Broadcasters Settle Copyright Dispute With FilmOn — Thus bringing to an end the dispute over whether services retransmitting broadcast television over the internet can avoid negotiating with broadcasters and instead take advantage of the Copyright Act’s §111 cable compulsory license. The settlement means the pending appeals in the DC and 7th Circuits are dismissed. In both circuits, the lower courts had held in favor of the broadcasters. The Ninth Circuit earlier this year reversed a lower court decision that held in favor of FilmOn. Add to that the Second Circuit’s 2012 WPIX v ivi decision holding the same, and you have as close to a clean sweep as you might get.
ReDigi, Key Digital ‘First Sale’ Case, Heating up on Appeal — ReDigi is back on the menu, with amicus briefs in support of Capitol Records being filed last Friday. Here, PublishersWeekly takes a look at the arguments advanced by Association of American Publishers. Law360 covers a joint brief from RIAA and MPAA. My organization also filed a brief.
The (First) Register of Copyrights and the Drafting of the 1909 Copyright Act — More historical goodness from Zvi Rosen, tracing the immediate active role that the first Register of Copyrights, Thorvald Solberg, took in making a mark on copyright law.
How the internet financially kills musicians and other artists — Over at Washington Post, New America Fellow Emily Parker reviews Jonathan Taplin’s new book, Move Fast and Break Things. She writes, “Many hoped that the Internet would have a democratizing and decentralizing effect. Instead, Taplin argues, power became concentrated in a small number of digital giants, such as Amazon, Facebook and Google. This ‘winner take all’ scenario also applies to artists. People may be consuming more content than ever, but most creators aren’t reaping the gains.”
The two kinds of title pages — Did you ever notice that many books have two title pages? Here’s why.