A perpetual "revolving door" at the Copyright Office is allowing major entertainment industries to capture the agency and significantly influence its policies, Public Knowledge said Thursday in a report. PK said the CO “regularly contorts” copyright law issues to “further the monopoly interests of major rightsholders” and regularly advocates for an expansion of copyright law that allows for fewer exemptions and consumer protections. The CO repeatedly inserted itself “into more and farther-flung policy debates," including via its 2015 Digital Millennium Copyright Act Section 1201 exemptions triennial review, PK said. The CO prioritized its own views over those of other stakeholders, the group said. Congress, other federal agencies and federal courts also have noted the CO's failings by ignoring or overturning the agency's decisions, PK said. “With limited accountability [and] a pattern of favoritism toward industry and rightsholder groups, it is unsurprising that they have staked out tenuous positions and advocate for expansive copyright monopolies,” said PK Policy Advocate Meredith Rose in a news release. “It is clear from its positions … that the [CO] often acts more as an advocate for profit-maximizing entertainment industries, rather than as an impartial organ of government.” The CO didn't comment.
The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine has put together a group of 14 academic, civil liberties, law enforcement, privacy and technology experts to study government encryption and surveillance. In a summary about the 12-month project, the National Academies said the group will examine tradeoffs in mechanisms for giving government "access to the plaintext version of encrypted information." The study will include identifying alternative ways government can get such information and seek ways to measure risks weighed against potential law enforcement and intelligence benefits. "The study will not seek to answer the question of whether access mechanisms should be required but rather will provide an authoritative analysis of options and tradeoffs," it said Wednesday. Chaired by Indiana University law professor Fred Cate, the group includes Scott Charney, Microsoft vice president-trustworthy computing group; David Kris, general counsel of Intellectual Venture; David Hoffman, Intel director-security policy and global privacy officer; Worcester Polytechnic Institute cybersecurity professor Susan Landau; Richard Littlehale, Tennessee Bureau of Investigation special agent; Crowell & Moring privacy and cybersecurity attorney Harvey Rishikof; and Google software engineer Peter Weinberger. The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, and the National Science Foundation sponsored the project.
Leaked proposals for the European Commission’s planned copyright law revamp “raise some troubling issues,” said Center for Democracy and Technology fellow Stan Adams in a Tuesday blog post. The commission may propose a pan-EU ancillary copyright aimed at allowing publishers to claim royalties from news aggregation services (see 1608290062). Similar ancillary rights in Germany and Spain haven’t worked as intended, Adams said. “Despite the questionable legal basis for this proposal, and despite the fact that publishers could easily configure their sites to limit or block automated access to the content therein, the Commission believes that creating this new right will benefit both publishers and consumers, who will enjoy the ‘enhanced availability of quality content in the long-term.’” The EC is also exploring a proposal to require ISPs hosting or storing user-generated content to “take appropriate and proportionate measures to ensure the functioning of agreements concluded with right holders." Even “when dressed in the language of contractual agreements, this looks very much like a general obligation to monitor, which Article 15 of the [EC’s] E-Commerce Directive explicitly bars,” Adams said. “This proposal seems to go against some of the goals of the Digital Single Market Strategy, like making the EU an environment in which digital startups can thrive.”
Thursday's release of the HDMI “Alt Mode” spec will allow HDMI-enabled source devices to use a USB Type-C connector to link directly to HDMI-enabled displays, and “deliver native HDMI signals over a simple cable without the need for cumbersome protocol and connector adapters or dongles,” HDMI Licensing said in an announcement. The Alt-Mode spec “enables two of the most popular solutions for connectivity to come together,” pairing the multipurpose USB Type-C connector that’s “gaining traction” in smartphones and tablets, with HDMI, it said. HDMI Licensing expects nearly 290 million HDMI-enabled display devices to ship globally this year, adding to the installed base of “billions of displays,” it said.
