House Judiciary Calls for Copyright Hearings, as Stakeholders Expect No Quick Action
The House Judiciary Committee plans another season of copyright hearings, it said Wednesday. It said in a news release the hearings will take into special consideration Copyright Act sections 102 and 106 on copyright protections and Section 107 on fair use, and Digital Millennium Copyright Act Section 512 on notice and takedown provisions. The committee, still in the early stages of its look at copyright legislation, may have its work cut out with the last comprehensive update to the copyright law in 1976, said experts we interviewed Wednesday. Some said it’s too soon to tell what direction the committee and Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., will take next year when the hearings will likely occur.
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Goodlatte plans to “continue our extensive review of U.S. copyright laws to ensure that we continue to incentivize creativity and innovation in the digital age,” he said in the news release. House Judiciary Ranking Member John Conyers, D-Mich., said that “as copyright plays an increasingly important part in the American economy, it is essential that we continue to foster the development of intellectual property in general and copyright in particular.”
The committee is still “in the information gathering stage,” said David Sohn, general counsel at the Center for Democracy & Technology. The hearings are in response to the legislative defeats of the Stop Online Piracy Act and PROTECT IP Act and a call by Maria Pallante, U.S. register of copyrights, for the “next great Copyright Act” (CD March 21 p8), said Sohn. The last comprehensive update to copyright law was in 1976, and “the pace of technology means that taking 20 years to arrive at an update isn’t an option,” said Casey Rae, interim executive director at the Future of Music Coalition, which advocates for the fair royalty compensation of musicians.
Rightsholders in the music industry are especially concerned with the right of performers, not just songwriters, to receive royalties on terrestrial airplay. That’s according to separate interviews with Ted Kalo, executive director of industry advocacy group musicFIRST, and Rich Bengloff, president of the American Association of Independent Music. Music consumption is framed around an “access” model rather than an “acquisition” model, said Bengloff. “So, performance has become that much more important in terms of having a viable business plan.”
Preserving Section 106, among others, of the Copyright Act concerning “first-sale” issues will be crucial for research libraries to adequately serve the academy and the public, said Prue Adler, associate executive director of the Association of Research Libraries. “Copyright law is at the heart of what research libraries do,” she said. “The key is that you need to reflect how users are managing and accessing information in the digital environment and recognize how they are innovating and being very creative in the use of technology,” she said. “You want the law to reflect that kind of use.”
Copyright issues are not a “black and white battle” anymore, said Sohn. “We're at a stage of taking a pretty comprehensive look at copyright law and the Judiciary Committee seems to want to be pretty methodical about it,” he said. The Committee’s statement said it “plans to proceed roughly in numerical order through the sections of the Copyright Act.”
The copyright hearings are not another example of “political theater,” said Rae, but signifies “a genuine recognition that our current laws aren’t optimized to the realities of the digital marketplace.” The increasing number of copyright stakeholders on the Internet, however, “makes updating existing laws a real challenge,” he said. -- Joe McKnight (jmcknight@warren-news.com)