Head Of House Judiciary Committee Dines With MPAA, Joins Their Fundraiser, Following LA Copyright Hearing

from the soft-corruption-at-work dept

In the past, we've discussed the idea of "soft corruption" a few times -- which in some ways can be more nefarious than out and out corruption. In soft corruption, it's not what most people normally think of as corruption (i.e., cash for getting something from politicians), but merely something that presents the very strong appearance of influence buying. It involves situations where even if everything being done is legal and done for the right intentions, the mere appearance of the conflict reduces the public's trust in government. Earlier this week, we wrote about how the House Judiciary Committee, which claims to be working on a major copyright reform effort, held "listening tours" in both Silicon Valley and Los Angeles (unfortunately, reinforcing the idea that copyright is a "Hollywood v. Silicon Valley" concept). As we noted, however, we were pleasantly surprised at the Silicon Valley hearing, that the discussion seemed really positive. It was (a) focused on actual ideas that could be implemented and (b) the members of the Judiciary Committee really seemed open to lots of good ideas.

From reports I've heard, the LA listening tour was also pretty good, minus one silly, but expected, flareup involving someone accusing Google of being a criminal pirate enterprise. However, in a move that seems fairly sketchy, following the hearing, the Committee members who were there had dinner with the MPAA. And, in Politico's latest report it notes that the head of the Judiciary Committee, Rep. Bob Goodlatte, hung around an extra day in Southern California to put his name on and attend a fundraiser for his colleague Rep. Kevin McCarthy.... put on by the MPAA:

Rep. Bob Goodlatte didn't just bring lawmakers to Silicon Valley and Los Angeles this week to talk with tech companies and content creators about the future of copyright. The House Judiciary Committee chief also offered his name and support to a fundraiser for House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy and the National Republican Congressional Committee, hosted last night by the MPAA, according to an invite snagged by MT.

The event, a cocktail reception and dinner at the BOA Steakhouse in West Hollywood, asked for checks to be made out to the McCarthy Victory Fund, a joint fundraising committee with the NRCC, according to a Goodlatte aide. But the Judiciary chairman, who was slated to attend, extended the help a day after he and other lawmakers visited Hollywood to talk tech policy and later dined with the MPAA. A spokeswoman for the congressman added it was Goodlatte's only fundraising event while out in California

And, yes, if he had done a similar thing up in Northern California with tech folks, it would be equally concerning. I know the cynical folks who read this won't accept this, but I actually do believe that Goodlatte is trying to come up with a reasonable plan for copyright reform that actually takes all the issues into account. While I don't always agree with him, I've found him to be a lot more open to understanding these issues than some of his colleagues. But... that said... this is the kind of thing that most people will see and reasonably think that it undermines Goodlatte's trustworthiness on issues like this. It certainly gives off the appearance of a pretty strong conflict of interest, and makes people more cynical and less trustworthy of the government that is supposed to represent them.

Of course, much of the real underlying problem here is the state of money in politics today, and the fact that, for most Congressional Reps. fundraising is nearly 50% of their job responsibilities. So, if you're going to Hollywood, why not tack on a fundraiser? But, again, what that does, in the public's eyes, is make the entire process appear corrupt in some fashion. Thus, even if everyone's goals and intentions are aboveboard, the American public has significantly less trust in the entire system.

Filed Under: bob goodlatte, congress, copyright, copyright reform, corruption, crony capitalism, fundraising, house judiciary committee, soft corruption
Companies: mpaa

House Judiciary Committee Hears Concerns From Silicon Valley About Copyright Law

from the now-what? dept

Yesterday afternoon, for about two and a half hours, members of the House Judiciary Committee took part in what they're calling they're "Copyright Review Listening Tour" for a roundtable in Silicon Valley. There were 20 participants in the roundtable, mostly made up of people who work in and around the technology industry. Today, the Representatives will host a similar roundtable down in LA, which will be mostly made up of entertainment industry folks. Unfortunately, this aspect of the tour seems to reinforce the silly idea that copyright law is a battle between "Silicon Valley" vs. "Hollywood" -- and that what's good for one is bad for the other.

Reps. Blake Farenthold, Darrell Issa, Jerry Nadler. Photo by Parker Higgins, EFF, CC BY
That whole line of argument is ridiculous and counterproductive -- as a few of the panelists at yesterday's hearing made clear. Good copyright law enables new platforms to rise up and that provides more opportunities for content creators to create, to distribute, to build a fan base and to monetize. Bad copyright law recreates a gatekeeper-based system where only the elite can choose what content is allowed to reach the public. In short, the innovations that are being created are actually helping content creators and are living up to the Constitutional requirements for copyright: that it "promote the progress." But it's frequently not copyright that's doing that job -- it's the technology innovations.

