This post is authored by Authors Alliance Senior Staff Attorney, Rachel Brooke. More recent members and readers may not be aware that Authors Alliance was founded in the wake of Authors Guild v. Google, a class action fair use case in the Second Circuit that was litigated for nearly a decade, and finally resolved in […]
This post is by Dave Hansen and also posted to the Fair Use Week blog here. Fair use is an essential part of the Copyright Act’s careful balance—on the one hand protecting rightsholders’ interests, while on the other “[permitting and requiring] courts to avoid rigid application of the copyright statute when, on occasion, it would […]
Authors who want to incorporate source materials into their writings with confidence may find themselves faced with more questions than answers. What exactly does fair use mean? What factors do courts consider when evaluating claims of fair use? How does fair use support authors’ research, writing, and publishing goals? Fortunately, help is at hand! This […]
We’re very pleased to announce a new project for 2023, “Text and Data Mining: Demonstrating Fair Use,” which is generously supported by the Mellon Foundation. The project will focus on lowering and overcoming legal barriers for researchers who seek to exercise their fair use rights, specifically within the context of text data mining (“TDM”) research […]
UPDATE: You can find Authors Alliance’s comment on the Copyright Office’s proposed rulemaking here. “Termination of Transfer,” is a legal tool that allows authors to recapture rights previously handed over to another party, even if their contract contains language to the contrary. It’s a really great idea. The policy rationale is that we need a […]
Termination of transfer has been in the news lately with a dispute over the release of a sequel to the movie Top Gun, entitled Top Gun Maverick, which as of the date of this blog post is one of the highest grossing movies in the U.S.. A little discussed and somewhat arcane provision of copyright […]
Fair use is one of the more dynamic topics in copyright law lately—the Supreme Court has issued decisions or agreed to hear cases in two separate fair use cases that could affect how authors can rely on fair use just within the past year and a half. Fair use is also a topic Authors Alliance […]
Authors who want to incorporate source materials into their writings with confidence may find themselves faced with more questions than answers. What exactly does fair use mean? What factors do courts consider when evaluating claims of fair use? How does fair use support authors’ research, writing, and publishing goals? Fortunately, help is at hand! This […]
In today’s post, as a part of our series of open access success stories that spotlight noteworthy openly accessible books and their authors, we’re featuring Peter Kaufman of MIT Open Learning. Kaufman made his new book, The New Enlightenment and the Fight to Free Knowledge, available for free under a CC-BY license upon its publication […]
Today, Authors Alliance is thrilled to announce the release of a brand new educational guide for authors: Third-Party Permissions and How to Clear Them, authored and edited by Authors Alliance staff. We were inspired to create this guide, the fifth in our series of author guides, by the myriad questions we receive from authors about […]
