On Martin Luther King, Jr.

By , January 19, 2015.

One of the more unfortunate outcomes to emerge over the past decade from copyright skeptics is criticism of the Martin Luther King, Jr. estate, and their maintenance of his copyrighted books and speeches—his legal property—that they inherited from him.

In 2005, for example, digital activists Downhill Battle (many of whom would later form activist group Fight for the Future) protested copyright law by posting civil rights documentary “Eyes on the Prize” online without permission. The film was unavailable on television or home video at the time because the original licenses for some of the material did not extend to those uses (the documentary has since become available again).

More recently, during the SOPA debate in January 2012, Vice took the opportunity to tie that bill and the copyright status of King’s legacy together. It called King’s “I Have a Dream Speech” “the rhetorical equivalent of a national treasure or a national park,” decrying the fact that it is protected by copyright and asking “What would King have made of all this, and of SOPA?”

Since then, it seems no opportunity has been wasted to delegitimize the King estate for political points. A year later, Vice was back to report on the one year anniversary of the defeat of SOPA and another online protest by Fight for the Future. This time, the group sought to upload a video of King’s “I Have a Dream” speech to YouTube. The group wrote that “Had SOPA and PIPA passed last year… you could have gone to jail for sharing this video.” Vice wrote that this protest “Echo[ed] the civil disobedience of King.”

On the fiftieth anniversary of King’s “I Have a Dream” speech (August 2013), a new round of articles appeared, making the same complaints that, yes, you could license the speech, or buy a copy on DVD (the Atlantic noted that, at the time, Amazon currently had a copy for $13.41), but shouldn’t it be free?

Most recently, the issue has come to the forefront again with the release of the film Selma, a narrative of the 1965 march from Selma to Montgomery. Like any film adaptation—whether based on fictional or nonfictional source material—creative liberties must be taken. In the case of Selma, these included paraphrasing some of King’s speeches.

A Washington Post article on the film explains:

Working with an original script by Paul Webb, [director Ava] DuVernay carefully paraphrased King’s oratory, so that the words [actor David] Oyelowo speaks in the film have King’s cadence and meaning, even when they’re not literal.

The reason is simple: “We never even asked” for the rights to King’s speeches, said DuVernay during a recent visit to Washington. “Because we knew those rights are already gone, they’re with Spielberg, and secondly we found a way to do it where we didn’t have to ask for permission, because with those rights came a certain collaboration.”

The result is a fascinating portrait that both eerily captures King, but also feels just a tick off from impersonation. Oyelowo doesn’t physically resemble the civil rights leader, nor does his voice possess quite the ringing timbre most people associate with one of the greatest orators of the 20th century. But the filmmakers’ decision to eschew mimicry liberates “Selma” from being mere hagiographic waxwork, or a series of speeches and set pieces, and allows it to be an authentic drama with fully realized, grounded characters.

But despite the fact that the above shows the filmmakers never sought rights to the speeches, didn’t want them, and made a film that didn’t suffer as a result, copyright critics took the opportunity to complain that copyright law “forced” the filmmakers to paraphrase the speeches. GigaOm reporter Jeff John Roberts opined that this is “because the King family aggressively enforces copyright at all turns, unleashing lawyers in the direction of anyone who seeks to use the civil rights icon’s speeches or images without permission.” Roberts argued that “the root issue here is entirely about money, and the King estate wants as much as it can get” and concludes that the deeper problem is that “copyright protection lasts for far, far too long.”

In honor of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, I want to point out several reasons why these efforts to begrudge the legacy King left his family are misguided. While I’ve yet to find any King remarks directly about copyright—I’m certainly not claiming to speak for him or his family—I think two things are clear.

King and Copyright

First, King attached importance to his literary property by actively administering and enforcing his copyrights during his life.

In a November 20, 1964 letter, King’s literary agent, the notable Joan Daves, wrote King regarding a number of copyright matters, including preparations to ensure the copyright in his Nobel Prize lecture was secured. Daves concluded, “I hope that neither you or your office will find cumbersome my insistence that your writings and your speeches be protected properly by copyright. I am sure there will come a time when we will all be very glad of having organized these matters and of your having control over the further use of your works.”

King apparently agreed, as other correspondence shows that Daves actively licensed King’s work around the world, administered royalties, and fielded permission requests for reprints and translations. This correspondence shows a careful balancing of King’s various interests. For example, one letter denies a request to reprint King’s letter from the Birmingham Jail in a French book because, as Daves explains, “The letter in question will form a very important part in a forthcoming book by Dr. King and we feel that we cannot distract from its impact by allowing it to be published elsewhere before a French edition appears.” Another one grants permission to translate and publish a Marahati edition of Why We Can’t Wait “without a fee” after a request from Dr. Moray explaining how social problems in India were similar to the American problems King addressed.

And King was not shy in asserting his rights when they had been infringed. The copyright in King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, delivered August 28, 1963 at the Lincoln Memorial, was registered little over a month later on September 30. And only a few days later (October 4th), King filed a lawsuit against 20th Century Fox Record Corporation and Mister Maestro, Inc. for selling records of the speech without King’s consent.1King v. Mister Maestro, Inc., 224 F. Supp. 101 (SDNY 1963). The District Court granted a preliminary injunction in December after concluding, “There are thus no principles which prevent relief to plaintiff from what seems the unfair and unjust use by defendants of his speech and his voice.”2Id. at 108.

Publication of King’s work is what helped disseminate his ideas and benefit the public, but the ability to control and benefit from that publication is what allowed him to continue his work until he was brutally killed in April 1968 (and what allows his family to continue that work today).

From Civil Rights to International Human Rights

Second, the ability of someone to benefit from their labor, as King did through copyright, is consistent with his views on economic justice and individual dignity.

On the Fourth of July, 1965, King delivered an address to the Ebenezer Baptist Church called “The American Dream.” He begins by noting the spirit “of the founding fathers of our nation,” who created a system of government distinct from “any totalitarian system in the world” by saying “that each of us has certain basic rights that are neither derived from or conferred by the state.” The Declaration of Independence, said King, is a “profound, eloquent, and unequivocal” expression of “the dignity and the worth of human personality.” He adds, “The American dream reminds us, and we should think about it anew on this Independence Day, that every man is an heir of the legacy of dignity and worth.”

However, continued King, “We are challenged more than ever before to respect the dignity and the worth of all human personality.” This universal recognition of the equal dignity of all human personality is what, said King, made segregation and racism morally wrong. But, he would go on to say, it also meant that economic inequality and poverty must be addressed. “This is why we must join the war against poverty,” said King, “and believe in the dignity of all work.”