Panelists Timothy Vollmer, Brianna Schofield, Zoe Keating, Michael Keller & Brewster Kahle. Photo by Parker Higgins, EFF, CC BY
And the key thing that we heard yesterday was how copyright was actually counterproductive in that it has frequently blocked innovative services from existing or from providing the best services for content creators. There were a few key themes that became clear throughout the hearing:

1. Statutory damages are an absolute disaster and create massive chilling effects for free speech and innovation. Multiple panelists discussed how much of a problem statutory damages are for innovation. They highlighted how frequently they are abused to stifle innovation and to create fear among people for doing something most people think should be legal. The disconnect between the actual "infringement" and the punishment is a major problem. Somewhat surprisingly (in a good way!), the members from Congress seemed quite interested and concerned about the problems of statutory damages. Rep. Jerry Nadler, who historically has basically supported the RIAA position on all copyright-related issues, surprised me by agreeing that statutory damages seem like a real problem, and noting that basically all other torts require a showing of actual damages. Rep. Darrell Issa admitted that it was unlikely Congress would be able to dump statutory damages "in the next decade," but asked for ideas on ways to "bend" the system in a more reasonable way. The panelists made a few suggestions -- including a personal use exemption and a "good faith" defense for sites (and users, I guess) where they don't believe what they're doing is infringing. Such a defense, if successful, would take away statutory damages, and only allow actual damages. A potentially better alternative was requiring the copyright holder to prove "bad faith" to move from actual damages to statutory damages. That Congress even seems open to this is a huge step in the right direction.
2. Fair use is important and shouldn't be cut back. Lots of good discussions from panelists about the importance of fair use and how bad decisions create real chilling effects on innovation. When the one "Hollywood" person on the panel, CreativeFuture's Ruth Vitale, made a slightly nonsensical argument that increasing fair use was bad for creators, other panelists quickly pointed out that's not even close to true, and tons of content creators regularly rely on fair use to create content. Rep. Nadler (again, long a supporter of expanding copyright law) noted that he believes fair use needs to be made "less dangerous" for people to embrace it. That was really encouraging.
3. The problem of bogus DMCA takedowns is massive and there needs to be real punishment. Brianna Schofield, from Berkeley, pointed to research showing that companies that actually review DMCA takedowns are now rejecting between 40 and 60% of them as bogus takedowns, designed to censor content, rather than legitimate copyright claims. And Alex Feerst (and some others) suggested that what's really needed is real teeth to Section 512(f) of the DMCA, which is supposed to punish those who send bogus DMCA takedowns, but, as we've seen, is entirely toothless based on the way courts currently interpret it. Rep. Issa actually asked if there should be criminal punishment for bogus takedowns, which I think took people by surprise, and probably goes too far.
4. The DMCA's 1201 anti-circumvention provisions are a disaster and the idea that people need to re-apply every three years just to fix products they own -- because of copyright law -- is messed up. Again, it was nice to see that the Representatives really seemed to get this fact and seemed interested in looking at ways to fix Section 1201 -- such that you couldn't use digital locks and DRM for anti-competitive purposes or to control other aspects of your business.
5. Orphan works are a problem and the Copyright Office's solution is a disaster. Multiple panelists pointed out that the orphan works problem remains a big, big problem -- and they're concerned that the most recent suggestion from the Copyright Office (which requires "registration" to use an orphan work) is an absolutely terrible solution. People suggested going back to the previous Copyright Office proposal from a few years ago, that just required a diligent search for the copyright owner -- but that plan died when photographers freaked out after misreading the proposal. The Internet Archive's Brewster Kahle even brought up the suggestion of fixing the orphan works problem by returning to a system of "formalities" in which a copyright holder is required to register to get the copyright (rather than automatically getting it) and then would need to renew the copyright every five years with another payment. As Kahle pointed out, this would also help solve some of the concerns Congress has over funding the Copyright Office. This is a suggestion that many have made over the years that had been mostly ignored -- but at least a few on the panel seemed interested in the idea, with Rep. Issa rightly pointing out that the patent office already works this way.
6. Modernizing the Copyright Office: The panelists went back to this issue multiple times, in part because it's hot in DC right now, though much of the tech industry has basically avoided the discussion. Both the Copyright Office and the Library of Congress (which is where the Copyright Office is housed) are antiquated, with terrible and broken technology. Hollywood is strongly pushing to take the Copyright Office out of the Library of Congress and set it up as its own independent agency to try to give it more power (and because they don't like that the Library of Congress actually takes into account things like what's good for the public...). Ruth Vitale kept arguing for a separate Copyright Office, but when pressed on why, the only thing she could come up with was that the Library of Congress needs more room to store all of its books. Really. Michael Keller, the University Librarian at Stanford, rightly pointed out that pulling the Copyright Office out of the Library of Congress wouldn't fix anything -- it would just create more "chaos" and leave us with two dysfunctional organizations, rather than one.

