin (WZB). The reason for my stay is a research project on the societal and economic role of...
View ArticlePrivate Ordering in Copyright and Patent Law: Property-Preempting Investments
As mentioned in my last post, this summer I am visiting the WZB to work on a paper about the digital public domain. Rifling through a huge pile of papers on the issue, I recently stumbled across Robert...
View ArticleGovernment Across Borders: From Inspiration to Implementation
In the history of copyright law, legislation in Europe and the US have wound each other up more and more. Everytime when there was a copyright term extension on one side of the ocean, lobbyists on the...
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ACTA as a Case of Strategic Ambiguity
While the dust of the SOPA and PIPA battle in the US has not settled yet, we quickly approach the next showdown around an acronym in the realm of intellectual property regulation. This time the main...
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New Layer of Copyright Enforcement: Search
Recently Google announced an extension to its “Transparency Report“, which now also includes a section on requests to remove search results that link to material that allegedly infringes copyrights....
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Algorithm Regulation #2: Negotiating Google Search
In the series “algorithm regulation”, we discuss the implications of the growing importance of technological algorithms as a means of regulation in the digital realm. Earlier this year, Google...
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Copyright, Creative Commons and other Calamities in Scientific Publishing
When publishing a scientific work or a textbook in a reputable publishing house, the final steps before publication usually involve signing over exclusive copyrights in a standardized manner. A...
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The Rhetoric of Copyright Extremism in European Copyright Reform Discourse
In the end, nothing happened. When the European parliament adopted a compromise version of MEP Julia Reda’s evaluation report of the EU copyright directive, the attempt of MEP Jean-Marie Cavada to...
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Bordercrossing Books: “Creative License” by McLeod and DiCola on Digital...
While the recent Google Books ruling by the US Second Circuit has once again proven how the US copyright system is – thanks to its fair use provision – more flexible and adaptable to digital challenges...
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Copyright in the Books versus Copyright in Action: Without Reform, Only...
The dreadful state of copyright law in the digital age can be nicely illustrated by a thought experiment.* If one thinks back to 1980, it is hard to imagine how one could have committed a copyright...
View ArticleFrom Transnationality to Territoriality and Back: The Case of Creative Commons
At a workshop on “Intellectual Property Ordering Beyond Borders” hosted by the newly founded Weizenbaum Institute in Berlin I was invited to give a talk on issues of transnationality and territoriality...
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Bordercrossing Article: “Between Anxiety and Hope? How Actors Experience...
We, that is Sigrid Quack, Konstantin Hondros, Katharina Zangerle and I, proudly present the article “Between Anxiety and Hope? How Actors Experience Regulatory Uncertainty in Creative Processes in...
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Platform rules! Terms and conditions on professional creative platforms...
Platform rule No. x, own drawing In a recent blog post, Amy Thomas from the CREATe center at the University of Glasgow suggests that contractual provisions can have – not least detrimental – effects...
View ArticleBordercrossing Talk at re:publica 2024: “Public Domain in the Digital Age: a...
The Berlin-based re:publica conference series deals with what Felix Stalder calls “The Digital Condition” of our society and attracts about 10.000 peopel each year. At this year’s conference themed...
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