News Bites from the Copyright Alliance

News Bites from the Copyright Alliance
December 4, 2009

Dear Copyright Advocates,

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving and beginning of this festive holiday season!

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Find us on Facebook! The Copyright Alliance has a Facebook page. If you're not already a fan, take a minute to connect with us there!
Resources for educators.The Copyright Alliance Education Foundation has a variety of free resources for educators to use in K-12 and college classrooms. Check them out today!
Enjoy the blogs below and have a great weekend!

Lucinda
The Consequences of Movie PiracyBy Patrick Ross, Executive Director, The Copyright AllianceThere remains a stubbornness out there among some Internet users, a sense of entitlement to enjoying someone else's creativity without payment to the creator. Read more >>

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Pirates AhoyThis blog was written by Michelle Gagnon, a crime fiction writer. The blog was originally posted on The Kill Zone, and is reprinted with permission from the author.

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I received a Google alert last week for a website called, "Plunder.com." I clicked on it, and lo and behold, it led to a file sharing site. And there were all three of my books, in their entirety, available for free download. Including THE GATEKEEPER, which was just released two weeks ago... Read more >>

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Stuff Infringers LikeBy Patrick Ross, Executive Director, The Copyright AllianceWe write a lot on this blog about the puzzling ability of those who are able to rationalize their acquisition of a creator's work without permission or compensation. Some of those logic-twisting rationalizations are debunked in our piece, "Critiquing Copyright Canards." We're not the only ones who have observed this, and picked up on how silly the rationalizations are. Let me introduce you to the "Stuff White People Like" blog by Christian Lander... Read more >>

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Technically, Parasites Take and Don't GiveBy Patrick Ross, Executive Director, The Copyright AllianceThere is a lack of understanding of the creative process and the motivations of potential present and future payment that drives creators to create, and of the role copyright plays in that motivation. A columnist in the U.K.'s Guardian newspaper - my general read of choice when I lived in England - gets that this lack of understanding about creativity is truly troubling... Read more >>

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Infringement is Real, Ignoring it is UnrealBy Patrick Ross, Executive Director, The Copyright AllianceIn rhetoric, there's an old trick - begin with a true statement, and then follow with an argument that does not naturally follow from the true statement. When challenged, ignore the criticism of the argument and instead defend the true statement.

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Here's an example. True statement - "We'll always have copyright infringement. You can never completely eradicate it." False following argument - "Copyright owners should accept infringement as a reality and pursue other paths for compensation." Read more >>

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Debunking the Crazy, Lazy, Hazy Artist MythBy Lucinda Dugger, Director of Outreach, The Copyright AllianceWhy is it that people think that in order to be an artist, you have to be this crazy, lazy, ungrounded person that lives in a hazy do-what-you-will, when-you-want state?

Truth be told, most successful artists are not this way at all. [Side note: when I say 'successful' here, I mean artists that are making a living off of what they do, not just the most famous of artists.] Read more >>