So, updating the #Copyright YEAR has no legal bearing as Copyright protection is a fixed duration.- Author-owned works is lifetime of author + 50 years (70 or longer in some countries)- Entity-owned & pseudonym (not revealed) is 95 years from FIRST publication
copyright
So, updating the #Copyright YEAR has no legal bearing as Copyright protection is a fixed duration.
- Author-owned works is lifetime of author + 50 years (70 or longer in some countries)
- Entity-owned & pseudonym (not revealed) is 95 years from FIRST publication
- Unpublished is 120 years from first creation
Which means that it is pointless to list multiple years or a range of years. This is according to the International agreements related to Copyright, like the Berne Convention and the TRIPS Agreement.
Milestones for the Deep Backfile project.
Back in 2020-2021, while the Penn Libraries were largely closed, many of our librarians worked from home on the Deep Backfile project. Faced with more demand than ever for online access to our collections while most users couldn't go into our libraries, we researched the copyrights of some of the many thousands of journals, magazines, newspapers, and other serials in our collections.
https://everybodyslibraries.com/2024/08/13/milestones-for-the-deep-backfile-project/
Edited 1y ago
#OTD in 1886.
The Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works is signed. The treaty provides authors, musicians, poets, painters, and other creators with the means to control how their works are used, by whom, and on what terms.
#OTD in 1911.
The U.K. Copyright Act consolidates copyright law in the British Empire and confirms the six libraries to which a copy of every book published in the U.K. must be deposited by the publisher: the British Museum Library (London); the Bodleian Library (Oxford); the Advocates Library (Edinburgh); the National Library of Wales (Aberystwyth); Trinity College Dublin; and Cambridge University Library.
This week's net.wars, "Disharmony", finds Meta allegedly engaging in piracy and changing its content moderation policies, and network neutrality dying (for now?) in the US: https://netwars.pelicancrossing.net/2025/01/10/disharmony/ #copyright #eu #OnlineSafety #NetWars
#OTD in 1914.
In New York City the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers is established to protect the copyrighted musical compositions of its members.
It was founded by Victor Herbert, George Botsford, Silvio Hein, Irving Berlin, Louis Hirsch, John Raymond Hubbell, Gustave Kerker, & Jean Schwartz; Glen MacDonough; publishers George Maxwell and Jay Witmark & copyright attorney Nathan Burkan.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Society_of_Composers,_Authors_and_Publishers
ASCAP archives at NYPL:
https://archives.nypl.org/mus/22936
What on earth, SoundCloud??
"In the absence of a separate agreement that states otherwise, You explicitly agree that your Content may be used to inform, train, develop or serve as input to artificial intelligence or machine intelligence technologies or services as part of and for providing the services."
https://soundcloud.com/terms-of-use
via @sarahdal https://crispsandwi.ch/@sarahdal/114477755873097160
This week's net.wars, "Conundrum", goes to a meeting on copyright's "existential threat" to generative AI: https://netwars.pelicancrossing.net/2025/07/11/conundrum/ #NetWars #Copyright #AI
Last night, @pluralistic was in conversation with @mariafarrell to mark ORG's 20th birthday.
This wide-ranging conversation covers everything from the 'Internet dimension' of policy-making to copyright in the age of AI and how to fight for digital rights.
Plus much more!
Missed it live? No worries, you can watch it in full on Youtube 📺
https://www.youtube.com/live/M9H2An_D6io
#ORG20 #digitalrights #corydoctorow #AI #copyright #dataprotection #bigtech
Edited 30d ago
This week's net.wars, "Big Bang", finds a folk musician fighting to get back the rights over his long-ago recorded music, and chronicles the first week of age verification in the UK: https://netwars.pelicancrossing.net/2025/08/01/big-bang/ #NetWars #HumanRights #Copyright #FolkMusic #AgeVerification
A best-selling Vancouver author has launched a class-action lawsuit against Nvidia, claiming the multi-trillion dollar tech company illegally used his and other Canadian writers' works to train artificial intelligence large language models (LLM). https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/vancouver-author-leads-class-actions-against-ai-giants-1.7595962
J.B. MacKinnon is named as the representative plaintiff in the claim, which says his books, The 100-Mile Diet and The Once and Future World, were part of a 196,640-book dataset that Nvidia used without paying a licensing fee or securing consent to acquire or use the works. #cdnpoli #copyright #AI
I learned today that because of the strong Moral Rights protection in the #Philippines , it is not possible for Authors/Creators (defined as "natural persons" by law) to dedicate/release their work to the #PublicDomain .
And even if we use 0BSD, MIT-0, CC0, and other similar public-domain-equivalent licenses, we can still sue anyone who:
1. Misused our name
2. Misrepresented us
3. Misused our work (downstream)
All under Moral Rights because we can never waived it under Philippine law. Even with a promise not to sue anyone is not a guarantee.
So, saying, "This work is under 0BSD/MIT-0/CC0 and I will never sue anyone for whatever reason", won't work under Philippine law. The Creator/Author will always have their Moral Rights as the creator/author of the work. It's completely up to you to trust that they will fulfill their promise. 🤪
Edited 10d ago
Perhaps don't launch businesses that rely on breaking the law? Just a thought.
'If the appeals court denies the petition…the emerging company may be doomed. As Anthropic argued, it now "faces hundreds of billions of dollars in potential damages liability at trial in four months"…that involves "up to seven million potential claimants, whose works span a century of publishing history," each possibly triggering a $150,000 fine.'
A class action lawsuit is being prepared against Anthropic over their downloading of copyrighted material from pirate websites.
If you're an author, and your books have been registered with the US Copyright Office, you may be eligible to be included, and thus receive damages.
The plaintiff's lawyers are collecting contact information so that they can ensure eligible authors receive formal notice of the class action.
More information and the form are here: https://www.lieffcabraser.com/anthropic-author-contact/
#PleaseBoost and pass on to any authors you know not on the fediverse.
#WritersOfMastodon #WritingCommunity #AI #Anthropic #copyright #author
@writingcommunity @bookstodon