[Jonathan Band] In March 2015, I published The Complexity Dialectic: A Case Study From Copyright Law, where I argued that the nature of the U.S. political system encourages increasingly complex regulatory frameworks, which benefit those with more resources to navigate those frameworks. I used the triennial rulemaking under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (“DMCA”) as a case study to demonstrate this point. I showed that the rule issued by the Librarian of Congress (upon the recommendation of the Copyright Office) had grown increasingly complex. The number of words in the exemptions increased from 35 words for two exempted classes of works in the 2000 rulemaking cycle to 1,172 words for five exempted classes in the 2013 cycle. The most recent set of exemptions continues this trend.

[Reposted from Creative Commons, Link (CC-BY)] The “Safe harbor” provisions of the DMCA have been critical to build the internet as we know it today. Provisions like this one have given space to intermediaries providing platforms to host and transmit…

Over 11,000 People Join EFF’s Call to Protect Security Research and Repair [EFF Press Release, Link (CC-BY)] San Francisco – The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) urged the U.S. Copyright Office today to protect the public’s right to research and repair…

Jennifer Urban and I just published a short version of our work on notice and takedown in the Communications of the ACM (currently paywalled but accessible through most universities).  Here’s the general argument: As automated systems became common, the number…