Tag: Fair Use

The U.S. Copyright Office should allow the courts to decide the crucial issue of whether a temporary copy of a song or other copyrighted work made by a computer must be subject to copyright royalties, public interest groups said today.

The Copyright Office should not try to decide the issue, a group of public interest organizations led by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), Public Knowledge (PK) and the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) said in a filing with the Office in response to a proposed rule published July 16. In addition, Consumers Union, Consumer Federation of America, and U.S. PIRG signed onto the pleading, as did the Computer & Communications Industry Association.

Yesterday, a federal district court in San Jose refused to dismiss a suit brought against Universal Music for improperly demanding that YouTube remove a home video from its site.

In this case, Stephanie Lenz was sent a takedown notice for posting a home video on YouTube. Lenz had made a video of her toddler stumbling through her kitchen, then hearing and bobbing to Prince’s “Let’s Go Crazy,” which was playing tinnily in the background on a countertop stereo. Despite the obvious fair use of the work, Universal sent a takedown notice to YouTube anyway. YouTube took the video down and notified Lenz that she had been accused of infringing copyright. After Lenz consulted a lawyer and issued a counter-notice, the video was put up again some six weeks later. After this, Lenz sued Universal.

The Center for Internet and Society at Stanford Law School reports that a New York State court has refused to stop the distribution of the film Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, holding that the movie’s use of a clip from a John Lennon recording is not likely to violate copyrights held by EMI Records and Capitol Records. The movie uses a 15 second clip of John Lennon’s “Imagine” in juxtaposition with views about religion and science. In refusing to stop the distribution of the movie, the court held that the use was probably fair. This decision comes two months after a federal district court in New York held that use of the underlying lyrics in the same song was also likely to be fair use.

Copyright Hearing Room, Library of Congress
Room LM-408, 4th Floor
James Madison Building
101 Independence Ave, SE
Washington, DC

The Copyright Office has announced a hearing on proposed ammendments to clarify the scope and application of the Section 115 compulsory license to make and distribute phonorecords of a musical work by means of digital phonorecord deliveries. 73 FR 40802. Requests to testify at the hearing must be received in writing no later than Friday, September 12, 2008 at 5:00 p.m.

For additional information see the hearing notice at: http://www.copyright.gov/fedreg/2008/FRNoticeExtensionofTime2008.pdf

In my post from Monday, I laid out a very brief outline of some of the conclusions reached by the Second Circuit in its Cablevision decision on remote DVRs. Today, I want to take a step back and discuss why it was so important for the development of digital media and technology.

Two theories espoused by the TV networks in the case were extraordinarily dangerous for copyright law. The first was that fleeting, transitory copies like buffer copies could make someone liable for copyright infringement.

Background: The U.S. Appeals Court for the Second Circuit today ruled in a case brought by that Cablevision’s remote DVR system did not violate copyright law.

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

“This decision is a great victory for innovation, technological progress and consumers’ rights.

Consumer rights advocates and media companies have been fighting over digital rights management (DRM) software for many years now. In the age of the closing digital media store, the negative effects of DRM are more apparent than ever before.

Just a few days ago Yahoo! announced it would be closing its music store, taking the authentication server for its DRM offline in September. This will leave its users without access to the content they believed they bought once they: switch computers, alter their operating system, or try to copy their Yahoo! store music to an MP3 player. Luckily for Yahoo! customers the company has said it will compensate them for music they bought.

We just produced a two-minute video on selectable output control, entitled “Selectable Output Control: How the MPAA wants to break your TV (again)”. It’s a quick summary of what SOC is and its potential effect on home entertainment devices.

Check it out on YouTube.

Legislation considered today by the Senate Judiciary Committee would nullify rights consumers already have to record digital music, Public Knowledge said in written testimony submitted to the Committee.

The group said S. 256, the PERFORM Act, would also unfairly impose restrictions on some types of digital music, but not on others.

It sounds paradoxical, but that’s the argument made by Universal in its defense of an overzealous DMCA takedown notice sent to Stephanie Lenz. That notice was sent to Lenz after she posted a YouTube video of her then-13 month-old son dancing in her kitchen to the barely-intelligible strains of Prince. Give me a minute to walk through the background of what caused Universal to make this twisted argument.

Lenz, represented by EFF, has sued Universal for violating 17 USC 512(f), which penalizes abuses of the DMCA’s notice-and-takedown procedures.