"The CASE Act: The Road to Copyright Trolling is Paved with Good Intentions"

Stan Adams has published "The CASE Act: The Road to Copyright Trolling is Paved with Good Intentions " in the Center for Democracy & Technology Blog.

Here's an excerpt:

The bill would establish a Copyright Claims Board (CCB) in the Copyright Office. This would not be a court and would be entirely separated from the court system. The only option to appeal any of the CCB's determinations, based on the CCB's legal interpretation, would be to ask the Register of Copyrights to review the decision. It would be theoretically possible to ask a federal court to review the determination, but only on the grounds that the CCB's determination was "issued as a result of fraud, corruption, misrepresentation, or other misconduct" or if the CCB exceeded its authority. So if you disagree with the CCB's legal interpretation, or even its competence to make a decision, you are out of luck. This raises red flags about potential due process and separation of powers problems under the Constitution.

The "small claims" part of the bill is also troubling, in that the CCB can award damages up to $30,000 per proceeding. This amount is only considered small in the context of copyright statutory damages, which range between $750-30,000 per work infringed, unless the infringement was willful, in which case, damages can be $150,000 per work. The $30K cap is a 2x-10x multiple of the maximum awards for small claims courts in 49 of 50 states. . . .

Even though the Supreme Court recently ruled that the registration process must be completed (either the Copyright Office granted or denied the application for registration) before filing infringement claims, registration is not required to bring an action under the CASE Act. This leaves everyone (other than the original author/photographer) with no guaranteed way to determine who holds the rights to unregistered works. Even if you identified someone as a potential rightsholder, it could be difficult or impossible to verify their claim of ownership without the official recognition by the Copyright Office. So even if you are acting in good faith and attempt to obtain permission before using a work, you may not be able to do so and there is no guarantee that you will have obtained permission from the correct party, leaving you exposed to claims via the CASE Act.

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CASE Act: "Life-Altering Copyright Lawsuits Could Come to Regular Internet Users Under a New Law Moving in the Senate"

The EFF has released "Life-Altering Copyright Lawsuits Could Come to Regular Internet Users Under a New Law Moving in the Senate."

Here's an excerpt:

In short, the bill would supercharge a "copyright troll" industry dedicated to filing as many "small claims" on as many Internet users as possible in order to make money through the bill’s statutory damages provisions. Every single person who uses the Internet and regularly interacts with copyrighted works (that's everyone) should contact their Senators to oppose this bill.

Making it so easy to sue Internet users for allegedly infringing a copyrighted work that an infringement claim comes to resemble a traffic ticket is a terrible idea. This bill creates a situation where Internet users could easily be on the hook for multiple $5,000 copyright infringement judgments without many of the traditional legal safeguards or rights of appeal our justice system provides.

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European Parliament Approves Controversial Copyright Directive

The European Parliament has approved the controversial Copyright Directive, including Article's 11 and 13.

Here's a quick news roundup.

"Don’t Sacrifice Fair Use to the Bots"

Elliot Harmon has published "Don't Sacrifice Fair Use to the Bots" in DeepLinks.

Here's an excerpt:

It's easy to see the impact that Content ID has had on the YouTube community—a simple search reveals hundreds of videos about how to avoid a Content ID takedown, with litanies of guidelines about keeping clips to a certain length, adding a colored border to them, or keeping the copyrighted content in a certain corner of the screen.

That's the problem. The beauty of fair use is its inherent flexibility. The law does not provide specific rules about how long of a clip must be for you to use it in your parody or criticism or whether it can take up the full screen. But in a filtered Internet, the algorithms create new restrictions on our online speech. The danger of mandatory filtering is that machines will replace human judgment.

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Final Text of the EU Copyright Directive Is Now Available

Julia Reda has published the final text of the EU Copyright Directive: Article 11, Article 13, and the entire document.

Read her analysis at: "The Text of Article 13 and the EU Copyright Directive Has Just Been Finalised."

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