Open Internet Threatened At USCO Roundtables. InfoWorld writes on the continuing fallout from May’s Copyright Office Section 512 roundtables in the May 20 article DMCA “reform” harbors return of SOPA. Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) Legal Director Corynne McSherry defends Section 512 against the entertainment industry’s attack, saying, “The safe harbors were supposed to give rights holders streamlined tools to police infringement, and give service providers clear rules so they could avoid liability…Without those safe harbors, the Internet as we know it simply wouldn’t exist, and our ability to create, innovate, and share ideas would suffer.”
FOX Issues Takedown Request For YouTube Clip That It Borrowed. The problems of notice and staydown (as detailed above) can be illustrated by the fact that a YouTube clip featured on FOX’s Family Guy was taken down after FOX filed a complaint with YouTube on copyright grounds. Fight for the Future’s Jeff Lyon told TorrentFreak in a May 20 article, “It is not hyperbolic to call this mass censorship…Creators are discouraged from filing counter-notices to stand up for their work, facing lost revenue and permanent bans from online platforms. This erodes fair use and free speech on the Internet.” The video has now been restored following a petition and multiple news stories.
J.J. Abrams Acknowledges Importance Of Fans, Claims Star Trek Lawsuit Will Be “Going Away”. Director J.J. Abrams indicated at an event earlier this week that the ongoing copyright lawsuit between CBS/Paramount and a fan-made Star Trek film will be “going away, and that fans would be able to work on their project” according to an Ars Technica report. Though the disputing parties would only confirm that they are in settlement conversations, Abrams told reporters that Justin Lin, the director of the upcoming Star Trek Beyond, urged CBS and Paramount to call off the lawsuit: “We…realized this was not an appropriate way to deal with the fans. The fans should be celebrating this thing…Fans of Star Trek are all part of this world.”
The Music Industry And Technology Don’t Have To Be At Odds. There are those who believe when reforming the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) that musical/creator interests are at odds with those on the technology side. Annemarie Bridy, Professor of Law at the University of Idaho College of Law, doesn’t see it that way. In Taplin’s False Choice Between Music and Technology (originally published on the Stanford University Center for Internet and Society blog), Bridy believes the DMCA has done well, considering the time of its conception, of balancing the needs of music creators and setting guidelines for innovative online platforms. “Because of the DMCA, which imposes costs and obligations on both creative types and technology types, lovers of music and lovers of new technologies have been able to enjoy the best of both worlds. Let’s not encourage Congress to make a false choice now.”
Chile’s Misguided Attempt To Help Authors Will Hurt Their Audience. In Chilean Bid to Help Authors Will Chill Audiovisual Content Online, Jeremy Malcolm with the Electronic Frontier Foundation explains how extending copyright authority to all “authors” of an audiovisual performance would greatly restrict access to their content. The new law before Chile’s Congress forces all authors to accept payment for use of their copyrighted work, no longer allowing authors to dedicate their work to the public domain or license it under a free license, such as a Creative Commons license. And since authors may have other motivations beside monetary gain, Malcolm believes this is the wrong approach. “This is the wrong solution to the problem of unfair treatment of authors of audiovisual works, because it disregards the wishes of those authors, and restricts access to their content; perhaps even shutting down entire Internet platforms.”