Carla Hayden's Sept 14 swearing-in as librarian of Congress will be webcast live on YouTube, the Library of Congress said Friday. The Senate confirmed Hayden in July to lead the LOC after a weekslong hold by a Senate Republican (see 1607130061). Hayden, who will be the first woman and the first African-American to lead the LOC, will be sworn in using the Lincoln Bible, the LOC said in a blog post. The swearing-in ceremony is set to begin at noon.

The New York State Broadcasters Association disputed the U.S. District Court in New York's 2015 ruling in Flo & Eddie's lawsuit against SiriusXM that said state common law allowed a pre-1972 performance right, in a brief Thursday to the New York Court of Appeals. The court is reviewing the district court ruling's finding on state common law after the 2nd U.S. Court of Appeals delayed its consideration of SiriusXM's appeal of the Flo & Eddie case pending the state court review (see 1605030055 and 1608050059). New York “has never recognized a public performance right in sound recordings, and such a sweeping alteration of the law is unsupported by prior case law, legislative history at the federal level, and the history of the recording and broadcasting industries” in the state, NYSBA President David Donovan said in the group's filing. He said that such a right “threatens to cast aside almost 100 years of accepted practices in the music broadcasting industry, while simultaneously circumventing the legislature and throwing copyright licensing into total disarray. NYSBA's members would be directly impacted by the ensuing chaos.”

Members of Fall Out Boy, Linkin Park and singer Jennifer Hudson are among 212 musicians jointly urging (in Pacer) the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit to overturn a 2015 jury verdict in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles that said “Blurred Lines” co-writers Robin Thicke, T.I. and Pharrell Williams infringed Marvin Gaye’s “Got to Give It Up." The Los Angeles jury determined (in Pacer) that infringement of Gaye’s copyright wasn’t willful but the “Blurred Lines” co-writers faced $5.3 million in damages. Public Knowledge backed the “Blurred Lines” supporters in an amicus brief also filed Tuesday. Gaye's family believes the Los Angeles jury’s verdict and District Judge John Kronstadt's confirmation of it “sit on unshakable footing," emailed family lawyer Paul Philips. “Got to Give It Up” was written before provisions in the 1976 Copyright Act protected sound recordings, musicologists said (in Pacer). PK said the borrowing and adaptation of existing works “takes on a particular importance” in music. “Greater similarity among musical works is to be expected simply due to the ordinary structures of Western music,” the group wrote (in Pacer). “Copyright has long been understood to be premised on a utilitarian justification, that the monopoly right to exclude copying is granted in service of encouraging creation and dissemination of new works. Consequently, the scope of that monopoly right must be limited to avoid interference with downstream creators who build upon the works of the past.”

Mozilla is pushing the EU to revamp copyright laws to reflect changes in the internet's development, launching a petition Wednesday asking the EU to use its planned update of its copyright legal framework to “bring copyright law into the 21st century.” The European Commission is to release its copyright law rewrite proposal this fall as part of its larger digital single market policy strategy (see 1606010011). “The current copyright legal framework is outdated,” said Mozilla Chief Innovation Officer Katharina Borchert in a blog post. “It stifles opportunity and prevents, and in many cases legally prohibits, artists, coders and everyone else creating and innovating online.” Borchert focused on the need for the inclusion of an EU-wide fair-use exception in any copyright law revision, saying “in some parts of the EU, making a meme is technically unlawful.” The EU needs to “update and harmonise the rules so we can tinker, create, share and learn on the internet,” Borchert said. “Education, parody, panorama, remix and analysis shouldn't be unlawful.” Some proposals for the EU's copyright law update would threaten innovation, including “licensing fees and restriction on internet companies for basic things like creating hyperlinks or uploading content,” Borchert said. “Others are calling for new laws that would establish gatekeepers and barriers to entry online, and would risk undermining the internet as a platform for economic growth and free expression.”

The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative is seeking comment for its 2016 notorious markets list (see 1601110051) by Oct. 7, replies by Oct. 21, for its out-of-cycle review based off the annual Special 301 Report, says a notice scheduled to be published in Thursday's Federal Register. The list identifies “online and physical marketplaces that reportedly engage in and facilitate substantial copyright piracy and trademark counterfeiting,” the notice says.

The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation pushed back against oft-repeated claims that anti-piracy efforts like the failed 2012 Stop Online Piracy Act would “break the internet,” saying in a report there's little evidence to substantiate such claims. ITIF said Monday its analysis of five years of data from 25 countries found there were no “dire outcomes” from those countries' efforts to block piracy websites. ITIF referenced an April Carnegie Mellon University study saying the U.K.'s blockage of 53 piracy websites in 2014 caused a 90 percent reduction in visits to piracy websites and a rise in visits to websites legally featuring content.

