WaPo Editorial Board: Senate Should Give Librarian Of Congress Nominee A Vote. Yesterday, the Senate approved Dr. Carla Hayden to become the fourteenth Librarian of Congress. Earlier in the week, The Washington Post Editorial Board urged the Senate to give Dr. Carla Hayden “the consideration she deserves” following reports that partisan infighting delayed Senate approval. Following her confirmation, the American Library Association announced, “There is no doubt that Dr. Hayden will have a positive impact by leading efforts to establish a more modern approach to serving members of Congress, researchers and the public at large.” The Re:Create Coalition added, in a statement, “As she assumes her new role, we look forward to working with Dr. Hayden on the Library’s much-needed technological upgrades and to finding the right policy solutions for a balanced copyright system that benefits creators, innovators, and the American people.”
YouTube Content ID Pays Out $2 Billion To Copyright Holders. Google released a new report on piracy on Wednesday, noting that YouTube’s Content ID system has paid out $2 billion to copyright holders. The report also notes that 98% of copyright management occurs through Content ID, and the music industry chooses to monetize more than 95% of claims, allowing the copyrighted material to stay up on YouTube. “While music labels have so far issued vague estimates about the level of piracy and cost to them, Google has repeatedly published hard data that shows a positive trend,” writes Ben Popper for The Verge. Project DisCo adds, “[These] data points highlight the absurdity of misrepresentations earlier this summer that musicians were receiving more money from vinyl records than streaming…[and] underscore the scope of opportunity as players in the highly competitive video platform industry jockey for a growing pool of industrially-financed and individual creator content.”
Creators Look To Overcome Legal Hurdles In Use Of Iconic Songs. A July 12 New York Times article profiles the ongoing litigation battles to bring iconic American songs “We Shall Overcome” and “This Land Is Your Land” into the public domain. The article notes that many see the copyright protections as “anathema to the spirit in which they were created,” while Duke law professor James Boyle says, “We can respect the rights of creators, but creators are often in the position of building on other works, and there has to be freedom for that, too.”
3D Printing Creates Out-Of-This-World Opportunities For Aerospace Industry. The aerospace industry is experimenting with 3D printing in outer space, a practice they say could save time and money for the industry. “If you think of challenges in getting a satellite into orbit, if you think of major antennas, the fold out antennas we have, the ability to print something in space and deploy it from space is really interesting,” Andy Anderson, deputy chief technology officer at Airbus, told CNBC in the July 12 article, Coming soon: 3D printing satellites in outer space. In April, a company called Made In Space installed the first ever manufacturing facility in space on the International Space Station. It uses 3D printing specifically designed for the zero-gravity conditions in space.
Not Everyone Is United Over The Copyright Restrictions In The United Kingdom’s Proposed Digital Economy Bill. A new bill has been introduced in the UK that looks to dramatically affect the fair use of copyrighted material online. In New Censorship and Copyright Restrictions in UK Digital Economy Bill, Jeremy Malcolm with the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) details how the bill lowers the standard when use of copyrighted material can be deemed criminal and excessively increases the penalty: “[N]ew rules that would lower the threshold of criminality of online copyright infringement while raising the penalties, are disproportionate and will result in punitive sanctions being applied to infringements that may caused little if any actual harm.”