Tag: DMCA

PK President Gigi B. Sohn will participate in the first panel, titled “Update on United States Issues: Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), Three Strikes (Graduated Response), and Filtering” at this CLE Seminar presented by the FCBA International Telecommunications and Intellectual Property Practice Committees. The seminar will focus on U.S. and international ISP issues. From an international standpoint, there will be survey of international issues for ISPs.

Dow Lohnes LLP
1200 New Hampshire Avenue, NW
5th Floor
Washington, DC

For more information and to register please visit the event website.

It wouldn’t have been surprising if there was a semi-panicked conversation in the corporate suites of Sony. Michael Lynton, the head of Sony studios, had just been quoted as saying “I’m a guy who doesn’t see anything good having come from the Internet.”

Some marketing gal or PR guy in the Sony eco-sphere probably realized, hey, our audience lives on the Web. How would it look for our top exec to go around trashing the Net?

It’s hard to imagine an American industry as privileged and protected as the newspaper. Right there in the First Amendment to the Constitution, are the words: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press…” No other industry is mentioned in the Constitution.

The rights of journalists, working in print or electronic media, have been protected down through the years. While ordinary citizens might be liable to be sued for libel, the U.S. Supreme Court in 1964 set a higher standard in Times v. Sullivan so that a newspaper could be sued only if it could be proved the paper knew ahead of time that what it was printing was false.

In any other industry, the concept of competitors combining operations might be anathema to rigorous antitrust law (admittedly a stale concept after the past eight years).

Access to information is a fundamental human right. It allows individuals to effectively participate in social, political, and cultural life. Many international treaties oblige countries to secure this right for all individuals including those with disabilities. However, as I noted in my previous post, many national copyright laws, including US copyright law, place limitations on access to information by the blind. A move to address this issue is underway at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), which may consider an international treaty that would require countries to remove certain copyright restrictions that prevent access. The Copyright Office, which is part of the U.S. delegation to WIPO, had invited public comments on this issue. The comments filed with the Copyright Office are available here.

If you were following the DMCA Section 1201 anticircumvention rulemaking proceedings last week, you likely saw Tim Vollmer's video of the MPAA's demonstration on how to create a film clip by pointing a camcorder at a TV set (embedded above). This demonstration was the MPAA's response to an exemption request filed by educators, who are seeking to exercise their fair use rights by breaking the CSS encryption on DVDs in order to make short clips for classroom use.

As you'll recall, a group of media studies professors led by Peter DeCherney successfully filed for just such an exemption in 2006 (for more on that, see our video interview with DeCherney, embedded after the break). Three years later, the educators have returned, in an attempt to renew the exemption and to expand it to include students in media studies classes as well as educators outside of the media studies field. Despite having three years to regroup, the studios returned with the same tired, apocryphal argument: despite the fact that DVD-ripping is already widespread, if educators are allowed to legally rip, demand for DVDs will plummet and the industry will collapse. As an alternative, they suggest camcording, a cumbersome process that produces low-quality clips while requiring a significant investment in video recording equipment. Practical matters aside, the MPAA's argument for camcording also happens to contradict a number of the organization's other arguments against fair use--a fact that was not lost on many of the witnesses at last Wednesday's hearing.

This past week the Copyright Office held public hearings in Washington D.C. and Palo Alto, California, as part of its fourth section 1201 rule making proceeding. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) requires the Copyright Office to conduct these proceedings once every three years to exempt from the DMCAs prohibition on circumvention of technological protection measures (TPMs) those lawful uses that are adversely affected. I attended the last two days of the D.C. hearings and came away not only with a renewed understanding of how the DMCA is killing consumer rights especially fair use but also how much content owners are afraid of fair use. The hearing also reaffirmed something we have said always: the DMCA is used more to lock out competition than to protect copyrighted works. Here are some of the arguments that stood out:

The fair use exemption for documentary filmmakers and vidders:

The most forceful advocates for fair use were Prof.

Every three years, the Copyright Office holds hearings to listen to commenters suggestions for exemptions to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act’s prohibition on circumvention of access controls. We’ve previously written about the handful of exemptions that the Office has granted (which expire and must be renewed every three years). This year, we’re on the ground and live-twittering what’s going on. Today, Mehan is manning the Public Knowledge twitter account picking out a number of choice quotes and responding to questions.

But we’re not alone at the hearing. A number of twitterers are there, and you can follow the related tweets using the #dmca1201 tag.

And now, thanks to Kristen for sharing her CoverItLive, we now have an embedded client so you can read the tweet-reports of what’s going on at the hearing live below:

Public Knowledge has asked the U.S. Copyright Office to recommend a global policy that allows blind or visually handicapped people to use technology to read electronic material that is otherwise protected by digital rights management (DRM).

What does access to information mean to you?: the ability to read your newspaper – physical or online – every day?; the ability to go to a book store and buy your favorite author’s book?; the ability to read professional publications to advance your career? Most of us rely on these sources and more to keep ourselves informed and participate in society. But for the blind and the visually impaired access to information is not easy. Works have to be converted to special formats to enable access. Because copyrights are implicated during the process, copyright law provides certain exceptions enabling the creation of accessible formats.

Are these laws sufficient to allow the blind to read anything they want to? Is the market responding to their needs? The Copyright Office is asking for public comments on these and other questions.

What’s New:

• Public Knowledge Urges the Federal Government to Fulfill Congress’ Vision for Universal Broadband
• Broad Coalition Asks Obama Administration for Balance in Intellectual Property Policy Appointments
• Public Interest Groups Criticize ‘Privatization’ of Broadband Mapping
• Public Knowledge Represents Consumer Rights at FTC Hearing
• USTR Takes First Step Toward ACTA Transparency
• Internet Users Defeat Three Strikes Initiatives, Broadband Caps
• Harold Feld Joins Public Knowledge