Besides being one of the world’s most popular pop stars, Taylor Swift is usually recognised for her masterful use of social media. Her Instagram and Tumblr accounts are wildly popular, but are also textbook examples of how to use the Internet to communicate a carefully curated image. The savvy online Read more…
My social media timeline is filled with links to an article on Torrent Freak by Rick Falvinge, the founder of the Swedish Pirate Party. The article is entitled “The Entire Copyright Monopoly Idea is Based on a Lie“. The article sets out to criticise the social contract that gives copyright Read more…
The Green Party in the UK has found itself in a bit of hot water with the creative sector when it made a policy statement that it would shorten copyright terms to 14 years. As far as I am aware, this is the first proposal of its kind outside of Read more…
It has been often remarked in these pages that we seem to be going back in time when it comes to copyright case law. In particular, the fact that the Court of Justice of the European Union continues to decide cases about linking seems to me to be a baffling Read more…
The Court of Justice of the European Union has produced an interesting decision regarding copyright levies in the case of Copydan Båndkopi v Nokia Danmark (C‑463/12). Some European countries have established a copyright levy scheme for blank media, this means that whenever there is a sale of a product that Read more…
Some weeks ago I was asked to comment on whether tweets are subject to copyright protection. Unsurprisingly, this is a common question that gets asked over and over again, as some of the information online is contradictory and misleading, or refers to other jurisdictions. Do we have an answer in Read more…
On December 9 2014, Swedish police raided the servers of the file-sharing site The Pirate Bay, and finally managed to shut down the service for the first time since its creation in 2003. Police acted from a complaint from Swedish rights holder anti-piracy group Rights Alliance, and while I have Read more…
The UK has implemented yet another piece of positive copyright reform by creating a scheme that licences orphan works. Now, that is one sentence that you do not get to say often enough, but it truly is heartening that we are undergoing a very interesting evidence-based approach to IP regulation Read more…
The popular press and the blogosphere are going ape over the news that Wikimedia has refused a take-down request by photographer David Slater of the self-portrait of a macaca monkey, arguing that it is in the public domain (I promise no more monkeying around with the puns). Wikimedia posted the Read more…
A new set of regulations detailing small yet important changes to its copyright law have come into effect in the UK through the publication of the The Copyright and Rights in Performances (Research, Education, Libraries and Archives) Regulations 2014. This is part of a series of reforms that will be Read more…