The “spirit of the founding fathers” that King speaks of was reflected in copyright discussions during the founding period. When the Continental Congress recommended in 1783 that the States pass laws securing copyright of authors, it did so after a committee consisting of James Madison, Hugh Williamson, and Ralph Izard were “persuaded that nothing is more properly a man’s own than the fruit of his study.”324 Journals of the Continental Congress 326. And some states, such as Massachusetts, explicitly noted in their subsequent copyright acts that the “legal security of the fruits of [a person’s] study and industry … is one of the natural rights of all men.”4Massachusetts Copyright Statute, Massachusetts (1783), Primary Sources on Copyright (1450-1900), eds L. Bently & M. Kretschmer, www.copyrighthistory.org.

Just as the experiences in the American colonies under British rule led to the Declaration of Independence, the experiences of the free world during the second World War led to an international declaration of rights.

Following World War II, the United Nations was formed to promote international cooperation, and in 1948, it drafted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), the first global expression of human rights. Among its articles is one that states, “Everyone has the right to the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production of which he is the author.”

This provision generated some debate during the drafting process, in part because it encompassed moral rights in addition to economic rights.5Peter K. Yu, Reconceptualizing Intellectual Property Interests in a Human Rights Framework, 40 University of California, Davis 1039, 1054 (2007). During one of the final rounds of drafting, French, Mexican, and Cuban delegates reintroduced the above language for inclusion in the declaration. 6Meeting records also note, “While it accepted the principle which they expressed, the United States delegation thought that they would be out of place in the declaration, more especially since they dealt with a specific aspect of the rights of property already covered by article 15.” Meeting records summarize the Mexican delegate as arguing:

The Committee had already recognized the rights of the wage earner, the family, the mother and the child; if it did not wish there to be a serious omission in the text it was drawing up it must now proclaim the rights of the individual as an intellectual worker, scientist, or writer; in other words, the rights of aIl those who contributed to the progress and well-being of humanity.

***

If the United Nations decided to include such a provision in the Declaration of Human Rights, it would be proclaiming to the world, with all the weight of its moral authority, its consciousness of the necessity of protecting all forms of work, manual as well as intellectual, and of safeguarding intellectual production on an equal basis with material property.

This language was eventually adopted by the Committee and included in the Declaration.

I note this not only because of the parallels in principles between the supporters of intellectual worker protections and King, but because King actively worked and inspired those who worked on seeing such principles recognized at the international level.

Calling King an “international human rights leader,” Henry J. Richardson has written that King “fused the discourses of civil rights and human rights” and “borrowed directly from international human rights law doctrine” in his speeches.7Henry J. Richardson, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. as an International Human Rights Leader, 52 Villanova Law Review, 471 (2007). And toward the end of his too-short life, “King had expanded his human rights leadership by moving, in concrete ways, to emphasize economic rights as human rights.”

Roger Alford at Opinio Juris has written that King’s work directly inspired those who struggled to achieve the same goals of racial and political equality at the international level. He notes that by 1964, membership in the UN had grown to 115 members, with 75% coming from the developing world. These delegates “were greatly influenced by Martin Luther King’s struggle against racial discrimination within the United States,” and worked to implement the UDHR into treaties. Alford writes, “The immediate result was the 1965 International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD)” and “The success of CERD broke the stalemate that had prevented completion of the work on the other major human rights covenants,” including the International Covenant on Economic and Social Rights (ICESR).

Article 15 of the ICESR implements the UDHR’s provision on intellectual property by requiring State Parties to recognize the right of everyone “To benefit from the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production of which he is the author.”

On this day, we honor and celebrate the tremendous legacy that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. left. King’s legacy hopefully inspires us all. But his work is not like “a national park” in the sense that it was bought and maintained by the public; indeed, it came about through great personal sacrifice, and King paid the ultimate price for his work when he was assassinated. It seems a bit presumptuous to say the public has a greater claim to this work than King’s own family, and it seems odd to say that the more lasting and important one’s work is, the less legal protection it should receive. More importantly, it seems better to focus on the content of the message King left us rather than the cost of his DVD.

References

References
↑1 King v. Mister Maestro, Inc., 224 F. Supp. 101 (SDNY 1963).
↑2 Id. at 108.
↑3 24 Journals of the Continental Congress 326.
↑4 Massachusetts Copyright Statute, Massachusetts (1783), Primary Sources on Copyright (1450-1900), eds L. Bently & M. Kretschmer, www.copyrighthistory.org.
↑5 Peter K. Yu, Reconceptualizing Intellectual Property Interests in a Human Rights Framework, 40 University of California, Davis 1039, 1054 (2007).
↑6 Meeting records also note, “While it accepted the principle which they expressed, the United States delegation thought that they would be out of place in the declaration, more especially since they dealt with a specific aspect of the rights of property already covered by article 15.”
↑7 Henry J. Richardson, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. as an International Human Rights Leader, 52 Villanova Law Review, 471 (2007).

Friday’s Endnotes – 01/16/15

By , January 16, 2015.

Collective Soul on Taylor Swift, U2, & Music’s Future — “While digital streaming has been a boon for consumers, it has had a chilling effect on musicians, the majority of whom argue that it has eroded their ability to earn back the money and time they’ve invested in creating their unique song catalogues. [Collective Soul lead singer Ed] Roland offers his take on some of the challenges facing young artists…”

Content Creators Coalition comes to APAP with plea for fair compensation — This week, the Association of Performing Arts Presenters hosted a panel on artist rights issues featuring artists like Rosanne Cash, Marc Ribot, and Melvin Gibbs.

More than 100 Creatives sign letter thanking Senator Leahy for urging credit card companies to cut ties with pirate sites — Over 100 actors, writers, directors, producers, and others applauded the Senator for his work imploring credit card companies to “implement voluntary steps that can prevent their services from being misused to fund pirate websites.”

Involuntary Distribution Business Subsidies — The Dead Kennedy’s East Bay Ray writes “One of the talking points that various tech company commentators, academics and bloggers have used to try to justify companies exploiting an artist’s work without consent (a loophole in safe harbor ) is that it would lessen the barrier for tech companies to start up. The idea is that creators should be required to give something up to facilitate this goal. Business start-ups are all well and good, but to require anyone to involuntarily subsidize a business, internet or otherwise, with something they have put time, effort, money, and skill into is extremely problematic.”

In defense of quality — “The web is working hard to change this—in particular, companies run by web entrepreneurs who so worship the God of Page Views as to drain life of qualitative meaning entirely. It’s all about quantity, all about getting the most people to click a link or like or follow.”

Artist Rights Leaders: Taylor Swift — “When we look back on the last year, there’s probably no one who did more for artist rights than Taylor Swift. She really did not need to take on these issues, she could easily have sat back and let the money roll in. And yet she did.”

Friday’s Endnotes – 01/09/15

By , January 09, 2015.

Happy New Year, Copyhype readers!

Among the Disrupted — 2015 starts out strong with this searing call for a humanist dissent against technology. “We can no longer roll over and celebrate and shop. Every phone in every pocket contains a ‘picture of ourselves,’ and we must ascertain what that picture is and whether we should wish to resist it. Here is a humanist proposition for the age of Google: The processing of information is not the highest aim to which the human spirit can aspire, and neither is competitiveness in a global economy. The character of our society cannot be determined by engineers.”