The New York State Broadcasters Association disputed the U.S. District Court in New York's 2015 ruling in Flo & Eddie's lawsuit against SiriusXM that said state common law allowed a pre-1972 performance right, in a brief Thursday to the New York Court of Appeals. The court is reviewing the district court ruling's finding on state common law after the 2nd U.S. Court of Appeals delayed its consideration of SiriusXM's appeal of the Flo & Eddie case pending the state court review (see 1605030055 and 1608050059). New York “has never recognized a public performance right in sound recordings, and such a sweeping alteration of the law is unsupported by prior case law, legislative history at the federal level, and the history of the recording and broadcasting industries” in the state, NYSBA President David Donovan said in the group's filing. He said that such a right “threatens to cast aside almost 100 years of accepted practices in the music broadcasting industry, while simultaneously circumventing the legislature and throwing copyright licensing into total disarray. NYSBA's members would be directly impacted by the ensuing chaos.”
Carla Hayden's Sept 14 swearing-in as librarian of Congress will be webcast live on YouTube, the Library of Congress said Friday. The Senate confirmed Hayden in July to lead the LOC after a weekslong hold by a Senate Republican (see 1607130061). Hayden, who will be the first woman and the first African-American to lead the LOC, will be sworn in using the Lincoln Bible, the LOC said in a blog post. The swearing-in ceremony is set to begin at noon.
Members of Fall Out Boy, Linkin Park and singer Jennifer Hudson are among 212 musicians jointly urging (in Pacer) the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit to overturn a 2015 jury verdict in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles that said “Blurred Lines” co-writers Robin Thicke, T.I. and Pharrell Williams infringed Marvin Gaye’s “Got to Give It Up." The Los Angeles jury determined (in Pacer) that infringement of Gaye’s copyright wasn’t willful but the “Blurred Lines” co-writers faced $5.3 million in damages. Public Knowledge backed the “Blurred Lines” supporters in an amicus brief also filed Tuesday. Gaye's family believes the Los Angeles jury’s verdict and District Judge John Kronstadt's confirmation of it “sit on unshakable footing," emailed family lawyer Paul Philips. “Got to Give It Up” was written before provisions in the 1976 Copyright Act protected sound recordings, musicologists said (in Pacer). PK said the borrowing and adaptation of existing works “takes on a particular importance” in music. “Greater similarity among musical works is to be expected simply due to the ordinary structures of Western music,” the group wrote (in Pacer). “Copyright has long been understood to be premised on a utilitarian justification, that the monopoly right to exclude copying is granted in service of encouraging creation and dissemination of new works. Consequently, the scope of that monopoly right must be limited to avoid interference with downstream creators who build upon the works of the past.”
Mozilla is pushing the EU to revamp copyright laws to reflect changes in the internet's development, launching a petition Wednesday asking the EU to use its planned update of its copyright legal framework to “bring copyright law into the 21st century.” The European Commission is to release its copyright law rewrite proposal this fall as part of its larger digital single market policy strategy (see 1606010011). “The current copyright legal framework is outdated,” said Mozilla Chief Innovation Officer Katharina Borchert in a blog post. “It stifles opportunity and prevents, and in many cases legally prohibits, artists, coders and everyone else creating and innovating online.” Borchert focused on the need for the inclusion of an EU-wide fair-use exception in any copyright law revision, saying “in some parts of the EU, making a meme is technically unlawful.” The EU needs to “update and harmonise the rules so we can tinker, create, share and learn on the internet,” Borchert said. “Education, parody, panorama, remix and analysis shouldn't be unlawful.” Some proposals for the EU's copyright law update would threaten innovation, including “licensing fees and restriction on internet companies for basic things like creating hyperlinks or uploading content,” Borchert said. “Others are calling for new laws that would establish gatekeepers and barriers to entry online, and would risk undermining the internet as a platform for economic growth and free expression.”
The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative is seeking comment for its 2016 notorious markets list (see 1601110051) by Oct. 7, replies by Oct. 21, for its out-of-cycle review based off the annual Special 301 Report, says a notice scheduled to be published in Thursday's Federal Register. The list identifies “online and physical marketplaces that reportedly engage in and facilitate substantial copyright piracy and trademark counterfeiting,” the notice says.
The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation pushed back against oft-repeated claims that anti-piracy efforts like the failed 2012 Stop Online Piracy Act would “break the internet,” saying in a report there's little evidence to substantiate such claims. ITIF said Monday its analysis of five years of data from 25 countries found there were no “dire outcomes” from those countries' efforts to block piracy websites. ITIF referenced an April Carnegie Mellon University study saying the U.K.'s blockage of 53 piracy websites in 2014 caused a 90 percent reduction in visits to piracy websites and a rise in visits to websites legally featuring content.