'Dreams' by Joakim Karud is a popular track in Youtube's library of safe, royalty-free music, which it supplies to video creators who want to stay on the right side of copyright, but Sonyatv and Warner Chappell claim that the Creative Commons-licensed song contains an uncleared sample from the Kenny Burrell Quartet's 'Weaver of Dreams,' which has allowed the giant rightsholder corporations to claim ownership over any video that incorporates the track and demand the lion's share of the revenue generated by the tens of millions of views associated with them. Read the rest

As the European Parliament prepares for tomorrow's vote on the new Copyright Directive with its provisions requiring mass-scale filtering of all public communications to check for copyright infringement (Article 13) and its provisions requiring paid permission to link to the news if you include as little as two words from the headline in your link text (Article 11), a dismaying number of "creators groups" are supporting it, telling their members that this will be good for them and their flagging financial fortunes. Read the rest

I'm an 8th grade middle school student at a public school in NYC. In my humanities class we are studying muckraking journalism, and we have an assignment to write a muckraking article about a modern issue. (For those who didn't pay attention during class, muckraking journalism is journalism that became prominent in the late 19th century. A muckraking article digs up and exposes problems in society.) Coincidentally, I recently had a personal experience with a muckrake-able issue. I chose to make lemonade out of lemons, and got a very interesting topic for my assignment--and one that I could write about both professionally and privately. So, I'm posting my homework here.

Harry Shearer says he received $98 in total music royalties and $81 in merchandising income for Spinal Tap from entertainment giant Vivendi, thanks to the company's (extremely) creative accounting. He's been suing them for more than a year, and just scored an important court victory that will allow him to proceed, with US District Court Dolly Gee ruling that the case will go to trial. Read the rest

Everything is a Remix (previously) is an important, entertaining series of short videos that trace the ways the creation is built on earlier creation -- that "originality" is just mixing existing things in new ways. Read the rest