How postmodernism destroyed journalism — Odd title aside, this is a great introduction to Scott Timberg’s soon-to-be released Culture Crash, which looks at the crumbling “middle class” of creators.

A Year in Empowering Creators: Artists Speak Out — All types of artists and creators were vocal in 2014 about the importance of their craft and the need to be fairly compensated for it. Here are some of the highlights.

Digital Business Models Should Have to Follow the Law, Too — “[B]y YouTube’s own analysis, removing infringing content would reduce video views by 80% or even more. Copyright compliance, or lack thereof, was the key battleground: Users wanted copyrighted clips, rights-holders and royalties notwithstanding, and the market tipped towards the service that gave it to them.”

Copyright 2014: the year in review — Barry Sookman provides a comprehensive look at court decisions from across the globe dealing with substantial issues in copyright law.

Court Filing Ends AG v. HathiTrust Copyright Litigation — “‘Our pursuit of this claim was ultimately a success,’ said Authors Guild Executive Director Mary Rasenberger. “It led directly to HathiTrust’s 2011 abandonment of the Orphan Works Project. Moreover, the stipulation filed today resolves one of our biggest concerns with the HathiTrust Digital Library—namely, that its copying wasn’t done in accordance with the rules for library copying laid out in the Copyright Act.'”

2015 in Copyright and the Courts

By , January 07, 2015.

On Monday, I looked at what’s in store for copyright in the policy world in the upcoming year; today, I want to take a look at what we might see in the courts. Although it is impossible to predict what will come out of the courts in 2015, there are a number of ongoing lawsuits and appeals that may lead to further developments over the next twelve months. The following discussion is nowhere near comprehensive and highly idiosyncratic, reflecting my personal interests.

Supreme Court

All is quiet on the copyright front at the Supreme Court as we enter 2015. The Court does not currently have any cases featuring copyright issues scheduled on its docket. But pending is a cert petition filed this past autumn by Google in an infringement suit brought against the company by Oracle. In May, the Federal Circuit held that software code copied by Google from Oracle’s Java platform was copyrightable. Google is asking the Court to reconsider that decision, arguing that the literal code, along with the “structure, sequence, and organization”, that it copied is uncopyrightable as a system and method of operation. Oracle has responded that the Federal Circuit decision was correct, and Supreme Court review is not appropriate at this moment.

It will be interesting to see how courts continue to respond to last term’s decisions in Aereo and Petrella. Though there was some hand-wringing that the Court’s attempt to cabin its decision so as not to unduly impact cloud computing services would be unsuccessful, some lower courts have seemed a little too cautious in applying Aereo. For example, in September, a Southern District Court of New York judge declined to apply Aereo’s holding to the question of whether the defendant was engaged in an unauthorized public display “because its holding was explicitly limited to technologies substantially similar to the one before the Supreme Court.” 1Capitol Records v MP3Tunes, Memorandum and Order, 07-CV-9931 (SDNY, September 29, 2014). See MP3Tunes and the Ghost of Cablevision for an analysis questioning this conclusion. Additionally, though the majority in Aereo never once mentioned the “volitional conduct” test, a non-statutory doctrine applied sporadically and inconsistently in a handful of lower courts, a judge from the Southern District Court of California held that this silence implied endorsement in a December decision. 2Gardner v. CafePress, Order, 3:13-CV-1108 (SD Cali, December 4, 2014) (“[T]he Supreme Court expressly decided not to address the volitional conduct issue which leaves Fox [Broad. Co. v. Dish Network L.L.C., 747 F.3d 1060, 1067 (9th Cir. 2014)] undisturbed. As this Court is bound by Ninth Circuit precedent and Fox is still good law, the Court finds that volitional conduct is a required element of direct infringement.”).

Ironically, one of the early beneficiaries of the Aereo holding has been Dish Networks. The satellite television provider has exclusive rights to transmit a number of Arabic language television channels in the US. In 2012, it sued TV Net, a company that had begun offering many of those same channels to US subscribers via internet streaming. In October, a federal magistrate judge recommended Dish’s motion for default judgment and a permanent injunction 3Report and Recommendation, Dish Network v. TV Net Solutions, No. 6:12-cv-1629-Orl-41TBS, 2014 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 165305 (MD Fla., Oct. 10, 2014). (a recommendation that was subsequently adopted by the court). 4Dish Network v. TV Net Solutions, 2014 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 165120 (MD Fla., Nov. 25, 2014). The magistrate cited to Aereo to support its conclusion that transmission of the channels by TV Net to its customers constituted public performances.

The irony here is that Dish Networks had just a few months earlier filed an amicus brief arguing the opposite—that providers of “user-controlled technologies” like Aereo (and, presumably, by extension, TV Net) should not be held liable for public performance.

In Petrella, the Court tackled the equitable doctrine of laches; however, one of the interesting potential outcomes of the case has nothing to do with its holding. The Petrella opinion included dicta that seemed to suggest the Court was endorsing one side of an issue that has split the Circuit Courts—whether a copyright registration is effective when the Copyright Office receives an application (the “application” approach) or when it completes the processing of the application (the “registration” approach). 5Under US law, copyright registration is not mandatory; however, it does confer a number of benefits, including serving as a prerequisite before a civil infringement suit may be filed. At one point, the Court in Petrella said, “Although registration is ‘permissive,’ both the certificate and the original work must be on file with the Copyright Office before a copyright owner can sue for infringement.” The reference to a requirement that the registration certificate be on file before an infringement suit can be brought suggests that the receipt of an application alone does not satisfy the law’s registration requirement. This issue does not come up too often, but it will be interesting to see if courts pay any heed to the Petrella language.

It’s worth noting that the Copyright Office firmly endorses the view that registration is only effective after processing is complete. It says in the Third Edition of its Compendium, the final version of which was published in December 2014,

The mere submission of an application to the U.S. Copyright Office does not amount to a registration. This is corroborated by the statute and the legislative history… [which], when read together, clearly evince Congress’s intention that the Register of Copyrights must either issue a certificate of registration or refuse an application for registration prior to filing a suit for copyright infringement. Not only would the filing of a lawsuit solely on the basis of submission of an application eliminate the mediating role that Congress intended the Office to fulfill, it also would nullify the Register of Copyrights’ statutory right to intervene in an infringement action in cases where the application for registration has been refused.

The Supreme Court continues to grant cert petitions through the end of its current term, which concludes in June, and it begins considering cases for its next term starting in October, so there’s always the possibility it will confront a copyright issue before the end of the year.

Circuit Courts

There are a number of appeals before the Circuit Courts dealing with interesting or noteworthy issues that may see rulings in 2015.

