Mass Support Needed For Julian Assange; and You Thought We Wouldn’t Notice: Intellectual Property

Mass Support Needed For Julian Assange

Two weeks ago, WikiLeaks founder and internet publisher Julian Assange , who is holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, had his Internet access cut off due to pressure by the British and American governments on Ecuador. Ecuador had granted him political asylum in their embassy where he has been living in two small sunless rooms for five years. Ecuador gave him political asylum after he sought refuge in the embassy to avoid extradition to Sweden, which would have sent him to the US. Assange was under protracted investigation for a rape claim, made up by the Swedish police and Swedish prosecutor and denied by the purported women victim. Sweden finally dropped the case, but Assange remains subject to arrest in Britain jumping bail.

Assange and WikiLeaks had been steadily revealing the war crimes and illegalities of the American government since it first published the Iraq war logs eight years ago. The war logs included video footage of American soldiers assassinating Iraqi civilians and a Reuters journalist.Chelsea Manning, who was recently released after seven years in prison, furnished WikiLeaks with the war logs.

The United States government is seeking to capture Assange and bring him back to the United States to stand trial for espionage, a crime which carries the death penalty.

Guest ” John Pilger, an Australian-British journalist based in London. John has worked in many facets of journalism, including a correspondent in the Vietnam War, the Middle East Desk for Reuters in London, a documentary film maker, and a producer for the Independent Television Network in London. Pilger is known for his conscience, bravery and acute historical insight. His articles appear worldwide in newspapers such as the Guardian, the Independent, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times.

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You Thought We Wouldn’t Notice: Intellectual Property

Laws protecting artwork and intellectual property are increasingly being put to the test amid claims from rising artists marketing their work online whose work is being copied by others.

Art piracy can include music posters, clothing design, book cover art, signage, record sleeve art, and typography.Under copyright law, one artist using another artists idea is generally legal, while one artist using anothers expression of that idea is generally illegal. Only a fact-intensive analysis can provide a bit of clarity, and even that is subject to a judges or jurys review.

Sometimes copyright cases expand into major litigation. A New York judge recently ruled that graffiti, or aerosol artists, were entitled to a $6.7 million verdict after New York developer Gerald Wolkoff destroyed their well-known public work. The claim in the so-called FivePointz case arose under the Visual Artists Rights Act, or VARA. Its the kind of case that attorney Scott Burroughs says rarely goes to trial. Several artists created aerosol art pieces on the walls of an abandoned development in the once downtrodden and now gentrified neighborhood of Long Island City, Queens. Wolkoff destroyed their art as part of a development plan.

Guest – Attorney Scott Burroughs, an advocate for artists rights who curates the art law blog You Thought We Wouldnt Notice and has a weekly copyright law column on legal website Above the Law.

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