Yesterday, the Department of Commerce released its “White Paper on Remixes, First Sale, and Statutory Damages.” The paper is the culmination of more than five years of work by the Department’s Internet Policy Task Force. Among its many recommendations, the paper plots a course for significant progress on calibrating statutory damages for copyright infringement.
Read MoreIn a plenary session, the European Parliament voted yesterday to adopt a report on “the harmonization of certain aspects of copyright and related rights in the information society.” In a previous post, we applauded the report’s recognition of the importance of balanced copyright while lamenting over some the elements of the draft report that failed to make their way into the text adopted by Parliament’s legal affairs committee (JURI). Even with deletions and alterations, the report highlights the need for minimum baseline of copyright limitations and exceptions across the Union. The text of the report remains largely unchanged since its adoption by JURI, but a few late amendments made important improvements to the report.
Read MoreThe European Commission, Council, and Parliament have all identified the creation of a “digital single market” (DSM) for Europe as one of their shared top priorities. A refreshingly distinct view of a unitary copyright system for Europe arrived last week when the European Parliament’s Committee on Legal Affairs (JURI) voted to adopt a report on “the harmonization of certain aspects of copyright and related rights in the information society.”
Read MoreToday I spoke at the latest congressional hearing on possible reforms to copyright law. The hearing topic was the rise of innovative business models, so I and the other three witnesses generally discussed the extensive degree of change and innovation in the marketplace for copyrighted works; my prepared statement urges Congress to focus on ensuring that the copyright regime promotes continued innovation in business models and technologies.
Read More