Category: Digital Copyright Wars

"Can Beethoven Send Takedown Requests? A First-Hand Account of One German Professor’s Experience with Overly Broad Upload Filters"

Ulrich Kaiser has published "Can Beethoven Send Takedown Requests? A First-Hand Account of One German Professor's Experience with Overly Broad Upload Filters" in Wikimedia Foundation News.

Here's an excerpt:

The first video I uploaded to YouTube promoted the website where my digitized copies of public domain recordings are available to download. In this video, I explained my project, while examples of the music played in the background. Less than three minutes after uploading, I received a notification that there was a ContentID claim against my video. ContentID is a system, developed by YouTube, which checks user uploaded videos against databases of copyrighted content in order to curb copyright infringement. . . .

I decided to open a different YouTube account "Labeltest" to share additional excerpts of copyright-free music. I quickly received ContentID notifications for copyright-free music by Bartok, Schubert, Puccini and Wagner. Again and again, YouTube told me that I was violating the copyright of these long-dead composers, despite all of my uploads existing in the public domain. I appealed each of these decisions, explaining that 1) the composers of these works had been dead for more than 70 years, 2) the recordings were first published before 1963, and 3) these takedown request did not provide justification in their property rights under the German Copyright Act.

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Creative Markets and Copyright in the Fourth Industrial Era: Reconfiguring the Public Benefit for a Digital Trade Economy

The International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Developmen thas released Creative Markets and Copyright in the Fourth Industrial Era: Reconfiguring the Public Benefit for a Digital Trade Economy.

Here's an excerpt:

A rapid succession of technological advances—big data, robotics, machine learning, and artificial intelligence—is steadily changing how firms engage in productive activity, how consumers interact, and how knowledge goods are acquired, shared, and governed. The rise of big data and the increasingly widespread adoption of artificial intelligence across many industries have complicated our understanding of the values of twentieth-century intellectual property rules. . . . This paper explores the fundamental questions facing the copyright system in the new industrial and digital era. It considers a broad range of issues including the evolving concept of authorship, originality, exhaustion issues, and the fair use or fair dealing doctrine in the new global context. It concludes with recommendations on how to redesign global copyright for innovation, competition, and inclusion.

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"European Parliament’s Legal Affairs Committee Gives Green Light to Harmful Link Tax and Pervasive Platform Censorship"

Timothy Vollmer has published "European Parliament's Legal Affairs Committee Gives Green Light to Harmful Link Tax and Pervasive Platform Censorship" in the Creative Commons Blog.

Here's an excerpt:

Today, the European Parliament the Legal Affairs Committee voted in favor of the most harmful provisions of the proposed Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market. . . .

The committee voted 13-12 in favor of Article 11, the provision known as the "link tax," which grants an additional right to press publishers requiring anyone using snippets of journalistic content to first get a license or pay a fee to the publisher for its use online. Article 11 is ill-suited to address the challenges in supporting quality journalism, and it will further decrease competition and innovation in news delivery. Similar efforts have already failed miserably in Germany and Spain.

The committee voted 15-10 in favor of Article 13, the provision that would require online platforms to monitor their users' uploads and try to prevent copyright infringement through automated filtering. Article 13 will limit freedom of expression, as the required upload filters won't be able to tell the difference between copyright infringement and permitted uses of copyrighted works under limitations and exceptions. It puts into jeopardy the sharing of video remixes, memes, parody, and code, even works that include openly licensed content.

Read more about it: "EU Takes First Step in Passing Controversial Copyright Law That Could 'Censor the Internet'," "Europe Takes Another Step towards Copyright Pre-Filters for User Generated Content," and "We Can Still Win: Next Steps for the Copyright Directive."

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"70+ Internet Luminaries Ring the Alarm on EU Copyright Filtering Proposal"

Danny O'Brien and Jeremy Malcolm have published "70+ Internet Luminaries Ring the Alarm on EU Copyright Filtering Proposal" in DeepLinks.