Digital sampling. In the Ninth Circuit, parties are still briefing VMG Salsoul v. Ciccone, involving alleged infringing sampling by Madonna for her hit Vogue. A California district court ruled in November 2013 that the portion copied—an individual “horn hit” from a 1976 composition called “Love Break”—lacked the required originality to be protected by copyright, and even if it did, the amount used was de minimis. Notably, the plaintiffs based their argument primarily on the Sixth Circuit’s 2005 Bridgeport Music v. Dimension Films decision, which held that copyright’s traditional “substantial similarity” test for infringement does not apply to sound recordings, and any copying, no matter how minute, is infringing. While no court outside the Sixth Circuit has followed Bridgeport, 6Most recently, the Southern District Court of New York on December 9, 2014. and a few have even explicitly rejected it, 7See Blurred Lines: Digital Sampling, Bridgeport, and Substantial Similarity. this could be the first time a sister circuit court has squarely addressed the issue.

Mass digitization. The Second Circuit heard oral arguments in Authors Guild v. Google, concerning the Google Books commercial mass digitization project, less than a month ago, which could mean a decision some time in 2015 (though not necessarily). 8In 2009, the most recent year statistics are available, the average time from notice of appeal to disposition in the Second Circuit was 17.6 months for civil cases. The notice of appeal in Authors Guild v. Google was filed December 23, 2013. In 2013, the district court had held that Google’s scanning and display of excerpts en masse was fair use. However, the Authors Guild has noted, “Whatever the outcome of this case, a Supreme Court petition is in the cards.”

DMCA safe harbors. The parties in Capitol Records v. Vimeo are also still in the middle of briefing an appeal at the Second Circuit. Vimeo, like YouTube, allows users to upload and publicly share videos. The court there is being asked to consider the proper application of “red flag knowledge” and “willful blindness” under the DMCA as well as whether the DMCA safe harbor extends to pre-1972 sound recordings. Oral arguments there may be heard this year.

Lower Courts

Finally, there are a number of lawsuits in both federal and state lower courts which may bring developments in 2015.

The Southern District Court of New York continues to keep an eye on the dispute between Fox News and media monitoring service TVEyes. This past September, the court held that TVEye’s creation of a database and provision of television clips to its paying subscribers is fair use, an unusually expansive interpretation of the privilege. Fox News has not appealed this decision at this point (though it may be appealed whenever a final judgment is entered), and the parties continue to litigate whether the “features that allow searches by date and time, and that allow clips to be archived, downloaded, emailed, and shared via social media” are also fair use.

Litigation against satellite radio provider Sirius XM for alleged unauthorized public performance of pre-1972 sound recordings continues in a number of courts across the country. As I wrote previously, federal courts in New York and California ruled that pre-1972 sound recording owners do have an exclusive right of public performance under state and common law in lawsuits filed by surviving Turtle’s members Flo & Eddie, while a state court in California held the same in a lawsuit brought by major record labels. A summary judgment motion on the same question remains pending in a Florida federal case brought by Flo & Eddie, as well as any appeals that may yet come out. 9A motion for reconsideration also remains pending in the California federal court. The California state court has certified the ruling for interlocutory appeal while the New York federal court has yet to rule on certification.

Relatedly, litigation against streaming service Grooveshark continues. 10See Grooveshark is Done for a previous discussion of these lawsuits. In UMG Recordings v. Escape Media Group, a New York state court is ready to rule on a motion for summary judgment as to Grooveshark’s liability—including on a claim of direct infringement of public performance rights for pre-1972 sound recordings. 11Supreme Court of the State of New York, County of New York, Index No. 100152/2010 . This is particularly worth watching since a state court ruling on state law presumably carries more weight than a federal court ruling on state law (as has occurred in the Sirius litigation). Grooveshark is also facing claims of federal copyright infringement by Capitol Records in the Southern District Court of New York. Last May, the magistrate judge there recommended summary judgment in favor of Capitol Records, a recommendation Grooveshark subsequently opposed. A resolution remains pending.

Last August, Getty Images sued Microsoft over a “Bing image widget” released by Microsoft that allows third parties to embed on web sites images supplied by Microsoft’s Bing search engine. Getty alleges that this conduct amounts to copyright infringement by Microsoft. The Southern District Court of New York has so far denied a motion for preliminary injunction by Getty (Microsoft had disabled the widget by then) and a motion to dismiss by Microsoft; last month, Microsoft filed its answer and counterclaim.

References

References
↑1 Capitol Records v MP3Tunes, Memorandum and Order, 07-CV-9931 (SDNY, September 29, 2014). See MP3Tunes and the Ghost of Cablevision for an analysis questioning this conclusion.
↑2 Gardner v. CafePress, Order, 3:13-CV-1108 (SD Cali, December 4, 2014) (“[T]he Supreme Court expressly decided not to address the volitional conduct issue which leaves Fox [Broad. Co. v. Dish Network L.L.C., 747 F.3d 1060, 1067 (9th Cir. 2014)] undisturbed. As this Court is bound by Ninth Circuit precedent and Fox is still good law, the Court finds that volitional conduct is a required element of direct infringement.”).
↑3 Report and Recommendation, Dish Network v. TV Net Solutions, No. 6:12-cv-1629-Orl-41TBS, 2014 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 165305 (MD Fla., Oct. 10, 2014).
↑4 Dish Network v. TV Net Solutions, 2014 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 165120 (MD Fla., Nov. 25, 2014).
↑5 Under US law, copyright registration is not mandatory; however, it does confer a number of benefits, including serving as a prerequisite before a civil infringement suit may be filed.
↑6 Most recently, the Southern District Court of New York on December 9, 2014.
↑7 See Blurred Lines: Digital Sampling, Bridgeport, and Substantial Similarity.
↑8 In 2009, the most recent year statistics are available, the average time from notice of appeal to disposition in the Second Circuit was 17.6 months for civil cases. The notice of appeal in Authors Guild v. Google was filed December 23, 2013.
↑9 A motion for reconsideration also remains pending in the California federal court. The California state court has certified the ruling for interlocutory appeal while the New York federal court has yet to rule on certification.
↑10 See Grooveshark is Done for a previous discussion of these lawsuits.
↑11 Supreme Court of the State of New York, County of New York, Index No. 100152/2010 .

2015 in Copyright Law and Policy

By , January 05, 2015.

2014 was a busy year for copyright policy on a number of fronts, with the House Judiciary Committee, US Copyright Office, and USPTO actively working on a broad range of issues. What will 2015 bring?

House Judiciary Committee

Turning first to the House Judiciary Committee, it will likely continue its review of copyright law. The current copyright review process began nearly two years ago when Register of Copyrights Maria Pallante addressed Congress, saying it was time for it to approach copyright law issues “comprehensively.” Heeding the Register’s call, a Congressional copyright review was formally announced April 24, 2013. Representative Goodlatte (R-VA), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said the Committee would hold over the next few months a “comprehensive series of hearings on U.S. copyright law” in order “to determine whether the laws are still working in the digital age.”

