The Recording Industry Association of America® advocates for recorded music and the people and companies that create it in the United States. Investing in great artists and protecting their creative freedom is at the heart of their work. Their members work tirelessly to find new artists, help them reach their potential in the business and connect to fans. They support record labels by recognizing excellence through the Gold & Platinum Program, protecting music copyrights, providing tools for parents and helping music creators maintain production standards.

Public Knowledge promotes freedom of expression, an open internet, and access to affordable communications tools and creative works. They work to shape policy on behalf of the public interest. Fighting for broader consumer protections that put people — not the largest corporations — first, since 2017.

The New York Patent Law Association was conceived as an organization through which patent lawyers in New York could make their views known in Washington and provide support for the judiciary. The NYIPLA currently serves as a vehicle to promote the development and administration of intellectual property interests.

The NYIPLA strives to educate the public and members of the bar in this particular field and continually works with foreign associations to harmonize the substance and interpretation of international conventions for the protection of intellectual property.

1981 – The “Why a Union?” workshop at the Nation Institute’s Writers’ Congress draws an overflow crowd. The plenary of 3,000 writers endorses the proposal to create a union for writers in all genres to actively press for better pay and treatment and to vigorously oppose Reagan-era threats to free expression. “We need no more heroic individual writers,” said keynote speaker Toni Morrison. She called for “an accessible organization that is truly representative of the diverse interests of all writers.”

The purpose of the NWU is to promote and protect the rights, interests, and economic advancement of members; to organize writers to improve professional working conditions through collective bargaining action; and to provide professional services to members.

Founded in 1917, the National Music Publishers’ Association (NMPA) is the trade association representing all American music publishers and their songwriting partners. Its mission is to protect, promote, and advance the interests of music’s creators. The NMPA is the voice of both small and large music publishers and is the leading advocate for publishers and their songwriter partners in the nation’s capital and in every area where publishers do business.

The goal of NMPA is to protect its members’ property rights on the legislative, litigation, and regulatory fronts. In this vein, the NMPA continues to represent its members in negotiations to shape the future of the music industry by fostering a business environment that furthers both creative and financial success. The NMPA has remained the most active and vocal proponent for the interests of music publishers in the U.S. and throughout the world, a continuing tradition of which the association is very proud.

In 1922, motion picture studios formed the organization now known as the Motion Picture Association to protect and support the nascent film industry. Since that time, the MPA has served as the leading advocate of the film, television, and streaming industry around the world, advancing the business and art of storytelling, protecting the creative and artistic freedoms of storytellers, and bringing entertainment and inspiration to audiences worldwide.

Today, the stories that define our lives and shape our world are brought to life by the global creative community, including the creators and artists working in American film and television. The Motion Picture Association fosters an economic and cultural enterprise by advocating for policies that recognize the power of stories, reward creators, and allow the association to produce, distribute, and protect the creative content audiences love.

The Copyright Advisory Network (CAN) exists to help librarians understand copyright law and appreciate the important role that they can play in serving the public “to advance the progress of science and the useful arts.” They use the Network to respond to copyright questions posed by librarians, but perhaps—more importantly, to help librarians learn about copyright from a broader perspective, primarily its impact on information policy issues fundamental to our profession, including free expression, equitable access to information, censorship, and intellectual freedom.

The Harry Fox Agency (HFA), established in 1927, is America’s premiere mechanical licensing institution and has led the industry with innovative mechanical rights management solutions for music creators and publishers. Their mission is to provide to our partners timely, efficient mechanical rights management and royalty distribution services while meeting the changing needs of music distributors, songwriters and publishers.

FMC works with musicians, composers and industry stakeholders to identify solutions to shared challenges. They promote strategies, policies, technologies and educational initiatives that always put artists first while recognizing the role music fans play in shaping the future. FMC works to ensure that diversity, equality and creativity drives artist engagement with the global music community, and that these values are reflected in laws, licenses, and policies that govern any industry that uses music as raw material for its business.

The Free Software Foundation’s mission is to secure freedom for computer users by promoting the development and use of free (as in freedom) software and documentation—particularly the GNU operating system—and by campaigning against threats to computer user freedom like Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) and software patents.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation is the leading nonprofit organization defending civil liberties in the digital world. Founded in 1990, EFF champions user privacy, free expression, and innovation through impact litigation, policy analysis, grassroots activism, and technology development. EFF’s mission is to ensure that technology supports freedom, justice, and innovation for all people of the world.

Creative Commons has created the global standard for sharing content for use and re-use. There are over 1 billion CC-licensed works online, including on major content platforms like Flickr, Wikipedia, Soundcloud, and YouTube. The licenses are crucial for open data, open access publishing, open educational resources and open textbooks, and more.

Creative Commons helps you legally share your knowledge and creativity to build a more equitable, accessible, and innovative world. They work to unlock the full potential of the internet to drive a new era of development, growth and productivity.

CCC helps organizations integrate, access, and share information through licensing, content, software, and professional services. Founded in 1978 as a not-for-profit organization in response to negotiations preceding the United States Copyright Act of 1976, the CCC still maintains not-for-profit status in New York, but for federal purposes is a for-profit corporation.

CCC is a long-time supporter of the creation, development, and proliferation of persistent identifiers (PIDs) that are globally unique and associated with accurate metadata about an article, a grant, a person, a project, or an organization, play a vital role in the ecosystem.

