BASCA Chair Crispin Hunt: ‘Rules Won’t Break the Internet, They’ll Mend It’ — “YouTube and Facebook were squarely in the sights of Crispin Hunt, chairman of the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors (BASCA), as he delivered the opening address at yesterday’s Ivor Novello Awards in London.”
The Copyright Office is on a Rulemaking Roll — Copyright Office General Counsel Sy Damle gives a rundown on the rulemaking efforts of the Office—seven final rules and six proposed rules so far this fiscal year. As Damle explains, the rulemaking is part of “a years-long effort by the Copyright Office to establish more efficient business processes, and helps set the stage for our continued goal of Office modernization.”
Moving the U.S. Copyright Office Into the Digital Age — …but updated rules only lay the groundwork for Copyright Office modernization. The Global Intellectual Property Center looks at recent legislative efforts to ensure that the Office has the necessary autonomy over its IT, budget, and staffing to bring its services into the 21st century.
Time for the truth to interfere with the copyright battle in Australia — Kate Haddock, of the Australian Copyright Council, responds to recent claims by Wikipedia that the online encyclopedia cannot legally operate in Australia under its current copyright law.
Heeding Criticism from Many Corners, ALI Pulls Liability Insurance Restatement Before Membership Vote — Glenn Lammi of the Washington Legal Foundation writes, ” If ALI believes that an area of law should evolve in a direction different from what courts in the US have been applying, it commissions a “Principles Project,†which is explicitly aspirational, rather than a summation—along the lines of a glorified law review article. Restatements, on the other hand, are meant to simply restate. With projects like the Restatement of the Law, Copyright (which we criticized in a 2015 WLF Legal Pulse post) and now the liability insurance Restatement, the organization has been blurring the line between restating and revising.”