Since then, the House Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property, and the Internet has conducted sixteen days of informational hearings, five in 2013, and eleven this past year, on a range of issues across the copyright spectrum. Following November’s elections, Rep. Goodlatte announced Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) as chairman of the IP Subcommittee for the 114th Congress, also announcing that all copyright related issues will be handled at the full Committee. Goodlatte has said elsewhere that while the review process will continue into 2015, it is “almost complete.” He has emphasized that no specific goal or end product has been set for the process, saying, “A lot of the problems will be solved not by legislation but by new technologies, by business models, by business deals.”

One issue that hasn’t been heard yet during the review process is the operation of the Copyright Office. The IP Subcommittee did hold an oversight hearing on the Copyright Office September 18, where Register of Copyrights Maria Pallante testified not only about the current status of the Office and its projects but also the obstacles and opportunities it faces going forward. Pallante noted that the Office is “leanly funded” and its “fee authority does not permit the Office to collect for capital improvements or other forms of investment above the cost it incurs in the ordinary course of business.” She said the staff is “smaller than it should be to carry out the volume and complexity of work prescribed by Title 17.” Finally, Pallante remarked that the Office may need to “absorb more direct responsibility for its” technological needs; it currently uses the technical infrastructure of the Library of Congress, “including its network, servers, telecommunications and security operations.” This arrangement results in “both synergies and resource challenges.”

Departments across the Library compete for services and equipment. However, these services do not always support the fact that the Copyright Office is a twenty-four-hour business with a distinct mission. The Copyright Office intersects with a dynamic global marketplace and affects the legal rights and economic interests of those who rely on the provisions of Title 17.

This has been a constant theme of the review process—when Pallante first proposed a comprehensive review of copyright law, she remarked that “Evolving the Copyright Office should be a major goal of the next great copyright act.” 1Maria Pallante, The Next Great Copyright Act, 36 Columbia Journal of Law & the Arts 315, 341 (2013). The article is “is an extended version of the Twenty-Sixth Horace S. Manges Lecture delivered on March 4, 2013 at Columbia Law School.” See also “The Register’s Call for Updates to U.S. Copyright Law”, Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property and the Internet Committee on the Judiciary United States House of Representatives 113th Congress, 1st Session, Statement of Maria A. Pallante, Register of Copyrights of the United States (March 20, 2013); (“evolving the Copyright Office should be a major goal of the next great copyright act.”).

Copyright Office

Pallante expanded on her thoughts during the Eleventh Annual Christopher A. Meyer Memorial Lecture delivered on November 20, 2013 at George Washington University Law School, remarks of which have been edited and published as The Next Generation Copyright Office: What it Means and Why it Matters. There, Pallante noted that there is a desire among the broader copyright community to build a “next generation Copyright Office” that could take advantage of technology to provide a wider array of services.

For example, BMI suggested that it would be useful for the Office to collect and incorporate short digital samples of musical works as part of its registration records, to help people identify copyright ownership. The American Society of Media Photographers and the Graphic Artists Guild suggested it would be helpful for the Office to invest in image recognition technologies to help people find works of visual art. The Association of American Publishers said it would be helpful to the book publishing industry if the Office adopted commercially successful metadata standards for digital content, such as ONIX. And SoundExchange said that if the Copyright Office could develop APIs, then rights management organizations and aggregators could create innovative applications for collecting and disseminating information regarding copyrighted content across the supply chain. In a publication about the Copyright Office released in 2010, Public Knowledge observed that “[t]he long term cost savings created by an easy-to-use, comprehensive registry should easily outweigh the costs associated with its creation.”

Nevertheless, the Copyright Office remains busy going into 2015. It is currently engaged in active policy studies on orphan works and mass digitization, the making available right, and music licensing. While the Office has solicited public comments and held public roundtables on each of these studies over the past year, that does not necessarily mean we will see any outcomes in 2015—it would not be surprising for the Office to call for additional comments or other public input in any of these proceedings. 2Two recently concluded policy studies from the Copyright Office concerning resale royalty and copyright small claims could give some idea of report timelines. The Copyright Office solicited two rounds of public comment regarding resale royalties September 2012 and March 2013 and held a public roundtable April 2013. That report was released December 2013. The study of copyright small claims involved three rounds of comments—October 2011, August 2012, and February 2013—and two sets of public events—a roundtable May 2012 and two days of public hearings November 2012—with the final report released September 2013.

US Patent and Trademark Office

Shifting to the executive branch, The Internet Policy Task Force (IPTF)—a Department of Commerce group led by the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) and the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA)—held a series of public roundtables over the past year on several topics identified in its 2013 Green Paper, Copyright Policy, Creativity, and Innovation in the Digital Economy. Those include “(1) the legal framework for the creation of remixes; (2) the relevance and scope of the first sale doctrine in the digital environment; and (3) the appropriate calibration of statutory damages in the contexts of (i) individual file sharers and (ii) secondary liability for large-scale infringement.” The stated purpose of these roundtables was to “seek additional input from the public in locations around the country in order for the Task Force to have a complete and thorough record upon which to make recommendations.” During the fourth and final roundtable, held July 30, 2014 in Berkeley, California, Chief Policy Officer and Director for International Affairs at the USPTO Shira Perlmutter remarked that the conclusions and recommendations would be issued in the form of a White Paper, which would likely be issued sometime early 2015.

During 2014, the IPTF also coordinated a multistakeholder process for consensus-building among stakeholders with the aim of producing an agreed outcome by the end of 2014 on the issue of improving the operation of the DMCA notice and takedown system. The final public meeting of 2014 occurred December 18, where the Working Group presented a discussion draft of “Good, Bad and Situational Practices.” The draft notes:

The document represents the near final outcome of eight months of intensive public discussions, meetings, and negotiations in a process that was open to any and all interested stakeholders. A broad range of practices for potential inclusion were considered and discussed intensively over the course of eight months, and this draft contains recommendations on issues within the scope of the group’s work as to which best practices could be formulated.

The draft goes on to note that comments on the specific wording of the draft are now being accepted, and the IPTF will provide further information as to any future plenary meetings of the group.

In sum, 2015 promises to bring plenty of developments in copyright law and policy.

 

References

References
↑1 Maria Pallante, The Next Great Copyright Act, 36 Columbia Journal of Law & the Arts 315, 341 (2013). The article is “is an extended version of the Twenty-Sixth Horace S. Manges Lecture delivered on March 4, 2013 at Columbia Law School.” See also “The Register’s Call for Updates to U.S. Copyright Law”, Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property and the Internet Committee on the Judiciary United States House of Representatives 113th Congress, 1st Session, Statement of Maria A. Pallante, Register of Copyrights of the United States (March 20, 2013); (“evolving the Copyright Office should be a major goal of the next great copyright act.”).
↑2 Two recently concluded policy studies from the Copyright Office concerning resale royalty and copyright small claims could give some idea of report timelines. The Copyright Office solicited two rounds of public comment regarding resale royalties September 2012 and March 2013 and held a public roundtable April 2013. That report was released December 2013. The study of copyright small claims involved three rounds of comments—October 2011, August 2012, and February 2013—and two sets of public events—a roundtable May 2012 and two days of public hearings November 2012—with the final report released September 2013.