Cox Communications said Friday it's appealing a U.S. District Court ruling in BMG Rights Management's lawsuit against the cable company to the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. An Alexandria, Virginia, federal jury in 2015 found against Cox in BMG's lawsuit alleging the cable company failed to penalize its internet customers who repeatedly infringed copyrighted materials (see 1512180012). District Judge Liam O'Grady denied Cox's motion for judgment or for a new trial of the case, rejecting the ISP's argument that BMG's claims against the cable company failed from lack of proof (see 1608090047). Cox faces paying $25 million in damages to BMG. Cox's appeal hadn't appeared in the 4th Circuit's docket at our deadline, but Cox advised the Alexandria district court of its appeal in a notice (in Pacer). BMG didn't comment Friday.

Turkish CE giant Vestel was one of six companies to recently join the UHD Alliance, the group told the FTC and Attorney General Loretta Lynch in July 19 written notifications, said a notice in Thursday’s Federal Register by DOJ’s Antitrust Division. Other companies joining the alliance were Amlogic, Eutelsat, Ittiam Systems, Quatius and SPI International, the notice said. The notifications were required to extend antitrust protections to UHD Alliance members under the 1993 National Cooperative Research and Production Act, it said.

U.S. District Judge Liam O'Grady's ruling last week denying Cox Communications' motion for judgment or a new trial of the BMG Rights Management copyright infringement lawsuit (see 1608090047) shouldn't worry “law-abiding” ISPs, said Tom Sydnor, visiting scholar at American Enterprise Institute’s Center for Internet, Communications and Technology, in a blog post Wednesday. A federal jury in Alexandria, Virginia, found against Cox in BMG's lawsuit, which alleged Cox failed to penalize its Internet customers who repeatedly infringed copyrighted materials. The jury awarded BMG $25 million in damages (see 1512180012). O’Grady said Cox was right that there was no evidence on how its users ended up using the content of more than 100,000 copies of BMG works, but there was enough proof "from which a reasonable jury could find Cox users violated BMG's reproduction right." Sydnor countered Public Knowledge’s assertions that O’Grady’s ruling threatens reliable internet access, saying the ruling “merely” confirms that law-abiding ISPs should now “cooperate with copyright owners and others to use new technologies to deter internet infringement more efficiently than take-down or service-termination remedies devised in the mid-1990s do,” as devised in Copyright Act Section 512. BMG v. Cox likely will be appealed, but the evidence presented in the district court “must now be interpreted in the way most favorable to the jury’s verdict,” Sydnor said: Cox’s “thirteen-strike” user-access termination program meant “a family could pay Cox for years without learning that Cox had long known that their teenager was using their account to pirate hundreds or thousands of songs and movies. The problems with such a program go well beyond the copyright laws. For example, concealing from parents offers to settle potentially devastating claims for a few dollars could violate the many U.S. laws that outlaw deceptive or unfair trade practices.” PK “just misses the point of Section 512,” Sydnor said. “Congress intended to create a set of rough, even mutually inconvenient, ground rules that would strongly encourage responsible copyright owners and ISPs to work together, through open, fair, and voluntary multi-industry standard-setting processes, to create the sort of ‘standard technical measures’ envisioned in Section 512.” The termination-of-service policy required by Section 512 “is really just one of many efforts to encourage ISPs to cooperate, rather than litigate, terminate or use their subscribers as human shields,” Sydnor said. “If the result in BMG v. Cox reminds ISPs of the many advantages of cooperating, then it is entirely consistent with congressional intent.” PK didn't comment.

The leaders of five Virginia universities’ libraries urged House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., to proceed with caution in evaluating the Copyright Office’s anticipated legislative recommendation on a digital-age revamp of Copyright Act Section 108, which includes an exemption allowing libraries and archives to reproduce and distribute copyrighted works. The CO told stakeholders in meetings earlier this summer that it plans to proceed with the rewrite recommendation (see 1608100054). The suggestion “may not be the best approach for seeking consensus, which has proved elusive over the past decade,” the Virginia university libraries wrote Tuesday. “While Section 108 may show its age in some ways, it adequately protects core library activities like preservation and interlibrary loan, and includes enough flexibility to accommodate digital innovation, especially in combination with Section 107, the fair use doctrine.” Signatories were College of William & Mary Dean-University Libraries Carrie Lynn Cooper, Virginia Commonwealth University Librarian John Ulmschneider, University of Virginia Librarian John Unsworth, Virginia Tech Dean-University Libraries Tyler Walters and George Mason University Librarian John Zenelis.