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Quick – what’s the legal difference between ripping a CD and ripping a DVD?  Ripping a DVD is a violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) and could get you sued.  Unlike CDs, DVDs are protected by a digital lock.  The mere act of breaking that lock – even for a legitimate purpose – is a violation of the DMCA. 

Fortunately, the DMCA also has a built-in mechanism to deal with situations where it prevents people from doing legitimate things.  And that's why we need your help to make sure that DVD ripping is granted an exemption from the DMCA.

Right now the Copyright Office is in the process of overhauling how it administers part of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which has the potential to make the copyright notice-and-takedown process easier for service providers and copyright owners alike. The DMCA provides a safe harbor for online service providers that limits their liability for users’ infringement if they satisfy a number of conditions. One of those conditions is the agent designation requirement: the service provider must designate an agent to receive infringement notices from copyright holders so the service provider can take down the allegedly infringing content (subject to a counter-notice from the user). This week, Public Knowledge filed comments in the Copyright Office’s rulemaking to update its directory of service providers’ agents.

The following statement is attributed to Gigi B. Sohn, president and co-founder of Public Knowledge:

"We are very pleased to congratulate Maria Pallante on her appointment as Register of Copyrights and director of the Copyright Office.  We have worked with Maria for years on a variety of issues and found her to be open and receptive to the views of stakeholders from all points of view.

"We look forward to working with her in her new role.  We are eager specifically to work with Maria on the vexing question of orphan works, which has kept many artists, filmmakers and others from enriching their projects with source material for which the creator can't readily be found."

As the Net Neutrality debate brews, PK and others continue push for strengthening the proposal. Our three points of concern are ensuring protections for wireless access to the Internet, preventing paid prioritization, and simplifying the definition of “broadband Internet access service” (to avoid potential loopholes). Senator Al Franken sent a letter to the FCC Friday emphasizing the importance of “significantly strengthen[ing]” the proposal. Also, PK’s head of government relations responded to the mythical the meme that “300 Members of Congress are opposed to Net Neutrality”.

Marybeth Peters, the Register of Copyrights, is stepping down at the end of this year.  That means that very soon, for the first time since 1994, there will be someone new in charge of the Copyright Office.  Transitions are always an opportunity to think about setting new goals, but it seems especially appropriate at this important time in copyright policy.  That is why today we are releasing our newest white paper A Copyright Office for the 21st Century: Recommendations to the New Register of Copyrights.

The U.S. Copyright Office should use the occasion of the appointment of a new Register of Copyrights to make fundamental changes in how the Office operates, Public Knowledge said today in a new paper, “A Copyright Office for the 21st Century.” Current Register Marybeth Peters has served since 1994 and has announced she will retire at the end of this year.

A full copy of the report is here.

The new Register “must modernize both the operation of the copyright registry and its approach to policymaking,” PK said.  In addition, PK recommended putting a limit of 10 years on the amount of time a Register can serve.

A 2008 Copyright Office policy decision has resulted in cable operators getting charged copyright royalties for transmissions of broadcast content that do not actually take place — transmissions referred to as “phantom signals” since they eerily appear on copyright holders' balance sheets, but not on a cable subscriber’s television screen.  Now, this really starts to sting when you realize that the cost to cable operators of these rather spooky royalties charges necessarily get passed on to cable subscribing consumers for content they never actually receive!

PK Staff Attorney Rashmi Rangnath discusses the issues presented at the
May 18th, 2009 public meeting held by the US Copyright Office and the US
Patent and Trademark office on the topic of copyright exceptions for the
blind or other persons with disabilities.

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