Category: Digital Copyright Wars

"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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Lots of Institutional Repositories Keep E-prints Safe

The seductive allure of a commercial mega repository is two-fold: (1) everything is conveniently in one place, and (2) a company is taking care of the dreary and expensive business of running it.

Everything seems fine: problem solved! That is until something goes wrong, such as the repository being bought and controlled by a publisher or being threatened by lawsuits by a coterie of publishers.

Then it's important to remember: it's a company, and companies exist to make a profit.

Heh, companies are great. I wouldn't have just had that tasty cup of coffee without them. But, we should be very clear about what motivates companies and controls their behavior. And we shouldn't be shocked if they do things that aren't motivated by lofty goals.

I know: institutional repositories are hard work. The bloom is off the rose. But they exist to serve higher education, not make money, and they part of the academic communities they serve. And they can't be bought. And their universities don't often go out of business. And there are a lot of them. And they are not likely to be attractive targets for lawsuits unless something has gone very, very wrong at the local level.

Copyright is complicated. No one is advocating that we ignore it and just shove e-prints into IR's willy-nilly. Getting faculty to understand the ins and outs of e-print copyright is no picnic, nor is monitoring for compliance. But the battle is easier to fight at the local level where one-on-one faculty to librarian communication is possible.

For self-archiving to flourish in the long run, institutional repositories must flourish. By and large, librarians establish, run, and support them, and they are the quiet heroes of green open access who will continue to provide a sustainable and reliable infrastructure for self-archiving.

Coalition for Responsible Sharing’s Statement: "Publishers and Societies Take Action against ResearchGate’s Copyright Infringements"

The Coalition for Responsible Sharing has released "Publishers and Societies Take Action against ResearchGate’s Copyright Infringements."

Here's an excerpt:

Numerous attempts to agree with ResearchGate on amicable solutions, including signing up to the Voluntary Principles of Article Sharing on Scholarly Collaboration Networks and implementing a user-friendly technical solution, remained unsuccessful. Members of the Coalition for Responsible Sharing are therefore now resorting to formal means to alter ResearchGate's damaging practices. The coalition members include the American Chemical Society, Brill, Elsevier, Wiley and Wolters Kluwer. These organizations will begin to issue takedown notices to ResearchGate requesting that infringing content be removed from the site. Concurrently, The American Chemical Society and Elsevier are asking the courts to clarify ResearchGate's copyright responsibility.

See also: "ResearchGate: Publishers Take Formal Steps to Force Copyright Compliance."

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"Publishers Taking Legal Action against ResearchGate to Limit Unlicensed Paper Sharing on Networking Site"

Jyllian Kemsley and Andrea Widener have published "Publishers Taking Legal Action against ResearchGate to Limit Unlicensed Paper Sharing on Networking Site" in Chemical & Engineering News.

Publishers could issue "millions" of take-down notices to ResearchGate.

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"Will Ruling in ReDigi Case Open the Door to a Used E-book Market?"

Andrew Albanese has published "Will Ruling in ReDigi Case Open the Door to a Used E-book Market?" in Publishers Weekly.

Here's an excerpt:

Should there be a legal market for reselling "used" digital files, like the secondary market that currently exists for books or CDs in the analog world?

Read more about Capitol Records, LLC v. ReDigi Inc.

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Lessons From History: The Copyright Office Belongs in the Library of Congress

ALA has released Lessons From History: The Copyright Office Belongs in the Library of Congress.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

Prompted by persistent legislative and other proposals to remove the CO from the Library in both the current and most recent Congresses, [Alisa] Holahan's analysis comprehensively reviews the history of the locus of copyright activities from 1870 to the present day. In addition to providing a longer historical perspective, the Report finds that Congress has examined this issue at roughly 20-year intervals, declining to separate the CO and Library each time.

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"For Second Time, Appeals Court Hears GSU E-Reserves Case"

Andrew Albanese has published "For Second Time, Appeals Court Hears GSU E-Reserves Case" in Publishers Weekly.

