By , April 27, 2018.

David Israelite: My Lessons from the MMA — On Wednesday, the House of Representatives passed the Music Modernization Act (H.R. 5447) by an unprecedented unanimous vote of 415-0. Here is the National Music Publishers’ Association’s David Israelite describing what he believes led to that success, which puts much needed music licensing reforms one step closer to realization.

Celebrating Women in Innovation and Creativity — Terrica Carrington writes, “on this year’s World IP Day, as people and organizations across the country gather to celebrate the achievements of women in the creative and innovative space, I challenge everyone to think about the stories that would go untold, characters unwritten, people and events of the past forgotten, and lives untouched if not for the work of women around the world. But the challenge doesn’t end there. I also challenge everyone not to forget the role that copyright plays in affording these women the financial freedom and security to tell these stories, write these characters, commemorate those people and events, and touch countless lives through their work as creators.”

Player Pianos and the Origins of Compulsory Licensing – Some Details of its Origins — Zvi Rosen takes a look at some of the early cases considering the question of mechanical reproductions that preceded the 1909 Copyright Act, which clearly established such a right, along with an accompanying compulsory license to make mechanical reproductions. The aforementioned Music Modernization Act would be the first significant change to the compulsory licensing of mechanical reproductions in the U.S. since then.

Backlash prompts Eventbrite to drop demand to crash events, record them — I would imagine it would be surprising to find employees of the ticketing platform you used show up to your event and inform you that you agreed to let them record it. And it would be more surprising to learn that you released that ticketing platform from all claims arising from their exploitation of that footage. Fortunately, Eventbrite removed the terms from their agreement that would allow both once they were discovered.

‘One Has This Feeling of Having Contributed to Something That’s Gone Very Wrong’ — A riveting interview with Jaron Lanier about the current state of the internet. “Before Wikipedia, I think it would have been viewed as being this horrible thing to say that there could only be one encyclopedia, and that there would be one dominant entry for a given topic. Instead, there were different encyclopedias. There would be variations not so much in what facts were presented, but in the way they were presented. That voice was a real thing.”

Canadian government response to copyright and digital policy issues — “The term ‘balance’ is not only polarizing, it’s use doesn’t inform policy or policy makers to any specific or desirable course of action. For example, while one may refer to a ‘balanced budget’ as a desirable fiscal goal, one would eschew any attempt to do any comprehensive law review in other areas by focusing on balance as a guiding principle. For example, one would not premise updating our laws related to tax, securities regulation, criminal law, immigration, energy, or housing, based on a principle of ‘balance’ in the abstract. There would be more relevant guiding principles just as there are in copyright law.”