Photo:License
by Denn
So you’re a scholar or a researcher. You use the internet and other new technologies to research, create, archive, share and discuss your work with your peers, students and the general public. You might be an archivist, professor, grad student or even a citizen scholar. No matter what you study and no matter where your work is based (be it a large university, high school classroom or even your own home office) you rely on technology to do you work. But even though new technologies have the potential to revolutionize your work, they often come with new challenges far beyond simply mastering the technology.
Maybe you want to teach your students, the next generation of scholars, how to use these new technologies and techniques to enhance their work. You may wonder if there is any content online you could tell them to use without the need to pay a fee, hire a lawyer, or fear a copyright takedown. Content they would only need to attribute and say where they got it from; now that would make life so much easier. And it would be even better if someone had resources that could help you learn about this type of content so you could teach your students to use that content properly.
You might use new technologies to remix or critique pop culture or your specific area of study. You think your work is completely new, different and most importantly legal, but the DMCA takedown notice in your in-box seems to say otherwise. And you’re not entirely sure what to do with that takedown notice.
Maybe you’re frustrated that your research is stuck behind a pay wall or in a pricey textbook few people will read. Maybe you want to find a way to share your work more openly but you need help figuring out how to get your university or publisher on board. You know it’s been done before but you’re just not sure how to get there.
You might work in an archive and get to explore all sorts of works that have shaped the humanity. While you delight in getting new materials and making those materials accessible your worry that researchers who reuse some of these works might get into trouble and you want to know what you can do to help prevent that.
Or maybe your work focuses on improving the transparency of institutions or clarifying the historical record. You try to track down the facts but maybe the state or federal government won’t turn over documents. And sometimes you worry, too. What if by secretly recording that interview, I did something illegal? Did I maybe go too far with that last article? Should I really have used that video clip?
And then there is the question that’s on just about ever scholars mind, “How do I fund my work?” Finding funding can turn into a full time job. You may have been approached by a company or foundation that wants to sponsor your work, but that doesn’t want to just hand you a check and let you run with it. The funding could greatly expand the scope of what you want to do, but you don’t know what kind of limits the funder wants to place on your work.
That’s why New Media Rights provides free, reduced fee and competitive fee legal services. If you’re a scholar we can help with the following issues.
- How to legally reuse or remix Copyright protected work (fair use, parody, mash-ups, remixes, etc).
- Licensing content as well as counseling on openly licensed content.
- Respond to a DMCA takedown notice or cease and desist letters.
- Respond to other unfair content takedowns, access limitations, and account terminations.
- Help writing DMCA takedown notices and enforcement of copyrighted works.
- Review and writing of contracts, such as fiscal sponsorship agreements.
- Pre-Publication review for copyright, trademark and fair use.
- First Amendment Free Speech Issues.
- FOIA and Public Records Act requests.
- Legal advice regarding covert recording.
- Avoiding and responding to defamation.
- Providing written and video educational materials on Creative Commons, fair use and other legal topics relevant to reusing and distributing content.
Now that you know how New Media Rights can help you, please feel free to fill in our contact form here.