Here's an excerpt:

In the hearing, which went for just over an hour, a three-judge panel of the 11th Circuit in Atlanta, once again pressed attorneys for the fault lines in the decade-old copyright case, with much of the hearing focusing on whether Judge Orinda Evans correctly evaluated the fourth factor of the four factor fair use test (the effect on the market), and then properly weighted that factor in making her fair use determinations.

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"EU Research Committee Wants to Gift Publishers New Rights to Restrict Access to Scientific Research"

COMMUNIA has released "EU Research Committee Wants to Gift Publishers New Rights to Restrict Access to Scientific Research."

Here's an excerpt:

Last week the Culture and Education Committee (CULT) and the Committee on Industry, Research and Energy (ITRE) voted on their final opinions on the Commission’s Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market. . . .

The introduction of a new right for press publishers (aka the “link tax”) to extract fees from search engines for incorporating short snippets of—or even linking to—their content in article 11 is one of the most controversial issues of the proposed directive. Adopting this type of ancillary right at the EU level would have a strong negative impact on all stakeholders, including publishers, authors, journalists, researchers, online service providers, and readers. . . .

In the votes last week in the CULT and ITRE committees, the press publishers right was also carried through – and even expanded. Both of the recent opinions remove the restriction that the right applies to digital uses only, meaning that if adopted it would cover all uses—both digital and in print. Even worse, ITRE—the committee responsible for policy relating to the promotion of research—voted to extend the press publishers right to cover scientific publications.

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"Copyright Reform Is Never Happening"

Andrew Albanese has published "Copyright Reform Is Never Happening" in Publishers Weekly.

Here's an excerpt:

But here's what’s most troublesome to me: this bill [the Register of Copyrights Selection and Accountability Act (H.R. 1695)] can so easily be seen as an attempt to keep Maria Pallante's views on copyright intact at the Copyright Office, that it could very well taint anything that might eventually come from the House Judiciary Committee review.

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"Looking into Pandora’s Box: The Content of Sci-Hub and Its Usage"

Bastian Greshake has self-archived "Looking into Pandora's Box: The Content of Sci-Hub and Its Usage."

Here's an excerpt:

By utilizing the recently released corpus of Sci-Hub and comparing it to the data of ~28 million downloads done through the service, this study tries to address some of these questions. The comparative analysis shows that both the usage and complete corpus is largely made up of recently published articles, with users disproportionately favoring newer articles and 35% of downloaded articles being published after 2013. These results hint that embargo periods before publications become Open Access are frequently circumnavigated using Guerilla Open Access approaches like Sci-Hub.

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"Leveraging Exceptions and Limitations for Digital Curation and Online Collections: The U.S. Case"

Patricia Aufderheide has published "Leveraging Exceptions and Limitations for Digital Curation and Online Collections: The U.S. Case" in Libellarium: Journal for the Research of Writing, Books, and Cultural Heritage Institutions.

Here's an excerpt:

Librarians wanting to use digital affordances for their patron’s and public benefit have increasingly found themselves frustrated by copyright law designed for a pre-digital era. In the U.S., this frustration has driven the nation’s most prestigious library group, the Association of Research Libraries, to explore the utility of the major exception to copyright monopoly rights, fair use, in order to accomplish basic curation and collection goals in a digital era. The ARL's efforts to clarify how libraries can employ fair use has resulted in sometimes-dramatic changes in how work is done, and has permitted innovation at some universities. Its approach demonstrates the power of consensus in a professional field to permit innovation within the law.

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"Copyright Compliance and Infringement in ResearchGate Full-Text Journal Articles"

Hamid R. Jamali has self-archived "Copyright Compliance and Infringement in ResearchGate Full-Text Journal Articles."

Here's an excerpt:

This study aims to investigate the extent to which ResearchGate members as authors of journal articles comply with publishers' copyright policies when they self-archive full-text of their articles on ResearchGate. . . . The key finding was that 201 (51.3%) out of 392 non-OA articles infringed the copyright and were non-compliant with publishers' policy. While 88.3% of journals allowed some form of self-archiving (SHERPA/RoMEO green, blue or yellow journals), the majority of non-compliant cases (97.5%) occurred when authors self-archived publishers' PDF files (final published version).