There were some other points made, but overall, it was surprisingly encouraging in that most of the hearing didn't focus on red herrings and the usual boring talking points in copyright debates, but rather really did focus in on specific key issues. And, most surprising of all was that many of the Congressional Reps who were there not only seemed really engaged and mostly on point concerning the issues raised, but actually seemed open to looking at real legislative proposals on these issues. Of course, going from there to actually getting proposals before Congress is still going to take a Herculean effort -- because almost all of the good proposals listed above would almost immediately be fought hard by the big Hollywood studio lobbyists, who still seem to think of this as a zero sum game -- where any improvement to fair use is an attack on them, or any attempt to make sure the DMCA isn't abused is somehow a direct assault on the film business.

The biggest point that went totally missing from the debate was the TPP and other existing trade agreements. It's worth noting that for all the talk of fixing DMCA 1201 or solving the orphan works problem, doing so would almost certainly violate what the USTR just put into the TPP agreement that Congress needs to ratify (or not!) in the next few months. It was a little disappointing that no one raised this issue, and the fact that if Congress doesn't want to give up its power to make these kinds of fixes, it should vote down the TPP. Similarly, ideas like Brewster Kahle's return to copyright formalities requirements would violate the Berne Convention, and other changes suggested would violate a variety of other existing trade agreements. Of course, Congress should be willing to do exactly that in order to fix a terribly broken copyright system, but with at least the TPP currently on Congress's docket, it seems important to remind them that, in many ways, the TPP can bind Congress's hands in addressing many of the problems brought up at the hearing.

Filed Under: 512f, copyright, copyright reform, darrell issa, dmca, dmca 1201, dmca 512f, fair use, house judiciary committee, jerry nadler, orphan works

House Refuses To Consider USA Freedom Amendment Stopping NSA's Backdoor Searches... Even As Everyone Supports It

from the ridiculous dept

As we've noted, there's a new USA Freedom Act in town, and it's on the fast track through Congress. It has some good stuff in there, and is generally a step forward on surveillance reform and ending certain forms of bulk collection -- though there are some concerns about how it can be abused. But one thing that plenty of people agree on, is that even if it's a step, it doesn't go nearly far enough. Last Thursday, there was a markup in the House Judiciary Committee, to help move the bill to the floor, and some amendments were proposed to improve the bill -- all of which got rejected.

What was especially frustrating, was that for at least one key amendment, everyone agreed that it was important and supported it, and yet they still refused to support it. The reasoning, basically, was that the existing bill was the work of many, many months of back and forth and compromises, and the administration and the House leadership had made it clear that it would not approve a single deviation, even if it was really important. The amendment in question was basically a replica of an appropriations amendment from Reps. Ted Poe, Zoe Lofgren and Thomas Massie that we wrote about last year, which surprised many by passing overwhelmingly in the House, only to be stripped out by the Senate. The key idea: ending the ability of the NSA and others to do "backdoor searches" on data collected under Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act (both the "upstream" collection and PRISM). And even though everyone supported it, they couldn't go forward with it and upset the rest of the process:

It was clear from their comments that a majority of committee members supported the goal of the amendment. Indeed, no member spoke against it on substantive grounds. But Committee Chair Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) explained that the bill represents a fragile compromise — primarily with members of the House Intelligence Committee (HPSCI) — and that House leadership had made clear the bill would not get a floor vote if the Judiciary Committee amended it. (Whether leadership is carrying the water for HPSCI or vice versa — and what role the administration is playing here — are unanswered questions that deserve their own blog post.) The members were faced with a choice: acknowledge the terms set by House leadership and vote against an amendment designed to restore critical Fourth Amendment protections for Americans, or reject those terms and possibly derail surveillance reform altogether.

That’s where things got interesting, as the members spent an hour thoughtfully parsing what the right course of action was. (In the video, the amendment was proposed at 1:11:00.) More than one member characterized Poe’s amendment as an example of “the perfect being the enemy of the good.” There was consensus that back door searches implicate the Fourth Amendment. But, Goodlatte said, so does the bulk collection of Americans’ phone records — an important statement, given the FISA Court’s controversial rulings to the contrary. By killing the bill’s chances of a floor vote, Goodlatte implied, Poe’s amendment would be a net negative for the Fourth Amendment. Goodlatte also pledged to hold hearings on Section 702 in the near future, and to work with Poe to find opportunities outside of the context of the USA Freedom Act to address the problem.