The Copyright Alliance — which represents the interests of authors, photographers, performers, artists, software developers, musicians, journalists, directors, songwriters, game designers, and many other individual creators — is dedicated to advocating policies that promote and preserve the value of copyright and to protecting the rights of creators and innovators. They also represent the interests of book publishers, motion picture studios, software companies, music publishers, record labels, sports leagues, broadcasters, guilds, unions, newspaper and magazine publishers, and many other organizations that rely on copyright law to protect their creativity and investments in the creation and distribution of new copyrighted works for the public to enjoy.

CCIA is a not-for-profit membership organization for a wide range of companies in the computer, internet, information technology, and telecommunications industries, represented by their senior executives. Created over four decades ago, CCIA promotes open markets, open systems, open networks, and full, fair, and open competition. CCIA serves as the eyes, ears, and voice of the world’s leading providers of technology products and services in Washington and Brussels.

Lumen is an independent research project studying cease and desist letters concerning online content. We collect and analyze requests to remove material from the web. Their goals are to facilitate research about the different kinds of complaints and requests for removal–both legitimate and questionable–that are being sent to Internet publishers, search engines, and service providers, and to provide as much transparency as possible about the “ecology” of such notices, in terms of who is sending them and why, and to what effect.

The Lumen database contains millions of notices, many of them with a valid legal basis, some of them without, and some on the murky border.

BMI is the bridge between songwriters and the businesses and organizations that want to play their music publicly. As a global leader in music rights management, BMI serves as an advocate for the value of music, representing over 18.7 million musical works created and owned by more than 1.2 million songwriters, composers and music publishers.

For close to a century, the Association of Research Libraries has addressed issues of concern to the library, research, higher education, and scholarly communities. The Association was established at a meeting in Chicago in December 1932, by the directors of 42 major university and research libraries that recognized the need for coordinated action and desired a forum to address common problems. The Association incorporated in 1961 under the laws of the District of Columbia noting that “the particular business and objects of the society shall be: Exclusively for literary, educational and scientific purposes by strengthening research libraries.”

The Association of Research Libraries is a membership organization of libraries and archives in major public and private universities, federal government agencies, and large public institutions in Canada and the US. They advocate on research libraries’ behalf, convene our research and higher education partners, share intelligence on current issues, and develop the next generation of diverse library leaders.

The Association of American Publishers (AAP) represents the leading book, journal, and education publishers in the United States on matters of law and policy, advocating for outcomes that incentivize the publication of creative expression, professional content, and learning solutions.

Whether advocating for strong copyright policies, protecting free speech, or promoting the advancement of research and scholarship, the focus of AAP is on the central role that publishers play in enhancing culture, education, workforce, and democracy.

SESAC, originally the Society of European Stage Authors and Composers, is a for-profit performance-rights organization in the United States. SESAC was founded in 1930, making it the second-oldest performance-rights organization in the United States.

Today, SESAC is an invitation-only Performing Rights Organization that represents the world’s top songwriters, composers and music publishers.

SIIA is where specialized technology, content and information companies and associations connect, learn and collaborate. From small and large specialized publishers to global financial networks to leading education technology providers to health data companies — SIIA represents the businesses and organizations that make the world work.

TeleRead is the world’s oldest Web site devoted to general-interest news and views on e-books and related topics. In line with their original mission, they also strive to help narrow the digital and reading divides.

Founded in 1897, AIPLA is a national bar association constituted primarily of practitioners in private and corporate practice, in government service, and in the academic community. AIPLA represents a wide and diverse spectrum of individuals from law firms, companies, and institutions involved directly or indirectly in the practice of patent, trademark, copyright, trade secret, and unfair competition law, as well as other fields of law affecting intellectual property. Our members represent both owners and users of intellectual property.

AIPLA was formed to maintain a high standard of professional ethics, to aid in the improvement in laws relating to intellectual property and in their proper interpretation by the courts, and to provide legal education to the public and to its members on intellectual property issues.

Founded in 1969, Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts (VLA) is the leading legal aid and education organization dedicated to artists and the arts and cultural organizations. VLA strives to protect the artistic community’s livelihoods, businesses, and creative works through access to dedicated legal representation and focused innovative education programs.

WIPO provides a global policy forum, where governments, intergovernmental organizations, industry groups and civil society come together to address evolving intellectual property (IP) issues.

The member states and observers meet regularly in the various WIPO Committees and decision-making bodies. Their challenge is to negotiate the changes and new rules needed to ensure that the international IP system keeps pace with the changing world, and continues to serve its fundamental purpose of encouraging innovation and creativity.

Membership in the American Intellectual Property Law Association (AIPLA) connects the IP community through in-person meetings, online education and events, committee programs and legislative/policy activities.

The American Bar Association Section of Intellectual Property Law (ABA-IPL) advances the development and improvement of intellectual property laws and their fair and just administration. The Section furthers the goals of its members by sharing knowledge and balanced insight on the full spectrum of intellectual property law and practice.

ASCAP is a member organization of the Copyright Society. The American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers is a not-for-profit performance-rights organization that collectively licenses the public performance rights of its members’ musical works to venues, broadcasters, and digital streaming services.