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"’Notice-and-Stay-Down’ Is Really ‘Filter-Everything’"

Elliot Harmon has published "'Notice-and-Stay-Down' Is Really 'Filter-Everything'" in Deeplinks.

Here's an excerpt:

There's a debate happening right now over copyright bots, programs that social media websites use to scan users’ uploads for potential copyright infringement. A few powerful lobbyists want copyright law to require platforms that host third-party content to employ copyright bots, and require them to be stricter about what they take down. Big content companies call this nebulous proposal "notice-and-stay-down," but it would really keep all users down, not just alleged infringers. In the process, it could give major content platforms like YouTube and Facebook an unfair advantage over competitors and startups (as if they needed any more advantages). "Notice-and-stay-down" is really "filter-everything."

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EFF Submits Amicus Brief in Cambridge Press v. Georgia State University E-Reserves Copyright Case

The EFF has submitted an Amicus Brief in the Cambridge Press v. Georgia State University case.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

On behalf of three national library associations, EFF today urged a federal appeals court for the second time to protect librarians' and students' rights to make fair use of excerpts from academic books and research.

Nearly a decade ago, three of the largest academic publishers in the world—backed by the Association of American Publishers (AAP) trade group—sued Georgia State University (GSU) for copyright infringement . . . GSU argued that posting excerpts in the e-reserve systems was a "fair use " of the material, thus not subject to licensing fees. GSU also changed its e-reserve policy to ensure its practices were consistent with a set of fair use best practices that were developed pursuant to a broad consensus among libraries and other stakeholders. . . .

But that was not enough to satisfy the publishers. Rather than declare victory, they've doggedly pursued their claims. It seems the publishers will not be content until universities and libraries agree to further decimate their budgets. As we explain in our brief, that outcome would undermine the fundamental purposes of copyright, not to mention both the public interest, and the interests of the authors of the works in question.

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"Out of Print: The Orphans of Mass Digitization"

Mary Murrell has published "Out of Print: The Orphans of Mass Digitization" in Current Anthropology.

Here's an excerpt:

In the 2000s an interconnected set of elite projects in the United States sought to digitize "all books in all languages" and make them available online. These mass digitization projects were efforts to absorb the print book infrastructure into a new one centered in computer networks. Mass book digitization has now faded from view, and here I trace its setbacks through a curious figure—the "orphan"—that emerged from within these projects and acted ultimately as an agent of impasse. In legal policy debates, an "orphan" refers to a copyrighted work whose owner cannot be found, but its history, range of meanings, and deployments reveal it to be considerably more complex. Based on fieldwork conducted at a digital library engaged in mass digitization, this paper analyzes the "orphan" as a personifying metaphor that digital library activists embraced in order to challenge and/or disrupt the social relations that adhere in and around books.

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AAP and RIAA (and Others) Send Letters to Trump

The AAP and the RIAA (and others) have send letters to Donald Trump expressing copyright concerns.

Here's the AAP letter.

Here's an excerpt:

Provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act ("DMCA"), which Congress enacted in 1998 to encourage online availability of popular copyrighted works while promoting a balance of interests and cooperation between copyright owners and Internet service providers in dealing with online infringement of such works, wildly succeeded in encouraging such availability. However, the relevant DMCA provisions do not achieve that intended balance and cooperation due to numerous instances of judicial misapplication and the unanticipated appearance of service provider business models that foster, exploit and profit from online infringement by their users while offering only token compliance with the law.

Here's the RIAA letter.

Here's an excerpt:

However, much more needs to be done. Search engines, user upload content platforms, hosting companies, and domain name registrars and registries should follow others' example to effectively stop theft and assure fair payment.

Further, there is a massive "value grab" as some of these corporations weaken intellectual property rights for America's creators by exploiting legal loopholes never intended for them—perversely abusing U.S. law to underpay music creators, thus harming one of America's economic and job engines.

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