Other members, though, were not willing to accept House leadership’s efforts to constrain them. Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) posed the key question of the morning: what can members do when House leadership is blocking reform favored by a majority of the House? Poe’s amendment mirrored an amendment offered last year by Lofgren and Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) to a defense appropriations bill; that amendment passed overwhelmingly, 293–123, with 94 Republicans voting in favor. Lofgren suggested it might be time to consider a discharge petition — a procedural measure by which a majority of House members can bring legislation to the floor for a vote even if House leadership objects. She acknowledged that it’s difficult for the majority to buck the will of leadership, but that this was a case of “right versus wrong,” pitting the Constitution against “lawless behavior.”

Poe showed even more frustration. Addressing Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner’s (R-Wis.) observation that the Committee would have a chance to revisit Section 702 in 2017 when the FAA expires, Poe observed dryly that the Committee was not simply delaying the building of a bridge. It was delaying vital Fourth Amendment protections for Americans. He put the question simply: do politics trump the Constitution, or does the Constitution trump politics? He urged fellow committee members not to let leadership’s threats dictate their vote. He said they should support the amendment and let the political chips fall where they may.

And, yes, of course, in the end the amendment was rejected 24 to 9. I think the whole "perfect is the enemy of the good" argument made by some is clearly bogus in this scenario. The only "good" to come out of this is the fact that Poe, Lofgren and others aren't willing to let this matter drop -- though the idea of waiting until 2017 to address an issue that we already know the majority of the House supports, is pretty ridiculous. Especially when pretty much everyone agrees that we're talking about violations of the 4th Amendment.

Hopefully this means that this issue will get addressed separately, even if not in this particular bill. The fear, as always in this sort of situation, is that after the Herculean effort just to get this far to get this particular bill approved, that no one will have the appetite to continue the process and get the other necessary reforms in place.

Filed Under: backdoor searches, congress, house judiciary committee, nsa, section 215, section 702, surveillance, ted poe, usa freedom act, zoe lofgren

Epiphany: Rep. John Conyers Realizes Mid-Hearing That His Copyright Position Contradicts His Stand Against Overcriminalization

from the when-reality-sets-in dept

It's hard to imagine looking at the absurdly excessive copyright penalties on the books and thinking, "Hey, maybe these should be a bit higher." But Congress has shown itself to be exceedingly imaginative when it comes to cranking up copyright, so perhaps it is no surprise that in yesterday's hearing on those penalties—covering statutory damages and criminal sanctions—a number of witnesses and Representatives alike seemed to think that those remedies are insufficient.

More surprising, though, was an unexpected moment of clarity from Michigan's Rep. John Conyers, a staple of the Judiciary Committee's reform hearing process and a reliable supporter of ratcheting up copyright enforcement capabilities. Conyers broke the first rule of copyright exceptionalism club by actually talking about the fact that this discussion would seem pretty unreasonable—even by Congressional standards—in areas outside of copyright.

Specifically, Conyers referred to the very real problem of overcriminalization, which absolutely afflicts copyright policy. This, after all, is the area of law that has made us an "Infringement Nation," routinely racking up millions of dollars in hypothetical damages throughout the course of an average day. Conyers generally pushes back against this overcriminalization, but here he is arguing for misdemeanors to be made into felonies—what gives?

If you can't see that, here's the key clip, though it helps to watch the video:

Conyers: Mr. Assistant Attorney General, what else can we do besides addressing the felony streaming issue? It seems like... uh... once we get that going... uh... {long pause}... Well, it seems to me like there's an underprosecution. Normally, I... {pause} come to the committee complaining about overcriminalization. {Looks around} And now I find myself in the awkward position of saying... uh... let's make a felony of somebody's misdemeanors. Can you give me some comfort in some way? {awkward smirk}

David Bitkower, the witness from the Department of Justice, basically says that from the DOJ's perspective there is no overcriminalization problem, which is unsurprising. Then Nancy Wolff, a witness from the law firm of Cowan, DeBaets, Abrahams & Sheppard, adds that the ridiculously high damages helps plaintiffs force defendants to settle. Finally, Public Knowledge's Sherwin Siy notes that Conyers's question was spot on: our current excessive penalties do encourage certain plaintiffs to pursue non-meritorious claims, and that's something to be concerned about.

You can see on Conyers' face that he was looking for some resolution to his cognitive dissonance, but he couldn't find it. Copyright exceptionalism is simply inconsistent with fact-based policy—so when it comes time to reconcile the two, you're going to have a bad time.

Let's hope this moment was a lawmaker beginning to see the light. As EFF lays out in our brand new copyright whitepaper, "Collateral Damages", excessive and unpredictable penalties can chill free speech and stifle innovation. On such an important issue, it's encouraging to see lawmakers breaking from the standard script.

