How the TPP Will Affect You and Your Digital Rights; Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), 12/8/15

Maira Sutton, Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF); How the TPP Will Affect You and Your Digital Rights:

"The Internet is a diverse ecosystem of private and public stakeholders. By excluding a large sector of communities—like security researchers, artists, libraries, and user rights groups—trade negotiators skewed the priorities of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) towards major tech companies and copyright industries that have a strong interest in maintaining and expanding their monopolies of digital services and content. Negotiated in secret for several years with overwhelming influence from powerful multinational corporate interests, it's no wonder that its provisions do little to nothing to protect our rights online or our autonomy over our own devices. For example, everything in the TPP that increases corporate rights and interests is binding, whereas every provision that is meant to protect the public interest is non-binding and is susceptible to get bulldozed by efforts to protect corporations.

Below is a list of communities who were excluded from the TPP deliberation process, and some of the main ways that the TPP's copyright and digital policy provisions will negatively impact them. Almost all of these threats already exist in the United States and in many cases have already impacted users there, because the TPP reflects the worst aspects of the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). The TPP threatens to lock down those policies so these harmful consequences will be more difficult to remedy in future copyright reform efforts in the U.S. and the other eleven TPP countries. The impacts could also be more severe in those other countries because most of them lack the protections of U.S. law such as the First Amendment and the doctrine of fair use."

Senate Panel Leaders Condemn Companies for Drug Price Hikes; Associated Press via New York Times, 12/9/15

Associated Press via New York Times; Senate Panel Leaders Condemn Companies for Drug Price Hikes:

"The leaders of a Senate panel are condemning four companies for aggressively increasing prices for prescription drugs. They say the companies have exploited a system lacking in competition to hike prices for critically needed medicines.

An investigation by the Senate Special Committee on Aging focuses on Turing Pharmaceuticals, Valeant Pharmaceuticals, Retrophin Inc. and Rodelis Therapeutics. The first two faced especially harsh criticism.

"The Turing and Valeant price spikes have been egregious," Sen. Susan Collins, the Maine Republican who heads the panel, said at a hearing Wednesday.

Collins added that like those two companies, Retrophin and Rodelis also bought the rights to brand-name drugs whose patents had expired and then hiked their prices.

Public outrage boiled over this fall after news that Turing increased by more than 5,000 percent the price of Daraprim, a drug used to treat a life-threatening infection, jacking it up from $13.50 to $750 per pill."

The Tarnished Trump Brand; New York Times, 12/11/15

Editorial Board, New York Times; The Tarnished Trump Brand:

"It takes a lot of work to make brands successful, and they can be undone quickly by controversy and scandal. Thanks to Mr. Trump himself, his name increasingly stands for bigotry and racism. His licensees should ask themselves if they want to be linked to a brand that carries those connotations."

Edward S. Curtis's The North American Indian; Northwestern Digital Library Collections, Northwestern University

Northwestern University, Northwestern Digital Library Collections; Edward S. Curtis's The North American Indian:

"Sensitive images and text

This site presents the complete contents of The North American Indian originally published by Edward S. Curtis between 1907-1930. The images and descriptions reflect the prevailing Euro-American cultural perspective of Curtis’s time, that Indians were “primitive” people whose traditions represented a “vanishing race”. Contemporary readers should view the work in that context.

In The North American Indian some ceremonial rituals and objects are portrayed which were not intended for viewing by the uninitiated. No material has been excluded or specially labeled in this online edition. All descriptions and images are included in order to represent the work fully."

Copyright and use restrictions

This online edition has been derived from a copy of The North American Indian held by the Charles Deering McCormick Library of Special Collections, Northwestern University Library. Northwestern University Library is not aware of any current U.S. copyright or other restrictions to the use of the original work.

The contents of this site are provided for educational, personal, and non-commercial use, provided that the site is properly credited.

Sample credit line:

Northwestern University Library, Edward S. Curtis's "The North American Indian," 2003.

http://curtis.library.northwestern.edu/site_curtis/

Written request for permission is required for any publication, distribution, or transmission of data, images or text presented on this web site, beyond that allowed by fair use."

WIPO Copyright Committee Hears Case For Exceptions For Museums; Intellectual Property Watch, 12/10/15

Catherine Saez, Intellectual Property Watch; WIPO Copyright Committee Hears Case For Exceptions For Museums:

"A study [pdf] was presented yesterday on the need for copyright exceptions and limitations for museums by Lucie Guibault, co-authored with Jean-François Canat, and Elisabeth Logeais, who collaborated on the study.

According to the authors, the study investigates the issue of limitations and exceptions to copyright for museums and means to raise the international understanding on the need for museums to have adequate limitations to copyright. The study gives an overview of relevant existing legislative provisions.

