When most people think of their favorite song, they are likely envisioning a particular artist who recorded it with their unique style and voice, and not the writer.  While the song would be nothing without the words, that’s often not what connects the public to music… it’s the recording.  Think of “Heartbreak Hotel”: are you conjuring up visions of Elvis Presley twisting and gyrating, or of the lesser known writers of that song, Tommy Durden and Mae Boren Axton?

Today we, along with EFF and the Open Technology Initiative, filed comments in the Department of Commerce’s Internet Policy Task Force Inquiry on Copyright Policy, Creativity, and Innovation in the Internet Economy.  The Task Force, run by the NTIA is the Department’s attempt to start thinking about Copyright issues and how they impact the economy.  Our filing might be interesting for you because it summarizes many of the major issues in copyright policy today.

By many accounts, World's Fair Use Day was a great success. We had a capacity crowd, with hundreds more joining in on the webcast. Members of the audience included staff from the White House, the State Department, the US Copyright Office and Congress. Since one of the main missions of the event was to demonstrate to policymakers the importance of fair use to our culture, our discourse and our economy, having a strong turnout from government is key.

I've now had a few days to reflect on the day's events.

Via BoingBoing and then through Gizmodo, Gaper's Block has a post up putting into some perspective the enormity and enormousness of the damages ($1.92 million) that Jammie Thomas is supposed to pay to the record labels for engaging in some P2P file sharing (Conor McCarthy of Gaper's Block estimated penalties under the Illinois Criminal Code):

<

blockquote>

Here is a list of 7 ideas to get you started, but first we should make a few rules. Some of these "crimes" have imprisonment as part of their sentence.

Last Friday, another glowing example of out-of-proportion statutory damage awards came down from the federal court in Boston: Joel Tenenbaum, a 25-year-old physics PhD student, was found liable for the willful infringement of 30 songs and was ordered to pay $675,000 in statutory damages. Before the trial, the court quickly threw out the possibility of a fair-use defense, leaving Tenenbaum with little hope—although it’s questionable whether the outcome would have been different if his rather weak fair-use defense had been allowed. Tenenbaum flagrantly disregarded the law, continuing to share files on KaZaA throughout the court proceedings, so it was no surprise that he was found liable. But that doesn’t change the fact that $675,000 is grossly disproportionate to the offense.