Filed Under: copyright, copyright remedies, david bitkower, doj, felony, house judiciary committee, john conyers, nancy wolff, overcriminalization, streaming

Defending The Indefensible: Hilarious Talking Points On Ridiculous Copyright Terms

from the say-that-again? dept

Last week, the House Judiciary Committee held yet another copyright hearing, this one on Moral Rights, Termination Rights, Resale Royalty, and Copyright Term. We've discussed these issues at different times, and the hearing itself didn't break any major ground on anything, really. The artist resale right issue is nothing but a blatant money grab by successful artists, demanding to get paid any time one of their works gets resold. It shafts younger, up-and-coming artists to the benefit of the few, super-successful artists.

However, the tidbit that caught my attention was the copyright term issue. As you know, some are expecting there to be a fight in the near future to extend copyrights yet again. Thanks to repeated copyright extension, brought to you by relentless lobbying from Disney and others, the US hasn't had a previously copyrighted work fall into the public domain in ages. However, there actually has been some inkling that maybe, just maybe, Hollywood had realized this wasn't a fight worth taking on. In fact, we were pleasantly surprised when the head of the Copyright Office, Maria Pallante, presented her (mixed bag) plan for copyright reform, that it actually included a reduction in copyright terms rather than an increase.

And yet... two of the panelists last week laid out arguments for why the currently insane levels of copyright terms are perfectly reasonable. Of course, to do so, both had to totally misrepresent reality, often to levels that one might call disingenuous. Of course, the two individuals who made these arguments have appeared in stories on Techdirt before, so it really wasn't a huge surprise. First up, was Rick Carnes, the head of the Songwriters Guild of America. Carnes is from the old school world where internet hatred is a thing of pride. He seems to think that the internet destroyed songwriting and that no one could possibly write songs without strong copyrights. Carnes also got some attention for demanding extra payment for songwriters when Apple increased iTunes previews from 30 seconds to 90 seconds. That's the kind of person we're dealing with here.

His filing on copyright terms was so ridiculous that the Association of Research Libraries had to step in and correct all the "myths" he stated. Here's a little secret: when unprompted librarians step in to tell you you're totally wrong, you're not going to look very good. The ARL notes that Carnes is simply wrong in saying that the US's copyright term lengths "represent the international standard." They don't. As the ARL notes:

The copyright term in the United States extends well beyond the Berne Convention’s standard and beyond the term of protection in the majority of countries. Many countries’ copyright terms are set by the international agreements to which they are bound. The Berne Convention sets the minimum copyright term as the life of the author plus fifty years. The current term of protection in the United States is set at a period of the life of the author plus an additional seventy years. For corporate works or “works for hire,” the period of protection is set at ninety-five years. These terms far exceed what is required by international law.

As ARL further notes, it's the US that is actually out of step with "international standards":

The vast majority of countries use the Berne standard of life plus fifty years; there are almost twice as many countries with a period of protection shorter than the current term in the United States than there are countries with a period of life plus seventy years or greater

Carnes also totally ignores (as mentioned above) that the Copyright Office boss has, herself, called for shorter terms, instead saying that the Copyright Office believes the current term is proper. And finally, Carnes totally misrepresents the Supreme Court's ruling in the Eldred v. Ashcroft case to mean that the Supreme Court is fine with the current length of copyright. But, as anyone who knows anything about the decision realizes, that's not what the case was actually decided on. Instead, SCOTUS merely said that Congress has the authority to determine the appropriate term, and the Court wasn't going to overrule Congress. As the ARL explains to flunking student Carnes:

The Supreme Court never addressed the question of whether a period of protection of life plus seventy years was appropriate. The Court only upheld the power of Congress to set the term and extend the term retroactively. The majority opinion in Eldred, while upholding the Copyright Term Extension Act, never addressed the propriety or benefits of the extension itself. Instead, the court addressed “the authority the Constitution assigns to Congress to prescribe the duration of copyrights.” As Justice Stevens’ dissent further points out, the question of “whether the extraordinary length of the grants authorized by the 1998 Act are invalid because they are the functional equivalent of perpetual copyrights is a question that need not be answered in this case because the question presented by the certiorari petition merely challenges Congress’ power to extend retroactively the terms of existing copyrights.”

Perhaps even worse than Carnes' filing, however, is that of Tom Sydnor, who currently hangs his hat at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI). Sydnor is sort of a joke in the copyright world. Once responsible for whatever ridiculous expansion of copyright policy Senator Orin Hatch was pushing out, since leaving his job as a Congressional staffer, Sydnor has bumped around making increasingly ridiculous arguments for stronger and stronger copyright -- while occasionally stooping to take Larry Lessig quotes totally out of context as part of a smear campaign against him. Some of Sydnor's previous hits include claiming that universities who don't turn students over to the RIAA are helping terrorists and pedophiles, that the RIAA getting a jury to award it $1.92 million from Jammie Thomas for sharing 24 songs was a perfectly reasonable outcome and that France's (totally failed) Hadopi policy of kicking file sharers offline represented "consumer relief." So I'm already pre-conditioned to expect arguments that are reality-challenged from Sydnor, and he does not disappoint. His challenge was to try to take the life plus 70 term of today's copyright, and argue that it's completely consistent with the Founding Father's vision, which had copyright set at 14 years, plus a renewal for another 14 years. And rather than just admit this is ridiculous, Sydnor gives it the old Sydnor try and basically makes up a bunch of stuff. First, he states this, which has no basis in reality:

The Framers concluded that copyright term should last during the lifetime of a work’s author, and for a (potentially short) post-mortem-author period in which an author’s copyrights could support his or her spouse and children.