Here's an excerpt:

As Europe's latest copyright proposal heads to a critical vote on June 20-21, more than 70 Internet and computing luminaries have spoken out against a dangerous provision, Article 13, that would require Internet platforms to automatically filter uploaded content. The group, which includes Internet pioneer Vint Cerf, the inventor of the World Wide Web Tim Berners-Lee, Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales, co-founder of the Mozilla Project Mitchell Baker, Internet Archive founder Brewster Kahle, cryptography expert Bruce Schneier, and net neutrality expert Tim Wu, wrote in a joint letter that was released today:

By requiring Internet platforms to perform automatic filtering all of the content that their users upload, Article 13 takes an unprecedented step towards the transformation of the Internet, from an open platform for sharing and innovation, into a tool for the automated surveillance and control of its users.

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"The EU’s Copyright Proposal is Extremely Bad News for Everyone, Even (Especially!) Wikipedia"

Cory Doctorow has published "The EU's Copyright Proposal is Extremely Bad News for Everyone, Even (Especially!) Wikipedia" in DeepLinks.

Here's an excerpt:

Under Article 13 of the proposal, sites that allow users to post text, sounds, code, still or moving images, or other copyrighted works for public consumption will have to filter all their users' submissions against a database of copyrighted works. Sites will have to pay to license the technology to match submissions to the database, and to identify near matches as well as exact ones. Sites will be required to have a process to allow rightsholders to update this list with more copyrighted works.

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"The Music Modernization Act is a Good Solution for Songwriters. Don’t Combine It with Bad Copyright Bills"

Mitch Stoltz has published "The Music Modernization Act is a Good Solution for Songwriters. Don't Combine It with Bad Copyright Bills" in DeepLinks.

Here's an excerpt:

For the first time in six years, Congress is considering serious changes to copyright law. As you might imagine, those changes are a mixed bag for the public. One bill, the Music Modernization Act, would create a new system for compensating songwriters and music publishers when their songs are played on digital services. It solves a problem recognized by nearly everyone in the music space. And while the bill has some problematic text that needs fixing, it's a good effort.

Unfortunately, the MMA has now been combined with a harmful bill, the “CLASSICS Act,” which would create a new form of pseudo-copyright for recordings from before 1972, adding on new royalties and penalties without giving anything back to the public. And other dangerous bills could get added as amendments: the “CASE Act” and the “Register of Copyrights Selection and Accountability Act.”

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"Public Knowledge Urges Congress to Promote a Competitive Marketplace in Music Modernization Act"

Public Knowledge has released "Public Knowledge Urges Congress to Promote a Competitive Marketplace in Music Modernization Act."

Here's an excerpt:

The Music Modernization Act is a rare bill that will bring positive change to the world of musical copyright. We applaud Representative Collins for including a number of pro-competitive and pro-consumer provisions in the Act, such as a blanket license, new performing rights organization, and a searchable, publicly accessible database of licensing information. . . .

The CLASSICS Act attempts to solve a systemic problem in copyright law—the lack of federal protection for pre-1972 sound recordings—by treating its symptoms. In doing so, it sweeps in countless archival and historical recordings, and grants them terms that in some cases exceed two centuries in duration. By refusing to commit works published prior to 1923 to the public domain (where they rightly belong), the language of CLASSICS endangers archival and historical activities.

Read more about it: H.R. 3301: CLASSICS Act and H.R. 4706: Music Modernization Act of 2017.

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"Congress Shouldn’t Turn the Copyright Office into a Copyright Court"

Mitch Stoltz and Corynne McSherry have published "Congress Shouldn't Turn the Copyright Office into a Copyright Court" in Deeplinks.

Here's an excerpt:

The current bill, the "CASE Act of 2017" (H.R. 3945), would set up a "Copyright Claims Board" within the Copyright Office, staffed by three judges called "Claims Officers" and empowered to hear copyright complaints from all over the country. Proceedings at the Claims Board would be voluntary, but if a respondent fails to opt out, the proceedings become binding, and the outcome can be enforced in federal court. The Board can issue damages awards of up to $15,000 per work infringed, or $30,000 per proceeding. If the parties consent, it can also issue "agreements to cease infringing activity" that become binding injunctions.

Unfortunately, the Copyright Office has a history of putting copyright holders' interests ahead of other important legal rights and policy concerns. We fear that any small claims process the Copyright Office conducts will tend to follow that pattern.

See also: "CASE Act of 2017"

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