EFF's Internet Law Treatise

We were joined at WWM this year by Lee Tien, Senior Staff Attorney at the Electronic Freedom Foundation. Lee sat in and added his own and his organization's point of view to many of our discussions, and we all look forward to more time with him in the future. You can pick up a bit of Lee's own bio by scrolling down on the EFF's staff page at http://www.eff.org/about/staff/.

Lee pointed out to me that the EFF is currently in the process of drafting its own wiki-based summary of Internet law, currently housed at http://ilt.eff.org/index.php/Table_of_Contents. The Internet Law Treatise is a project to maintain a treatise summarizing the law related to the Internet with the cooperation of a wide variety of attorneys, law students and others. It is apparently based on an earlier publication issued by the Perkins Coie firm from 2003, which has allowed EFF to run with this on the proviso that we all acknowledge that Perkins is not responsible for the results. (In a sense, this is quite similar to how Prof. Larry Lessig has issued a 2nd edition of his famous Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace, known as Codev2, which was largely developed by others working on top of the 1st edition through a wiki set up by Prof. Lessig.)

The EFF's project is not officially sanctioned by the Committee, nor do we participate in it as an ABA effort. But, we are happy to pass on Lee's request that we let our members know about this, since we are certainly not the only game in this town. If you are interested, contact Kurt Opsahl at the EFF for information on getting access to the wiki for participation. (And, let us know if you get involved!)

UPDATE: Kurt himself just contacted me to remind me to remind you that the current draft you see of the Internet Law Treatise is most definitely a beta, and should be read with that in mind -- Which demonstrates the need for good lawyers to come in and assist!

Creative Commons Tool to Terminate Transfers of Copyright

Here is an interesting post from the Creative Commons Weblog. They have created a tool to allow creators a way to exploit the 35 year limit in the Copyright Act on certain transfers of copyright.

Here's the introduction to the Blog posting:

Creative Commons is excited to launch a beta version of its “Returning Authors Rights: Termination of Transfer” tool. The tool has been included in ccLabs — CC’s platform for demoing new tech tools. It’s a beta demo so it doesn’t produce any useable results at this stage. We have launched it to get your feedback.

Briefly, the U.S. Copyright Act gives creators a mechanism by which they can reclaim rights that they sold or licensed away many years ago. Often artists sign away their rights at the start of their careers when they lack sophisticated negotiating experience, access to good legal advice or any knowledge of the true value of their work so they face an unequal bargaining situation. The “termination of transfer” provisions are intended to give artists a way to rebalance the bargain, giving them a “second bite of the apple.” By allowing artists to reclaim their rights, the U.S. Congress hoped that authors could renegotiate old deals or negotiate new deals on stronger footing (and hopefully with greater remuneration too!!). A longer explanation of the purpose of the “termination of transfer” provisions is set out in this FAQ.

And here's the link to a very well organized FAQ on the provision of the Copyright Act and the tool: http://labs.creativecommons.org/termination/faq.php