They did no such thing. If they wanted copyright terms to last the lifetime, they had every opportunity to make it so. They did not. The founders were well aware that the initial term of copyright quite frequently resulted in works going into the public domain during the author's lifetime -- and they were actually quite okay with that.

the Framers’ principle of providing at least life-of-the-author copyright protection repeatedly required term to increase. Over time, authors and others simply began living longer than they tended to in 1790. For example, since 1790, the average human lifespan has increased by about 100% – from about 40 years to about 80 years. The Framers’ premise of life-of-the-author copyright term then required increases in copyright term.

So, we've already established that the basis of this point is simply incorrect, but even so, Sydnor is now building an incorrect argument on top of an incorrect argument. The increase in life-expectancy is true, but much of that came from better medical care concerning births and baby care. In other words, if you made it through the early years, you were expected to live much older than 40 years old. And I don't think that the founders were setting the length of copyright terms to encourage infants to write books. By ignoring infant mortality and child deaths, Sydnor is blatantly misleading people to pretend that the life expectancy of authors doubled. It did not.

In the US, legislative calculations of copyright term have always been driven by estimates of how long human authors are likely to live. Human life spans change gradually, but laws that calculate copyright terms by estimating human life spans do not – and that is another reason why changes in copyright term have been applied retroactively, to then-existing works.

Again, that's clearly bogus. The increase in the lifespan of authors has been tiny. Some have basically argued that once you account for infant mortality, there's been very little change in life expectancy over the last few centuries. And yet, copyright terms have gone from a maximum of 28 years to what's now likely to be more like 150 years. I don't care how you calculate life expectancy (even if you include infant mortality rates), things have not changed that much.

Either way, these kinds of blatantly dishonest arguments are likely to become increasingly common as we approach the next round of fights concerning copyright terms. Don't let them get away with it.

Filed Under: copyright, copyright term extension, copyright terms, house judiciary committee, rick carnes, tom sydnor

USA Freedom Act Passes Out Of House Judiciary Committee With Some Good And Some Bad

from the it's-meh-all-around dept

As expected, the USA Freedom Act has been passed out of the House Judiciary Committee today, moving the bill forward in a process that will likely bring some version of it to the House floor in the next few weeks. The markup include a variety of amendments, some dopier than others. One generally good amendment was added, bringing back the transparency provisions for tech companies to reveal some information about government requests they receive. Unfortunately, this wasn't as strong as it should be, keeping very wide "bands" under which the tech companies have to obfuscate how many requests they actually receive and how many users are impacted. There was some push to tighten the bands, and that is likely to continue, but it's unlikely to change. Late yesterday, the manager's amendment also added an important definition for "specific selection term" -- which if left totally undefined would easily lead to abuse. The definition is... not great. It can still be abused, but not as readily as when there was no definition.

The other major problem is that this new version strips out the attempt to close the loophole that allowed backdoor searches on Americans without a warrant. This is a big deal as the original version would have closed that loophole. The NSA apparently lobbied hard to remove it, and when Rep. Zoe Lofgren tried to amend this new version to bring back the ban, it was rejected quickly. In other words, the NSA (who has pretended this is no big deal) likely uses this "loophole" quite a bit and doesn't want to lose it.

That said, the bill is clearly a step forward, and both EFF and CDT have cautiously praised the House Judiciary Committee for moving forward on the bill, while still asking for more civil liberties protections and greater transparency.

The real question, though, is what will the House Intelligence Committee do with the bill tomorrow. As we noted earlier today, after fighting it for months, Rep. Mike Rogers has now indicated he's more comfortable with the (weakened) bill, and will be doing a dual markup of both his own bill and this new USA Freedom Act, leading many to suspect that some sort of deal has been reached to effectively incorporate parts of his (bad) bill into this USA Freedom Act -- potentially weakening it even further. We'll find out in a few hours.

