On January 12, 1977, Barbara Ringer, the register of copyrights, was presented the President’s Award for Distinguished Federal Civilian Service in 8 ceremony at the White House. This award, the highest honor for extraordinary achievement in the federal career service, cited the leading part taken by her in the movement to revise the copyright law and pointed out that her “energy, ability, and concern for the property rights of those who create literature, the arts, and science have ensured continuation of that creativity, thus enhancing life for all people.” Ms. Ringer had already received from the Librarian of Congress, shortly after the revision bill was cleared for passage, the Distinguished Service Award, the highest award offered by the Library, in recognition of her contribution to the quest for modern copyright legislation.
Peter Bart: How Content Creators Are Exploited By Monoliths Apple, Google, Facebook — Bart writes, “Why is it that, while vastly more creative content is being consumed worldwide, less revenue is flowing to the people who create it? This is the issue probed by Jonathan Taplin in an important new book that demonstrates how intellectual property has been hijacked by what he calls the new ‘marketing monoculture’ led by Facebook, Amazon and Google.”
Photographer Gets Cyberbullied After Defending Photo Copyright — As this story demonstrates, as important as it is for artists and creators to stand up for their rights, it’s rarely easy.
Transcribed Proceedings of CONTU — Zvi Rosen has provided another goldmine of copyright geekery reading pleasure: hundreds of pages of transcripts from the Commission on New Technological Uses of Copyrighted Works, established by Congress in 1974 as part of its broader copyright revision effort to focus on novel issues of technology such as photocopying and copyrightability of computer software.
A Bunch of Weak Anti-Piracy Measures Are Still a Pest to Pirates — Torrentfreak reports, “Clearly, none of these measures are good enough to hit piracy hard enough to kill it, but the barriers to entry are being raised. In addition to a fast broadband service, a decent VPN provider is now almost essential for many file-sharers, whether that’s for circumventing blockades or avoiding those pesky sharing warnings. Equally, keeping on top of the latest news, changes, developments, and domain switches can be a time-consumer in itself. That certainly wasn’t the case ten years ago. And if that isn’t enough, running the junk ad gauntlet requires a skill set all of its own, one that can potentially affect all sites running in a browser, whether they’re guilty of bad behavior or not.”
Fix the value gap – a reply to Michael Geist — Canadian attorney Barry Sookman discusses the value gap, the reallocation of value from creators to internet platforms due to free-riding on unauthorized content. Writes Sookman, “Online providers of services such as YouTube and Facebook would unquestionably be liable for substantial copyright infringements but for the safe harbours established around the world including in the U.S. under the DMCA. These legislative exceptions – which were pushed for by technology companies precisely to limit their liabilities – have enabled technology companies to avoid paying licensing fees (or fair market value fees) for which they would otherwise have been liable.”