Piracy Numbers Drop After Indonesia Blocks Over 3,500 Pirate Sites — Torrentfreak reports, “The Government of Indonesia continues to crack down on piracy. The country’s list of blocked sites and services has grown to more than 3,500 domain names. According to the Coalition Against Piracy, these actions resulted in a 75% decrease in pirate site traffic, while the use of legal alternatives has tripled.”
How to Support Your Local Library — Paul Sweeting writes about the demise in court of a Maryland law effectively creating a compulsory license of ebooks to libraries for digital lending. Taking a look at data regarding library expenditures, he suggests the aim of the bill was misplaced. “Indeed, insofar as public libraries face growing financial challenges, those challenges are not coming from the cost of material in their collections; it is coming from higher operating and administrative costs. . . . If state legislators genuinely want to help public libraries, they would get more bang for the buck by increasing funding for operating and administrative costs, not by trying to rewrite federal copyright law for e-books.”
Empowered to negotiate or obliged to contract? Lessons from the Italian implementation of the press publishers’ right — A look at one European Union country’s experience with implementing article 15 of the EU’s Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market, which allows press publishers to authorize or prohibit the use of their content by information society service providers.
Goold & Simon on Luck & the Labor Theory of Intellectual Property — Via Lawrence Solum: “A person naturally owns the fruits of their intellectual labour; so goes the labour argument for intellectual property. But what should happen when a creator gets ‘lucky’ – such as the photographer who is in the right place at the right time or the scientist who accidentally discovers a new drug?” The authors of the paper argue that the presence of luck does not undermine the labor theory of IP law.
Brent Lutes Named First Chief Economist of the U.S. Copyright Office — “Register of Copyrights Shira Perlmutter has announced the appointment of Dr. Brent Lutes as the first Chief Economist of the U.S. Copyright Office, effective April 10, 2022. As Chief Economist, Lutes will evaluate the economic impacts of programs and policies relating to the U.S. and international copyright systems. He will advise the Register and other senior officials on how these impacts affect the Office, copyright stakeholders, and the general public.”