Filed Under: bulk data collection, house intelligence committee, house judiciary committee, jim sensenbrenner, mike rogers, nsa, surveillance, usa freedom act

Competing NSA Reform Bills Suddenly Lurch Forward In Congress

from the well-this-might-get-interesting dept

In a bit of a surprise move, the House Judiciary Committee, led by Rep. Bob Goodlatte, caught people off guard this morning by announcing that there would be a markup of the USA FREEDOM Act on Wednesday, complete with a Manager's Amendment from bill author Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner. If you don't recall, the USA FREEDOM Act was the best bet for real NSA reforms. It was far from perfect, but did actually do a lot of good things without adding a bunch of bad things. The amended version scales that back a bit. It's not as good, but it's still pretty good. Harley Geiger, over at CDT has a good overview of the Manager's Amendment, and how it actually improves the bill in certain areas, while Marcy Wheeler highlights both the good and bad of the amendment.

Of course, within just a few minutes of the Judiciary Committee announcing its plans to move forward with the USA FREEDOM Act, the House Intelligence Committee announced that it would hold its own damn markup on the competing "NSA reform" bill from Reps. Mike Rogers and Dutch Ruppersberger, which is designed to look like a shot at NSA reform, but which really would make it easier for the NSA to collect info on people. That bill, called the FISA Transparency and Modernization Act (almost none of that is true), is basically the NSA's prime choice for pretending to be reform.

This sets up a bit of an upcoming fight -- assuming that both markups lead to bills getting voted out of committee -- to see which bill House Speaker John Boehner is willing to bring to the floor. Basically, Boehner gets to make the final decision on NSA reform at this stage. Will he bring the real reform bill or the fake one?

Filed Under: bob goodlatte, congress, dutch ruppersberger, fisa, house intelligence committee, house judiciary committee, jim sensenbrenner, mike rogers, nsa, reform, surveillance, transparency, usa freedom act

5 Myths We're Likely To Hear At Tomorrow's DMCA Hearing

from the and-some-debunking dept

Tomorrow, the House Judiciary’s Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property and the Internet is holding a hearing on the safe harbors of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, Section 512, as part of a continuing reexamination of U.S. copyright law.  We cover this important framework frequently, because it has been instrumental to the growth of the Internet – by many accounts online safe harbors “saved the Web.”  Now that the DMCA is over 15 years old, a number of pervasive misconceptions have developed about its safe harbors.  Let’s consider some of the top DMCA misconceptions that we’re likely to hear tomorrow.

(1) “No one anticipated there would be so many DMCA takedowns.” (Also, “filter because whack-a-mole.”)

One of the critiques of the DMCA is that because it is used so frequently, it must not be working.  It is strange to argue that a system isn’t working when demand for it is going up, but I hear ‘the Internet must be filtered because whack-a-mole’ so often that if I owned the Whac-A-Mole trademark I’d be worried about it going generic.

It is true that DMCA takedowns are increasing.  This suggests rights-holders see value in the system, and that third-party takedown vendors are enabling more rights-holders to outsource policing their content at lower cost.  When Congress enacted the DMCA, it specifically legislated that online services have no continuing obligation to monitor Internet content, in Section 512(m)(1), acknowledging that there would be continued costs to enforcing rights through the DMCA.  Congress recognized that assigning this responsibility to online service providers ill-equipped to execute it would hamper the growth of online commerce.  It thus forged a compromise, ensuring that rights-holders would need to initiate takedowns, but would receive expeditious, extralegal relief in response to a complaint without the time and expense of going to court.  Some would prefer to unwind the compromise struck in 1998, however, and shift more of the burden of enforcing copyrights to service providers, perhaps through some form of content filtering.

(2) “Anyone can see there’s a lot of copyrighted content on the Internet.”   

It is not possible to ascertain on sight which works are copyrighted and which are not.  U.S. copyright law no longer requires ‘marking.’  More importantly, even for works with identifying information, it is impossible to determine which uses of works are licensed, or otherwise authorized by law.  One might simply assume that every digital file is copyrighted and be right most of the time.  This blog post, every email and selfie, and every cat video receives instant copyright protection.  With copyright’s low threshold of creativity, instantaneously attaching protection, and exceptionally long terms, it is hard for something not to be copyrighted.  But what should one do with the knowledge that every photo and email gets a century-plus of protection?  Obviously, no one wants to censor the famous Oscar “selfie” that went viral just because the copyright is owned by Ellen DeGeneres (or Bradley Cooper, or Samsung, or whomever…).  The fact that something is protected does not mean the rights-holder doesn’t want it online.

Often, when people refer to “copyrighted” content in this context, they actually mean “industrially produced creative works.”  More specifically, when someone says “there’s a lot of copyrighted content online,” what they really mean to say is “there’s a lot of stuff online that seems so professional that we should assume it was made by an industrial content producer, and that we should also assume they don’t want it online.”  Of course, this isn’t a particularly clear line: what metric should a hypothetical army of content reviewers apply in deciding how professional a work should be before it is purged from the Internet?