Friday’s Endnotes – 12/19/14

By , December 19, 2014.

EFF Doubles Down on Barlow Declaration — “Cyberspace, like physical space, is a world in which people act like people; and unfortunately, this includes criminal, morally depraved, or just plain dumb behaviors, some of which were not possible prior to the opening of this new frontier. Human trafficking, identity theft, intellectual property theft, cyberstalking, the expansion of yellow journalism, terrorist propaganda, and child abuse are all beneficiaries of Barlow’s sacred “home of Mind.” We have to accept that and deal with it; and absent our participation in society through government, I am at a loss to know what realistic alternative might exist. Letting the six guys who own the most popular sites make all the decisions? Because that’s what’s happening now. Governance of cyberspace exists; it’s written in the Terms of Service, and you didn’t vote for anyone who wrote those terms.”

Building the Sets of Middle-Earth for the Battle of the Five Armies — “The creation of a film like Battle of the Five Armies is not only an adaptation of the source text, but hundreds of adaptations within the production itself. Howe and Lee produced thousands of Middle-earth illustrations, which are then adapted by Hennah into detailed designs, which are then adapted into practical sets. The illustrations are adapted by costume designers Anne Maskrey and Bob Buck who dress the actors, and then those actors are filmed in 3D by Lesnie at 48-frames-per-second using Red Epic digital cameras, and that imagery is augmented with the visual splendors (and horrors) created by Weta Digital, and on and on it goes.”

Reps. Chu and Collins Praise Economic Contributions of Core Copyright Industries — Representative Chu says of the recently released report, ““Employing more than 5.5 million people, our creative industries contributed more than a trillion dollars to our economy last year. This is a significant portion of our GDP, none of which would be possible without strong copyright protections. As co-chair of the Congressional Creative Rights Caucus, I am so proud of the talented minds and innovative workers that produce arts and entertainment admired around the world. We need to continue working to guarantee the protection necessary to help this industry continue to thrive.”

Flickr Sorry for Selling Creative Commons Photos as Wall Art, Will Stop and Refund All Sales To Date — Flickr originally rolled out a feature allowing Creative Commons images that were licensed to be reused commercially to be sold as wall art through the site, but the plan was met by outrage by a number of photographers.

2015: The year of blocking injunctions? — Eleanora Rosati notes, “Improving the legal framework for online enforcement of IP rights, notably copyright, has been probably the most debated policy topic in a number of jurisdictions in 2014, and will likely be so also in 2015. The recent decision of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) in Telekabel [here and here] clarified once and for all that blocking orders are compatible with EU law, and that it is left to the concerned internet service providers (ISPs) to determine how best to achieve the result sought by the relevant rightholder(s).”

A Sirius Setback: Two Courts Reject Motion for Reconsideration

By , December 16, 2014.

Even after two courts in California, one federal and one state, determined in September and October that California state protection of pre-1972 sound recordings includes an exclusive right of public performance, the conventional wisdom seemed to be that the decisions would not stand for too long. The public policy ramifications were too great for the holdings to survive on appeal or through further litigation. But then in November, a federal court in New York came to the same conclusion, and all bets seemed off.

The background of the litigation and issues involved are discussed more fully in the above two links, but very briefly: Flo & Eddie, a corporation made up of two founding members of the Turtles, sued satellite radio provider Sirius XM in federal court in California, New York, and Florida for infringement of their public performance rights under state and common law. The major record labels sued Sirius XM in state court in California alleging the same. Flo & Eddie have so far been granted summary judgment on the issue in California and New York; the record labels have won approval of a jury instruction stating California law grants public performance rights in sound recording owners.

Sirius XM changed legal teams days after the New York decision. 1Note, though, that Sirius XM had already done the same for the California federal court litigation prior to the New York decision. The new team immediately moved for reconsideration in all three proceedings, calling attention to not-yet-cited precedent that it claimed stood for the proposition that pre-1972 sound recordings did not include an exclusive right of public performance.

The case it relied most fully on was RCA Mfg. Co. v. Whiteman, a Second Circuit decision from 1940. 2114 F.2d 86. Sirius also relies on Supreme Records, Inc. v. Decca Records, Inc., 90 F. Supp. 904 (S.D. Cal. 1950) in its California motions. Sirius also raises a Dormant Commerce Clause challenge in its motions, which I won’t discuss here. In Whiteman, a maker of records sought to restrain their broadcast by a radio station. 3Though Whiteman is captioned as the defendant here, he was actually the original plaintiff and performer on the records at issue; the court explains how, procedurally, he ended up being the defendant on appeal:


Before the action was brought Whiteman had filed a complaint against W. B. O. Broadcasting Corporation and Elin, Inc., to restrain the broadcasting of phonograph records of musical performances by Whiteman’s orchestra. By leave of court RCA Manufacturing Company, Inc., then filed the complaint at bar, as ancillary to Whiteman’s action, asking the same relief against W. B. O. Broadcasting Corporation and Elin, Inc., as Whiteman had asked in his action, and in addition asking that Whiteman be adjudged to have no interest in the records of his performances, because of contracts between him and itself. Whiteman thereupon discontinued his action, leaving only the ancillary action in which the judgment on appeal was entered.

The case is one of the earliest to address property interests in sound recordings, the technology itself still in its early stages—state law would not begin protecting sound recordings for two decades, federal law, three. 4US Copyright Office, Federal Copyright Protection for Pre-1972 Sound Recordings, 2011. Musical compositions—the underlying songs that are protected by copyright separately from sound recordings—have had public performance rights protected under federal law since 1897, but even then, it was only until the 1920s that courts recognized that public performance included broadcast by radio. 5Twentieth Century Music Corp. v. Aiken, 422 US 151, 158-59 (1975). The case was, in other words, decided when the law concerning sound recordings was quite primordial.

The Southern District Court of New York was the first to respond to the reconsideration motion from Sirius, and it did not sound happy. In a December 3rd order directing a response to the reconsideration motion from plaintiffs Flo & Eddie, the court said, “Whiteman plainly should have been addressed the first time around, and it must be dealt with now—it is, after all, a Second Circuit decision (albeit a pre-Naxos decision) discussing key issues in this case.” It concluded even more bluntly:

I will not accept reply papers; I will also not hold oral argument. I am well aware of the ramifications of my original ruling, which I did not reach lightly. But in the end, this court does not make policy; I deal in law. Sirius has had its say about the law; Flo & Eddie will weigh in in writing; and I will decide whether or not to reconsider my original ruling.

Two days later, the California state court, where the plaintiffs are the major record labels, considered the motion for reconsideration. The court did not change its original decision that California law recognizes a public performance right in sound recordings, though it did certify the question for interlocutory appeal. 6The California federal court denied to certify the same question for interlocutory appeal on November 20.

