Copyright Alliance survey on copyright registration fee increase — If you register works with the Copyright Office, take five minutes to complete this survey, which will be used in response to the Copyright Office’s proposed fee schedule, which would raise fees an average of 41%.
Breaking the wall: copyright conflict reaches the Supreme Court — On the topic of copyright registration, the Supreme Court recently agreed to hear a case concerning when the registration requirement for filing a lawsuit has been met. Courts have split over whether the statute requires the Copyright Office to either complete or reject a registration application before a copyright owner can get into court, or whether the requirement is met earlier, when the copyright owner has submitted her registration materials to the Office.
As Clock Ticks, New Hurdles Mount Against the Music Modernization Act — Billboard’s Ed Christman has the latest on the Music Modernization Act, which was voted out of the Senate Judiciary Committee last month and has a few short months left to make it to the Senate floor before the Congressional term concludes.
Copyright found after brief search — Newhoff: “Nevertheless, having established an incomplete, if not outright false, premise for the purpose of copyright, [law professor Glynn] Lunney sets out in search of evidence to support his theory that higher revenue consistently fails to yield “more and better†works. And unsurprisingly, he finds exactly what he’s looking for in data that not only fails to prove his point, but actually has little to do with copyright.”
Google and the ennui of learned helplessness — The Supreme Court is set to hear a case concerning cy pres class action settlements. This article looks at an amicus brief filed by several artists who argue that Google has abused the process “to pay academics and nonprofits who support its causes instead of class members, avoid liability and damage payments to the public, and get a tax break for payments made to non-class members through use of the cy pres distribution vehicle.”