Museum collections include diverse objects, such as objects of art, texts, drawings, paintings, photographs, maps, films and sound recordings, according to the study. Museums have to adapt to the digital age and consider digitising and disseminating their collections via the internet.

In principle, said the authors, museums need rights holders’ permission to reproduce any copyright-protected objects in their collections, unless an exception or limitation to copyright applies. Of the 188 WIPO members, only 45 of them have laws which contain provisions specifically allowing museums to make certain uses of works in their collections without prior authorisation of the rights holder, the study found."

Batman v Superman: the latest exercise in corporate fan fiction; Guardian, 12/9/15

Noah Berlatsky, Guardian; Batman v Superman: the latest exercise in corporate fan fiction:

"Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster ended their creative input in the 1940s; for decades the duo’s main involvement with Superman was lawsuits over rights. Batman’s main creator, Bill Finger, was denied credit from the beginning by artist Bob Kane, and he died in poverty. Not much of a dawn of justice there.

At this point, there is no right or wrong version of Superman, or Batman, or Lex Luthor. Batman v Superman is just the latest exercise in corporate fan fiction, remixing bits and pieces of fan fiction based on fan fiction past. The result may be good, or bad, or mediocre, and you can love or hate Jesse Eisenberg’s performance for any number of reasons. But to say he’s not true to Luthor is to pretend that there’s some “true” version of Luthor to begin with – and to create a platonic, real Luthor who exists separately from, and overshadows, the original folks who, intentionally or by accident, came up with the character. Better to just take the upcoming film on its own merits, or lack thereof – and maybe give a nod to Leo Nowak, and his own stumbling lack of fidelity to Lex Luthor past."

New EU copyright rules would give travelers cross-border Netflix access; ArsTechnica.com, 12/9/15

Glyn Moody, ArsTechnica.com; New EU copyright rules would give travelers cross-border Netflix access:

"The European Commission says it wants to tackle the lack of consistency across the EU when it comes to copyright exceptions. As it notes: "The fragmentation of copyright rules in the EU is particularly visible in the area of exceptions. The exceptions set out in EU law are, in most cases, optional for Member States to implement and are often broadly defined. As a consequence, an exception in the law of one Member State may not exist in a neighbouring one, or be subject to different conditions or vary in scope."

In its new copyright framework, the European Commission proposes a number of initiatives in this area. These include: finally ratifying the Marrakech Treaty, which allows for the creation and distribution of special formats of print material for people with disabilities, without needing additional licences; permitting "public interest research organisations" to carry out text and data mining of material they have already licensed; and clarifying the scope of an exception for teaching materials.

The Commission also wants to sort out the freedom of panorama issue—the public's ability to take pictures of external objects like buildings and to distribute them without permission of the architect."

‘Happy Birthday’ Copyright Case Reaches a Settlement; New York Times, 12/9/15

Ben Sisario, New York Times; ‘Happy Birthday’ Copyright Case Reaches a Settlement:

"After more than two years of litigation, “Happy Birthday to You” — often called the most popular song in the world, but one that has long been under copyright — is one step closer to joining the public domain.

In September, a federal judge ruled that Warner Music, the song’s publisher, did not have a valid copyright claim to “Happy Birthday,” which has been estimated to collect $2 million a year in royalties. But what that ruling meant for the future of the song — and Warner’s liability — was unclear, and a trial had been set to begin next week.

In a filing on Tuesday in United States District Court in Los Angeles, the parties in the case said they had agreed to a settlement to end the case. The terms of that deal are confidential. But if the settlement is approved by the court, the song is expected to formally enter the public domain, meaning that it will not be covered by copyright and can be performed freely."

Milano cookie battle: Pepperidge Farm sues Trader Joe’s over copyright infringement; Fox News, 12/7/15

Fox News; Milano cookie battle: Pepperidge Farm sues Trader Joe’s over copyright infringement:

According to a complaint filed on Wednesday in New Haven, Conn., federal court, the grocery chain’s version of a sandwich cookie, called Trader Joe’s Crispy Cookies, look too similar to the Milano cookie and the products’ sale is “damaging its goodwill and confusing shoppers,” reports Reuters.

Milano cookies, which were introduced to the market in 1956, are crispy oval-shaped vanilla cookies with a chocolate crème filling. Over the years, variations have been introduced, including mint chocolate, orange chocolate and even pumpkin spice. The cookie was trademarked in 2010."

War of the Worlds sequel sets 2017 publication date; BBC News, 12/4/15

BBC News; War of the Worlds sequel sets 2017 publication date:

"A sequel to HG Wells's The War of the Worlds is to be published in 2017 when the copyright on the original expires.

Written by Stephen Baxter, The Massacre of Mankind will see the Martians from Wells's story invading Earth once more, having learned from the mistakes they made first time around.