It made short work of the arguments from Sirius. It says “Whiteman was limited to New York common law” while the original decision here was based on the text and structure of California statutory law. In addition, it notes that Whiteman “was expressly disapproved in Capitol Records v. Mercury Records Corp.” which held that Whiteman‘s conclusion “is not the law of the State of New York.” The court was equally unpersuaded by Sirius’s reliance on Supreme Records v. Decca Records, a 1950 California decision that the court says “involved the imitation of particular arrangements of a song” rather than addressing “the issue of public performance rights in sound recordings.”

But the worst blow to Sirius’s morale was yet to come. On Friday, December 12, the New York court denied the motion for reconsideration in a remarkably devastating critique of the arguments advanced. It begins by noting, “Obviously Whiteman is a very old case, and does not represent any ‘intervening change of controlling law,’ so the argument must be that the Court’s failure to apply Whiteman constitutes ‘clear error.'” But, says the court, “The only clear error in this case is O’Melveny’s [Sirius’ counsel].” It continues:

Sirius’s former counsel had two perfectly good reasons not to argue the lack of any public performance right on the basis of Whiteman: (1) Whiteman does not hold that New York does not recognize a public performance right as part of the common law copyright in sound recordings; and (2) its actual holding – which is that the sale of sound recordings to the public constituted “publication,” which divested a creation of any common law copyright whatsoever – is no longer good law, and has not been for 60 years.

The court goes on to say that the crux of Whiteman was whether the sound recording was published, and therefore lost any rights it had. It notes that the court did not specify what exactly those rights were—whether they included a right to publicly perform or not. 7I would add that Whiteman appears to make a material error in its discussion. It says, “Copyright in any form, whether statutory or at common-law… consists only in the power to prevent others from reproducing the copy-righted work.” This is clearly not the case, since federal statute had provided a right of public performance to owners of dramatic compositions since 1856, nearly a century prior to Whiteman. In any event, the court adds, Whiteman has since been overruled by New York courts.

Sirius also asserted a Constitutional challenge to Flo & Eddie’s claims based on the Dormant Commerce Clause. The court’s clarity here concerning property and commerce is worth quoting:

Sirius does not dispute that the reach of the Dormant Commerce Clause is only to state actions properly characterized as “regulations.” Instead of explaining how liability for common law copyright infringement constitutes a regulation, Sirius dodges and misconstrues the issues.

…

The question is whether the law at issue – common law copyright – constitutes “regulation.” In the one case Sirius does cite applying the Commerce Clause to a judicial finding of liability the law involved [] a California statute requiring pre-approval for marketing cosmetic products. The cases holding that a law may violate the Dormant Commerce Clause because of its “practical effects” on interstate commerce each involved state liquor-pricing schemes. All of those state laws -pharmaceutical approval and liquor pricing laws – are classic instances of states exercising their regulatory power, and are very different from this case, where the issue is protection of property rights.

Protecting Flo and Eddie from the theft of its property is not “regulation”; a simple example illustrates the point. Suppose, instead of stealing Flo and Eddie’s property rights in the sound recordings, someone stole its company car, which was then used to operate an interstate taxi service. The Dormant Commerce Clause obviously would not bar Flo and Eddie from maintaining an action at common law for conversion of the car. And that would be true even though the action, and the return of the car and the end of the taxi service, would affect interstate commerce. State laws barring theft do not violate the Dormant Commerce Clause.

The court ultimately defers on certification of this issue for interlocutory appeal.

That leaves pending the motion for reconsideration in the California federal court (a proposed motion seeks hearing January 26, 2015) and the motion for summary judgment on the same issue in Florida.

Thus far, things have not gone well for Sirius. But it may be the case that the issues in the cases are resolved legislatively before they are resolved through litigation—the Copyright Office has already reported on federalization of pre-1972 sound recordings and taken up the issue in a recent round of public comments, and the House Judiciary Committee considered the issue during a two part hearing this past June. Proposed legislation that would bring these recordings within the compulsory license that Sirius relies on for digital performances of sound recordings (stopping short of full federalization) was introduced this past session.

Many sound recordings made before 1972 remain economically valuable, as this series of litigation demonstrates. At the same time, there are numerous issues remaining to be resolved if federalization is the goal. But in the interim, the recognition by several courts of the property rights of creators to the products of their intellectual labors is welcome.

References

References
↑1 Note, though, that Sirius XM had already done the same for the California federal court litigation prior to the New York decision.
↑2 114 F.2d 86. Sirius also relies on Supreme Records, Inc. v. Decca Records, Inc., 90 F. Supp. 904 (S.D. Cal. 1950) in its California motions. Sirius also raises a Dormant Commerce Clause challenge in its motions, which I won’t discuss here.
↑3 Though Whiteman is captioned as the defendant here, he was actually the original plaintiff and performer on the records at issue; the court explains how, procedurally, he ended up being the defendant on appeal:

Before the action was brought Whiteman had filed a complaint against W. B. O. Broadcasting Corporation and Elin, Inc., to restrain the broadcasting of phonograph records of musical performances by Whiteman’s orchestra. By leave of court RCA Manufacturing Company, Inc., then filed the complaint at bar, as ancillary to Whiteman’s action, asking the same relief against W. B. O. Broadcasting Corporation and Elin, Inc., as Whiteman had asked in his action, and in addition asking that Whiteman be adjudged to have no interest in the records of his performances, because of contracts between him and itself. Whiteman thereupon discontinued his action, leaving only the ancillary action in which the judgment on appeal was entered.

↑4 US Copyright Office, Federal Copyright Protection for Pre-1972 Sound Recordings, 2011.
↑5 Twentieth Century Music Corp. v. Aiken, 422 US 151, 158-59 (1975).
↑6 The California federal court denied to certify the same question for interlocutory appeal on November 20.
↑7 I would add that Whiteman appears to make a material error in its discussion. It says, “Copyright in any form, whether statutory or at common-law… consists only in the power to prevent others from reproducing the copy-righted work.” This is clearly not the case, since federal statute had provided a right of public performance to owners of dramatic compositions since 1856, nearly a century prior to Whiteman.

Friday’s Endnotes – 12/12/14

By , December 12, 2014.

Flickr’s Wall Art Program Exposes Weaknesses in Licensing Automation — “The fact that a hosting website might exploit a Creative Commons-licensed work for its own commercial gain doesn’t sit right with many content creators who have operated under two assumptions that, as Flickr has shown, are naive. One is that these big Internet sites just want to get users to contribute content in order to build their audience and that they will make money some other way, such as through premium memberships or advertising. The other is that Creative Commons licenses are some sort of magic bullet that help artists get exposure for their work while preventing unfair commercial exploitation of it.”

