A wholesale revamp of the Copyright Act is unlikely soon, but more piecemeal fixes could be possible, lawyers said Friday during a Practising Law Institute event. The House Judiciary Committee has been doing a copyright law review since 2013, last week holding a pair of roundtables with copyright stakeholders in California (see 1511100063 and 1511120049). Any legislative fix would occur in the midst of ongoing legal battles over whether a terrestrial performance royalty right exists and the nature of fair use, lawyers said at PLI.
The House Judiciary Committee’s priorities for legislation in its Copyright Act review remained largely undefined after the committee’s Tuesday roundtable session at the University of California, Los Angeles, participants in the session told us. The UCLA session, House Judiciary’s third roundtable since beginning its copyright “listening tour” in September, drew Los Angeles’ movie, music and TV industries and others. House Judiciary’s Monday roundtable at Santa Clara University drew a mainly tech sector crowd (see 1511100063), while a September roundtable in Nashville was exclusively pegged at music licensing issues (see 1509220055). Participants in the UCLA roundtable said they remain unsure how House Judiciary will proceed, with several saying committee members made few statements indicating their leanings.
The House Judiciary Committee’s copyright roundtable Monday at Santa Clara University generated significant discussion about the need for fixes to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, stakeholders who participated in and attended the meeting told us. The Santa Clara roundtable, the first of two such sessions that House Judiciary plans this week in California, drew prominent interest from Silicon Valley’s tech sector, as expected (see 1511060052). Although content creators and other copyright stakeholders also made a significant impact during the Santa Clara roundtable, a Tuesday roundtable at the University of California, Los Angeles was expected to feature a bigger presence from those stakeholders.
Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., said he opposes the current version of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), telling participants at a U.S. Chamber of Commerce Global IP Center event Thursday that the current treaty language doesn’t go far enough to protect U.S. IP interests. The Obama administration released many portions of the full TPP text Thursday, prompting a mixed reaction from tech groups (see 1511050058). Tillis also vowed Thursday to work via the Senate Judiciary Committee to pass patent legislation “that actually satisfies” all stakeholders. “Let’s work hard to get this right,” he said.
Two planned House Judiciary Committee roundtables in California this week on copyright issues are likely to tackle a far wider range of issues, with several stakeholders set to speak at the roundtables telling us Friday they had received limited instructions ahead of the sessions on possible topics that could come up. House Judiciary plans a session Monday at Santa Clara University and a Tuesday session at the University of California-Los Angeles. Neither is targeted at specific copyright stakeholders (see 1511030061 and 1510130058). A previous House Judiciary roundtable in Nashville focused on music licensing (see 1509220055).
Rep. Ed Perlmutter, D-Colo., vowed he'll bow his Data Breach Insurance Act via the House Financial Services Committee to encourage financial services institutions to fortify themselves against data breaches, saying the bill is in line with the White House’s policy of encouraging critical infrastructure sectors to voluntarily improve their cybersecurity. Perlmutter and the co-founders of the Senate Payments Innovation Caucus emphasized the importance of government collaboration with the private sector on payment security issues during a joint Visa-The Hill event Thursday.
The House Homeland Security Committee voted Wednesday to advance the State and Local Cyber Protection Act (HR-3869) and the Strengthening Cybersecurity Information Sharing and Coordination in Our Ports Act (HR-3878), sending both bills to the full House on unanimous voice votes. The bills' markup came a week after the Senate passed the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act (S-754) 74-21 (see 1510280057), setting up what is anticipated to be a lengthy conference to reconcile that bill with the House-passed Protecting Cyber Networks Act (HR-1560). An industry lobbyist told us language from both HR-3869 and HR-3878 could potentially make it into a conference information sharing bill.
Google ranked highest on New America’s Open Technology Institute’s Ranking Digital Rights index of 16 major global Internet and telecom companies on commitments and transparency on users’ privacy and freedom of expression. But RDR Director Rebecca MacKinnon said that “there are no winners” among the ranked companies. Google scored an overall 65 percent on RDR’s Corporate Accountability Index, released Tuesday, ranking at the top on privacy policies and disclosure of restrictions of users’ freedom of expression. “If this were a test, they’d be getting a D,” MacKinnon said of Google during a joint RDR-Civic Hall event to mark the index’s release.
Google and the ICANN Generic Names Supporting Organization’s (GNSO) Business Constituency (BC) strongly urged that ICANN move toward establishing a continuous process for introducing new generic top-level domains (gTLDs), in comments Friday. Others didn’t comment on whether to shift away from a rounds-based framework, but noted other areas in which changes to the program are needed. ICANN had sought comment on its preliminary report on future gTLD procedures, which urged the GNSO Council to proceed with policy development for subsequent rounds of new gTLD rollouts (see 1510050067 and 1510140065).
Apple’s petition for a writ of certiorari with the Supreme Court last week seeking a review of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit’s ruling that the company violated antitrust laws in its e-book pricing case has a limited likelihood of being granted, legal experts said in Friday interviews. The 2nd Circuit ruled in late June that Apple was guilty of violating antitrust laws by conspiring with five major book publishers to eliminate price competition and raise e-book prices, affirming the U.S. District Court in New York’s 2013 decision in the case (see 1506300067). Apple’s $450 million settlement with consumers and state attorneys general (see report in the June 18, 2014, issue) was contingent on the 2nd Circuit’s ruling.