Gollancz will publish the sequel in hardback and eBook on 19 January 2017.

The copyright on the original, which was published in book form in 1898, lasts until 31 December 2016."

Hong Kong Copyright Law To Be Fiercely Debated; Variety, 12/7/15

Patrick Frater, Variety; Hong Kong Copyright Law To Be Fiercely Debated:

"Hong Kong’s legislature is Wednesday to debate a bill that seeks to make the territory’s copyright laws appropriate for the Internet age.

The government seems certain to win the vote in the Legislative Council (LegCo), but the bill is likely to be fiercely contested and extra security may be drafted outside the LegCo building.

Opponents say that the bill reinforces the position of business and copyright owners, but stifles freedom of speech.

In particular, they say that the proposed law does not take enough account of user-generated-content and that it will narrow the scope for sampling of copyright works for parody."

China vows copyright protection for online news media; Reuters, 12/4/15

Reuters; China vows copyright protection for online news media:

"China will crack down on illegal reproduction of online news, the country's media watchdog said, days after an influential Chinese news magazine complained publicly about what it described as unauthorized republishing of its stories.

China's government has long vowed to rein in intellectual property infringement from knock-off goods to the theft of commercial secrets. But violations remain rampant.

While the republishing of other news outlets' articles is common practice in China, some companies in the country's increasingly competitive media industry have become more vocal about what they say is unauthorized use of original content."

[Post-Public Draft 2016-2020 Strategic Plan] Positioning the United States Copyright Office for the Future: Strategic Plan 2016-2020; U.S. Copyright Office, December 2015

[Post-Public Draft 2016-2020 Strategic Plan] Positioning the United States Copyright Office for the Future: Strategic Plan 2016-2020:

[Excerpt]"This Strategic Plan organizes and prioritizes objectives for the next five years. It draws on four years of internal evaluations and public input — that is, two initial years of fact-findings, public inquiries, and special projects, and two additional years of public roundtables, reports, and Congressional hearings. These initiatives, announced in October 2011, coincided with government-mandated budget cuts as well as staff reductions and backlogs. We seized these challenges, however, as an opportunity to examine inefficiencies, dismantle dated practices, and propose new paradigms. Much of this exciting work and our accomplishments to date are described in the back of this Plan. We also introduce here a revised mission statement that better captures our statutory mandate.

Here is my vision for a modern Copyright Office:

Customers should be able to transact with the Office easily, quickly, and from anywhere at any time, using mobile technologies and any number of consumer-friendly platforms and devices to secure rights or access data. They should have at their fingertips an integrated life-cycle of copyright information — not only the date on which a work was created, published or fell into the public domain, but also all of the authors, owners, licensees, derivative uses, rights, and permission information that are both relevant to the marketplace and invaluable to meaningful research. The Office should have businessto-business capabilities that both leverage and support private sector activities, while ensuring and facilitating transparency and fairness.

Although technology improvements are an essential part of the future, true modernization involves much more than making incremental upgrades to hardware or software. It requires re-envisioning almost all of the Copyright Office’s services, including how customers register claims, submit deposits, record documents, share data, and access expert resources, and it requires meeting the diverse needs of individual authors, entrepreneurs, the user community, and the general public.

Maria A. Pallante

United States Register of Copyrights,

Director, U.S. Copyright Office

Judge: Company must pay $684k for suing Life360 in “exceptionally weak” patent case; ArsTechnica.com, 12/2/15

Joe Mullin, ArsTechnica.com; Judge: Company must pay $684k for suing Life360 in “exceptionally weak” patent case:

"Family networking service Life360 won a patent trial earlier this year against a Florida company called Advanced Ground Information Systems (AGIS) that sued it for patent infringement. Now it has won a significant chunk of its legal fees for fighting the case.

Yesterday, US District Judge Donald Middlebrooks ordered AGIS to pay Life360 the sum of $684,190.25. That amount represents the legal fees paid from November 21, 2014, when Middlebrooks issued a claim construction order, through the end of the trial on March 13, 2015."

Sharing of television news clips hangs in the fair-use balance; ArsTechnica.com, 12/2/15

David Kravets, ArsTechnica.com; Sharing of television news clips hangs in the fair-use balance:

"Fox News is winning more than just the news network ratings wars. It's also winning the battle against copyright's fair use doctrine.

In August, a federal judge sided (PDF) with the news station's copyright-infringement lawsuit against a television and radio clipping service known as TVEyes, which charges as much as $500 a month for its service. A New York federal judge ruled that wanton sharing, time searching, and downloading of Fox News' news segments is not fair use. Then in November, US District Judge Alvin Hellerstein ruled TVEyes could not allow its clients—like the White House, American Red Cross, members of Congress, and others—to download Fox News clips. The judge also ordered TVEyes to block users from searching Fox News clips and from allowing them to share them on social media...