Authors Guild Opposes Google’s Fair Use Claim in Federal Appeals Court — Last week, a Second Circuit panel heard oral arguments in the Google Books litigation, on appeal after the district court held that Google’s massive commercial operation was a fair use. Here’s the Author Guild’s report on the arguments.

Korean cultural export success rooted in freedom and democracy, industry insiders say — Freedom of expression and a sustainable, professional creative sector go hand in hand, as this report demonstrates. “The mania reaffirmed the success of Korean cultural and creative industries that, industry heavyweights say, owe their accomplishments to the freedom guarded by a democratic society that is seeking to cultivate a creative economy.”

Paying A Legitimate Toll To Ease On Down The Road — “I’m not suggesting that everyone get schooled in the intricacies of copyright law, but that as part of the process of creating and performing shows, students should come to understand that there is a value in the words they speak and the songs they sing, a concept that’s increasingly frayed in an era of file sharing, sampling, streaming and downloading. Creative artists try to make this case publicly from time to time, whether it’s Taylor Swift pulling her music from Spotify over the service’s allegedly substandard rate of compensation to artists or Jason Robert Brown trying to explain why copying and sharing his sheet music is tantamount to theft of his work. But without an appreciation for what copyright protects and supports, it’s difficult for the average young person to understand what this might one day mean to them, or to the people who create work that they love.”

10 FAQs on Twitter (Music Piracy Research Blog) — “What I won’t accept are the weak excuses to justify piracy. That’s all they are. Excuses. Piracy is easy, you get free stuff, and the chance of being caught is slim. That’s it. Don’t forget that when you obtain copyrighted media illegally, someone somewhere is profiting from that. Illegally. Rightsholders are denied money they are legally and morally entitled to. If you are happy to go see ‘Fast and the Furious 12’, or listen to Two/Three/Four Direction, then keep at it. Investment in new talent is down (BPI) because the return on investment has no guarantee anymore. And it looks like the cost of live concert tickets keeps rising in response to music piracy, so if you like concerts, start saving up for 2015.”

“blame the author” — John Degen talks about a “stock free-culture tactic – assert loudly and without any shame that anyone defending copyright hates the user community.”

 

Friday’s Endnotes – 12/05/14

By , December 05, 2014.

Second Circuit Hears Google Books Case — This week, the 2nd Circuit heard arguments in the dispute between authors and Google over the search giant’s mass digitization program. While this specific dispute has been going on for nearly a decade, the dispute over this issue is at least half a century old. A draft bill for copyright revision in 1964 provided that a copyright owner’s exclusive right to copy included “the right to reproduce the work in visual copies, to make or duplicate sound recordings of it, to make a translation, adaptation, or any other derivative work from it, and to reproduce it in any form in the programming or operation of an information storage and retrieval system.” This language did not appear in the final bill, passed in 1976.

The Strand’s Stand: How It Keeps Going in the Age of Amazon — A fascinating look at the legendary used bookstore in Manhattan.

‘Investing in Music’ report shows record labels invest US$4.3 billion in A&R and marketing — The report shows the significant contributions the global recorded music industry makes to promoting the progress of science and the useful arts.

Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) uses copyright law as censorship canard again — “Sutton lists 9 instances in which content was removed for allegedly political reasons via a DMCA notice. Not to minimize any wrongdoing in these particular instances, but has Ms. Sutton bothered to examine the millions of legitimate removals that occur each week worldwide? In any enforcement system there exist errors and potential for abuse, but the the truth is that the volume of legit DMCA notices far outweighs illegitimate ones.”

Virginia Woolf Goes to the Movies — Originally published in 1926, a year before the first talkie, The Jazz Singer, was released, the esteemed author pens a prognostic look at the brand new medium. “Yet if so much of our thinking and feeling is connected with seeing, some residue of visual emotion which is of no use either to painter or to poet may still await the cinema.”

Friday’s Endnotes – 11/21/14

By , November 21, 2014.

Not a good week for Sirius XM:

While the Court is largely unpersuaded and sometimes baffled by Sirius XM’s repetitive or off-point theories about how reasonable jurists might read an unwritten exclusion into §980(a)(2), the Court will not analyze the potential grounds for difference of opinion because certification of this Order suffers from an even more basic deficiency.

Disney’s global success with ‘Frozen’ took lots of translation, investment — “The company put a huge investment into making the animated film as accessible in Beijing as in Buenos Aires. The movie is translated into 41 languages, which included an international cast of more than 900 people. They worked on 1,300 recording sessions.”

Top 113 Congressional Copyright Review Moments — While the 113th Congress still has a few more days in session before the end of its term, there are no more copyright review hearings planned. Here is a look back at some of the top moments of the past year.

Landmark Trade Deal at Risk Without Strong Intellectual Property Laws — “The nature of the TPP’s IP provisions matter greatly to the United States because America’s competitive advantage in the global economy increasingly lies in innovation-based industries—such as life sciences (pharmaceuticals and medical devices), information and communications technologies, digital services, music and film, aerospace, and advanced manufacturing—that at their core depend on the production, and protection, of intellectual property.”

Fair Use and Market Harm: Use It or Lose It? — Thomas Young has an in-depth look at the Eleventh Circuit’s troubling conclusion concerning market harm in the GSU e-reserves case, one of the issues the publisher plaintiffs are asking the full bench to review in their petition for an en banc rehearing.

Social Media Bots Offer Phony Friends and Real Profit — “‘This all points to social media advertising being one giant bubble,’ said Tim Hwang, chief scientist at the Pacific Social Architecting Corporation, a research group that focuses on bots. ‘Everyone is really happy to say, ‘Look at the numbers that we got, it must have been successful,’ even though the retweets and favs are inflated by bots.'”

The Creepy New Wave of the Internet — Sue Halpern says in the New York Review of Books, “In other words, as human behavior is tracked and merchandized on a massive scale, the Internet of Things creates the perfect conditions to bolster and expand the surveillance state.”

Go back forty-four years, to 1970, when NJ Representative Cornelius Gallagher said much the same thing: “By weaving a web of data representing all of an individual’s experience, it seems to me that we are creating a suffocating sense of surveillance in this country.” 1Fair Credit Reporting Hearings on H.R. 16340 Before the H. Subcomm. on Consumer Affairs of the Comm. on Banking and Currency, 29, 91st Cong. (1970) (Statement of Rep. Cornelius E. Gallagher). Gallagher went on to say, “Files which are economically unfeasible to computerize now will undoubtedly yield to further generations of computing machines in a vast nationwide, even worldwide network of information. The question is no longer science fiction.”

References

References
↑1 Fair Credit Reporting Hearings on H.R. 16340 Before the H. Subcomm. on Consumer Affairs of the Comm. on Banking and Currency, 29, 91st Cong. (1970) (Statement of Rep. Cornelius E. Gallagher). Gallagher went on to say, “Files which are economically unfeasible to computerize now will undoubtedly yield to further generations of computing machines in a vast nationwide, even worldwide network of information. The question is no longer science fiction.”
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