Wednesday, April 14, 2021

When the State Becomes the Pirate!

"In copyright, when you create something (whether it's a picture, or a book, or a story, or a piece of music or whatever), you own that. That is your intellectual property, and it's a very real property in that regard. And as the owner of that property, just like your home, you have the right to decide what you will and won't do with that property. What the Supreme Court's decision said was that states essentially had a right to interfere in what you do with your own property, without any consequence. That's a problem for all of us." READ MORE

Are State Governments Copyright Pirates?

When the US Supreme Court ruled earlier this year in Allen v. Cooper, the outcome for an unusual copyright infringement case left many IP creators dismayed, though it may have pleased Blackbeard the pirate. Videographer Rick Allen had sued the State of North Carolina when he’d learned it was using his exclusive underwater footage showing the wreckage of Blackbeard’s flagship vessel without his permission. Allen cited the CRCA, which was passed expressly to prevent such infringements. Nevertheless, the state argued that sovereign immunity shielded it from any such claims. READ MORE

Friday, April 9, 2021

State Sovereign Immunity and Copyright with Rick Allen & Kevin Madigan

You wouldn’t think that a state entity would have the right to seize your intellectual property any more than it would have the right to seize other forms of property without due process. But it can. In this podcast, I talk with filmmaker Rick Allen, who documented the recovery of Queen Anne's Revenge, and copyright expert and advocate Kevin Madigan about the challenge that state sovereign immunity poses to creators of copyrightable works. READ MORE