All of this begs the question of what is fair use. It's complicated, and there is no bright-line rule."

COPYRIGHT OFFICE NEEDS MORE TECH AND DATA EXPERTS; NextGov.com, 12/2/15

Hallie Golden, NextGov.com; COPYRIGHT OFFICE NEEDS MORE TECH AND DATA EXPERTS:

"To keep pace with the demands of the digital age, the U.S. Copyright Office needs fewer file clerks and more techies, Maria Pallante, the office's director, told lawmakers on Wednesday.

“It used to be catalogers, now it needs to be technology and data [experts],” Pallante described the agency’s hiring needs. “I don’t know how we can administer the law without it.”

Every year, the Copyright Office's staff examines and register hundreds of thousands of copyright claims submitted by book authors, music artists, software manufacturers and other creators of intellectual property.

The office needs to restructure its workforce, Pallante told members of the Committee on House Administration during a hearing on the office’s tech plans. The office would like to eventually “morph” about a third of its staff -- 150 employees -- into tech and data experts, she said.

“These experts should not merely be assigned or on-call from another part of the agency, but rather be integrated into the copyright office mission where they can work side by side with legal and business experts,” she said."

Library of Congress, Copyright Office butt heads over IT vision; FedScoop.com, 12/2/15

Whitney Blair Wyckoff, FedScoop.com; Library of Congress, Copyright Office butt heads over IT vision:

"During the hearing, U.S. Register of Copyrights Maria Pallante reiterated a call for more autonomy over her agency’s technology. She referenced a report her agency released Tuesday that laid out a five-year plan that heavily focused on technology improvements.

“What we’re asking for is the autonomy to make sure that IT is intertwined with our business and legal expertise,” Pallante said. (Some House lawmakers have been shopping a draft bill to make the office an independent agency, but the legislation has yet to be introduced.)

Pallante also underscored the need to update the office’s 10-year-old copyright registration system, called eCO — which she said was “probably outdated by the time it was implemented.” The system, she said, simply replaced rather than improved upon paper copyright registration forms. It doesn't have a digital interface that is interoperable with the private sector technology and isn't flexible enough to be updated as copyright law evolves, she said...

“Your predecessor did many wonderful things in his long career,” Lofgren said to acting Librarian Mao. “Being a techie was not one of his fine points. So you have your work cut out for you.”"

Copyright Register: IT outage shows why agency must modernize; FedScoop.com, 11/30/15

Whitney Blair Wyckoff, FedScoop.com; Copyright Register: IT outage shows why agency must modernize:

"U.S. Register of Copyrights Maria Pallante still grimaces at the mention of a major IT outage that struck her agency this summer.

What started as routine data center maintenance shuttered critical Library of Congress IT systems — including those at the Copyright Office — for nine days. Pallante said it forced her staff, who were unable to fix the problems directly, to field angry calls from customers unable to register their songs, books or other creative works online.

“This is an illustration of the fact that my IT, and my databases, are in the hands of people who are not statutorily responsible for that information,” she told FedScoop, speaking in a Copyright Office conference room lined with the portraits of past registers. She added, "I just really feel that people who work on Copyright Office IT should be in the Copyright Office, in the mission, working side by side with the other experts."

It’s a point alluded to in the Copyright Office's five-year strategic modernization plan, finalized and released Tuesday. The 65-page document includes overarching goals that span from building a robust and flexible technology enterprise to recruiting a diverse workforce. But woven into the report is the need to tailor the office's technology to the needs of the people it serves.

“I think the main message of this is that the Copyright Office has to be directly involved in technology — for one, we can’t administer the law without having control of tools to allow us to do that,” said Pallante, who spent nearly 10 years as intellectual property counsel and director of the licensing group at the Guggenheim Museums before coming to her current job in 2011."

Scholars Unveil New Edition of Hitler’s ‘Mein Kampf’; New York Times, 12/1/15

Alison Smale, New York Times; Scholars Unveil New Edition of Hitler’s ‘Mein Kampf’ :

"Not since 1945, when the Allies banned the dubious work and awarded the rights to the state of Bavaria, has Hitler’s manifesto, “Mein Kampf,” been officially published in German. Bavaria had refused to release it. But under German law, its copyright expires Dec. 31, the 70th year after the author’s death.

That allows a team of historians from a noted center for the study of Nazism, the Institute for Contemporary History in Munich, to publish its two-volume, 2,000-page edition, a three-year labor complete with about 3,500 academic annotations.

The intention is to set the work in historical context, to show how Hitler wove truth with half-truth and outright lie, and thus to defang any propagandistic effect while revealing Nazism."