Creative Commons welcomes EC recommendation on common European data space for cultural heritage - Creative Commons

A few days ago, the European Commission (EC) released a recommendation for a common data space for cultural heritage, which aims to “accelerate the digitization of all cultural heritage monuments and sites, objects and artefacts for future...

Is Protecting Copyright More Important Than Saving Lives During The COVID-19 Pandemic?

Although the COVID-19 pandemic has wreaked terrible suffering across the world, we are fortunate that we already have several vaccines that have been shown to be highly effective in reducing the number of deaths and hospitalization rates....

the problematic GPL “or later” clause

The GNU General Public License started life as the GNU Emacs Public License in 1987 (the linked version is from February 1988), and has been built on the principle of copyleft: the use of the copyr…

Does Copyright Give Companies The Right To Search Your Home And Computer?

One reason why copyright has become so important in the digital age is that it applies to the software that many of us use routinely on our smartphones, tablets and computers. In order to run those programs, you must have a license of some kind...

NFTs and Web Archiving

One of the earliest observations of the behavior of the Web at scale was "link rot". There were a lot of 404s, broken links. Research showed...

What the Hell Is ‘Right-Clicker Mentality’?

A Twitter meme reveals everything you need to know about NFTs and the culture around it.

I Confess To Right-Clicker-Mentality

"Worth $532M" Both Cory Doctorow and Matthew Gault and Jordan Pearson have fun with the latest meme about NFTs, "Right-Clicker-Mentality"...

Copying is not theft - Ali Reza Hayati

Many publishers often refer to copying they don’t approve of as “piracy.” In this way, they imply that it is ethically equivalent to attacking ships on the high seas, kidnapping and murdering the people on them. Based on such propaganda, they have...

Why Songwriter Royalty Rates Won't Be Changing Much

No matter the outcome of these current rate hearings, nothing important will change when it comes to songwriter royalty rates.

The Hidden Costs of Requiring Accounts

Should online communities require people to create accounts before participating? This question has been a source of disagreement among people who start or manage online communities for decades. Re…