What’s coming up for discussion with the new media/old media/social media/internet marketing debate is: how important is ‘original material’? It’s an issue not just for the Rupert Murdochs of the world: original, quality content for news media — actually any media — is expensive to produce on anything like an ongoing and quality basis. It [...]

Remember my review of Geekversity spruiker Shaun Stenning‘s YouTube Traffic Thieves report… An odious little volume? Apparently news aggregator site Gawker.tv (parent of Gizmodo, receivers of stolen iPhone prototypes) recently used one of the dodgy ‘tricks’ promoted by the young guru’s mephitic ‘e-book’ i.e pinching someone else’s video and uploading it to get ‘their’ traffic. [...]

Well, that’s an interesting turn. Looks like the judge has confirmed the rule as: Go ahead, infringe somebody else’s copyright (or provide a platform for doing so), then stop doing it as soon as the aggrieved rights-holder demands you ‘take it down’ and … ‘sweet, bro!’. Hmm, I don’t think I like that. The role [...]

Reuters reported yesterday that film studio Summit Entertainment, which produces the “Twilight” film franchise, is suing a retailer that’s selling copies of a jacket worn by actor Kristen Stewart who plays heroine Bella Swan in the movies. The studio filed a lawsuit against women’s fashion designer BB Dakota on Friday for copyright and trademark infringement. [...]

We’ve discussed ‘fair dealing’ and ‘fair use’ of other people’s intellectual property previously. I stumbled across THIS useful explanation on wikipedia following a link from Jason Kottke on reproductions of classic photographs in lego and found it interesting enough — the copyright aspect — to quote in full here. Copyright is owned by Martin Elliott. [...]

How The Mainstream Media Stole Our News Story Without Credit by DANNY SULLIVAN on JUNE 1, 2010 http://daggle.com/mainstream-media-stole-news-story-credit-1906 Thanks to Bernard Hickey who tweeted it this morning.

Oh boy. This guy is off to almost as good a start as Brian J Hogan the iPhone prototype finder-keeper/thief/seller … Brian Corman, Columbia Valedictorian, PLAGIARIZED Patton Oswalt In Graduation Speech … leaving the university, home of the famed Columbia School of Journalism, embarrassed… It has come to our attention that a portion of our [...]

. LimeWire hammered in copyright case 11:36 AM Thursday May 13, 2010 | NZ Herald [AP story] LOS ANGELES – File-sharing software company LimeWire has lost a court battle to the major recording companies. A judge with the US District Court in New York ruled this week that the company and its Chairman Mark Gorton [...]

Andrew Keen’s opinion column “Copyrights take a back seat to profits on the Web” is worth a read. Even in the digital world, standards are still necessary and some old rules deserve respect. Creators should still be fairly compensated for their work, and we shouldn’t tolerate stealing as the road to profit. And, as much [...]

LOTs of people routinely reproduce Scott Adams’ Dilbert (and Gary Trudeau’s Doonesbury, my other favourite) thinking their lil’ ol’ blog is too small to matter and they can fly under the radar. Adams discusses his views past and present, and presents his new, streamlined, licensing model with ‘License Me’ button. The post is worth reading [...]