Re:Create Coalition Tells Copyright Office DMCA Is Cornerstone Of Creativity And Internet Growth. The Re:Create Coalition and its members filed comments in response to the U.S. Copyright Office’s study on Section 512 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). The groups highlighted the DMCA’s legal framework for protecting online platforms from liability, thus enabling the Internet’s creative revolution and economic boom. They also advocate against the proposed “notice and staydown” system, which would be “burdensome, disproportionate, and invasive of the privacy interests of legitimate users.” View the coalition and its members’ complete filings here.
Internet And Consumer Groups Promote DMCA’s Success As Tool For Innovation And Social Justice. In addition to the Re:Create coalition, various groups and individuals also filed comments in response to the Section 512 study, urging the Copyright Office to preserve the safe harbors provision. The Hill’s April 1 report Internet group warns against ‘radical changes’ in copyright review quotes the Internet Association’s assertion that “[r]adical changes…would chill incentives to invest and innovate.” Separately, The Institute for Intellectual Property & Social Justice’s filing examines the crucial impact the DMCA has had on promoting public access to copyrighted works “particularly with respect to historically and currently marginalized groups. It helps give voice to those who need one but who lack the massive resources needed for certain sorts of activities, including speech.”
As Spotify And Pandora Grow, Recording Industry Fights Against Innovation. Fortune’s Mathew Ingram examines the Recording Industry Association of America’s (RIAA) latest statistics on revenues from subscription-based streaming music services like Spotify, Pandora and YouTube in the article Record Industry Continues its War on Free Music. Ingram criticizes the RIAA not only for its “ongoing war on ad-supported music of any kind, whether it’s radio or streaming or YouTube videos” but also for blaming the DMCA’s safe harbor provisions while “taking the opportunity to complain about how it’s not making enough money…”
Internet Advocate Pushes For More…Restrictions? The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) – an organization that’s been primarily responsible for the Web’s most important, open standards – has now reversed course. Citing Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), W3C is working on a standard for digital locks that new businesses would not be able to remove, even to do something legal. In Save Netflix!, Cory Doctorow of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) explains how this could stymie any new businesses like Netflix or new Web technology. “In the past, the W3C has made its members agree to license their patents to anyone who was making a new Web technology [and] was committed to making its recommendations unencumbered by the need to get permission to improve the Web. For the first time in its history, the W3C is adding encumbrances to the Web, rather than removing them. We think that’s wrong.”