Free Market Groups Warn International Trade Commission On Digital Data Authority. Re:Create members R Street and FreedomWorks along with the Niskanen Center sent a letter to the chairwoman of the International Trade Commission expressing their deep concern over categorizing the transmission of digital data as an “importation.” The August 3 letter cites specific concerns that treating digital data in such…

The United States is currently negotiating a large, regional free trade agreement with eleven other countries: Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam. On August 5, 2015, Knowledge Ecology International published a new leak of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement’s (TPP) negotiating text for the intellectual property chapter. This text, dated May 11, 2015 reflects…

Happy Birthday Song Could Celebrate Entry Into Public Domain. The New York Times’ article, New Evidence Should Free ‘Happy Birthday’ From Copyright, Lawyers Say, details documents showing that the popular “Happy Birthday to You” song has been free of copyright restrictions for decades. The story reports that the current copyright holder collects an estimated “$2 million a year for the…

The Library Copyright Alliance filed a response to the U.S. Copyright Office’s Notice of Inquiry on Copyright Protection for Certain Visual Works, focusing largely on the importance of fair use and the detrimental effects of the current lengthy copyright term in the United States. The response opens by pointing out, In the past, the difficulty of identifying or locating the…

Today, Public Knowledge sent a letter to United States Trade Representative Michael Froman urging him to protect the rights of American consumers of intellectual property goods. Public Knowledge remains concerned that provisions in the secretive Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement could harm Americans by weakening exceptions and limitations available under U.S. law, including fair use. The following can be attributed to…

This post is the second installment of #CopyrightwithCourtney, a series from Courtney Duffy on the copyright challenges faced by artists in various disciplines. Courtney, who is the Robert W. Deutsch Arts & Technology Policy Fellow at Public Knowledge, focused on authorship in her first post. Today she begins a two-part post for the series on filmmaking. You’ll find her on…

Library Of Congress Could Help Lead Digital Revolution. Alan Inouye, who leads technology policy for the American Library Association, penned a column for Roll Call, “Who Should Be the Next Librarian of Congress? Wrong Question!” on July 20. In the column, he writes about how the attention surrounding who will replace the current librarian of Congress is misguided. Inouye raises…

Today, District Court Judge George Wu issued a preliminary decision finding that FilmOn, an online video service, is entitled to a compulsory copyright license. Public Knowledge has long advocated for regulatory parity for online video services, and applauds this decision. The following statement can be attributed to John Bergmayer, Senior Staff Attorney at Public Knowledge: “If upheld, this decision could…

Automakers Engaging In “Copyright Creep” Is Bad For Consumers. In his July 8 op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, William Rand, Assistant Professor at the University of Maryland Robert H. Smith School of Business, takes on the assertion by automakers that consumers don’t really own their cars due to copyright law. Rand takes a look at auto copyright exemptions filed…

Even after you’ve learned the basics of U.S. copyright law, once you delve into music copyrights, you discover an even more complex—I like to say “fractally complex”—framework at the root of today’s music industry. At the first level, this complex framework is grounded in the compulsory mechanical license and other compulsory licenses, which set a baseline for private negotiations among…