Even if there were a clear line, rights-holders of industrially produced creative works often approve of works being used online for promotional purposes.  And it isn’t just Oscar selfies.  In the Viacom v. YouTube litigation, it came out that Viacom’s marketing teams were secretly uploading its own works to YouTube, even after the lawsuit began, and its lawyers sued over works that had been uploaded to the site by its own personnel.  

Given billions of indexable pages, the absence of a reliable list (government-maintained or otherwise) of who owns or has licensed what, and the inherently complex contours of copyright’s exclusive rights and exceptions, only rights-holders are positioned to begin the process of enforcing their own rights.

(3)  Infringing content is “illegal.”

It is common to refer to infringing works as “illegal,” but this actually clouds the fact that the Copyright Act regulates actions, not content.  That is, a pirated work itself is not what violates the Copyright Act; the law is violated by the act of reproducing a work without authorization or as permitted by an exception.  In many cases this distinction doesn’t matter.  That doesn’t mean the point is mere semantics, however.  Because two different acts reproducing the same protected work may be alternately permitted and unlawful, depending on who did it and why, it is important to separate the infringement from the content.  For example, a law professor posting to YouTube the copyright announcement on an NFL game for her students to analyze in the classroom would constitute fair use, whereas an individual doing the same without any educational purpose might be labelled an infringer.  There’s nothing illegal about NFL football games (well, usually): it’s the act that matters.  Thus, it is important not to lose this distinction.

(4)  “Services filter for other illegal content; so they can filter for infringement.”

The previous point leads to this logical flaw.  The notion is that because some services attempt to filter wholly unlawful content, such as child pornography, they should also filter for lawful content whose use may be unlawful.  However, filtering any unauthorized Harry Potter for example, might also filter out Harry Potter reviews, book reports, and cultural studies.    Again, lawful content, used unlawfully, is not the same as unlawful content.  One cannot filter when lawfulness is context- and user-dependent, and even if that were possible, it is rarely stated when a use has been authorized.

(5) DMCA compliance is mandatory.

It isn’t.  Service providers may comply with the DMCA in exchange for the promise of liability limitations, and many services within the US and abroad (over 66,000 at last count) do so.  Notwithstanding that DMCA compliance can be a significant expense, particularly for smaller services, it is viewed by many as the cost of market entry: a regulatory obligation undertaken by responsible businesses.

That being said, DMCA compliance is not compulsory, a service can decline to comply with takedown requests — or even ignore them altogether.  As a standard business practice, this is a terribly bad idea, because of the potential exposure to copyright’s notoriously large statutory damages.  At times, however, online services can and do rightly refuse to comply with abusive requests by bad actors.  Attempts to get one’s business competition kicked offline, or to suppress criticism, embarrassing news, or disfavored speech are increasingly common.  (E.g., [1], [2], [3], [4]).  In each case that an online service stands up for users, however, it risks extraordinary liability if a court should later side with a complainant who the service initially concluded was not acting in good faith.

Reposted from the Disruptive Competition Project, DisCo

Filed Under: copyright, copyright reform, dmca, house judiciary committee, notice and takedown, safe harbors

Congress Warns DOJ That If It Doesn't Support NSA Reform Plan, It Won't Renew Key Patriot Act Provision

from the get-your-act-together dept

While the USA Freedom Act isn't perfect, it is one bill in Congress that has a lot of support and will fix many problems with the current NSA overreach. Much more needs to be done, but the USA Freedom Act is a good starting point. And yet, the Obama administration and his Justice Department have yet to take a public stand on the bill, and that seems to be annoying plenty of folks in Congress. At the recent Judiciary Committee hearings, Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, the original author of the Patriot Act and Section 215, made it abundantly clear that the DOJ/NSA's interpretation of his bill was simply incorrect and that they were abusing the system. As the sponsor of the USA Freedom Act to fix this misinterpretation, he pointed out that if the DOJ doesn't agree to support it, there's a good chance that Congress simply won't renew the provisions in Section 215 at all. Section 215, of course, is the part that has been misinterpreted by the DOJ, the FISA court, the NSA and the FBI to pretend it authorizes the collection of every phone record. In short, the message from Congress is: work with us to reform things, or we'll pull the authority altogether. Of course, some of us think that pulling the authority altogether might be a better long term solution.

And it's not just Sensenbrenner making those claims. Many others -- across the political spectrum -- made it clear during the hearing that the NSA's actions with regards to Section 215 were unacceptable and Congress is going to make them change things. Yes, nothing has happened yet, and Congressional bluster doesn't always lead to results, but it's becoming increasingly clear that the NSA (and the President's) desire to keep collecting everyone's metadata is not convincing anyone.

Filed Under: doj, house judiciary committee, jim sensenbrenner, nsa, reform, section 215, surveillance, usa freedom act