The Internet Association attempted to dispel what it calls five “myths” about the safe harbors in Digital Millennium Copyright Act Section 512. The Facebook- and Google-backed group recently warned against proposals to revamp section, saying proposals designed to rein in internet companies would hinder free speech and growth in the digital economy (see 1606210040). IA said in a Thursday blog post it believes “one of the worst arguments for changing the DMCA is that it is old -- the whole point of the safe harbors was that they weren’t meant for the technology of 1998.” Congress “didn’t write the law about 1998 technology for a reason: doing so would create a ceiling on creativity,” IA said. “Instead, policy makers knew the law could never keep pace with technology in the digital age, so they created a future-proof, clear system that established a firm floor of action and (critically) enacted strong incentives for good actors to develop practices that benefited both platforms and creators.” Online copyright infringement has diminished in the U.S. since DMCA enactment, countering the claims of interest groups that “have attempted to diminish the effectiveness of safe harbors by claiming that piracy is up and therefore the law isn’t working for rightsholders,” IA said. “DMCA-compliant platforms seeking legal distribution have flourished, reaching billions of users and growing to 6 percent of U.S. GDP, while infamous sites like Napster and Grooveshark have been unable to survive.” Claims the law hurt creators are “especially troubling, given the wealth of data and examples that we have to prove that just the opposite is true,” IA said. The group said Section 512 doesn't put too much of the onus for identifying copyright infringement on rightsholders, saying “all stakeholders have responsibilities” under the statute and “internet companies are going above and beyond those responsibilities to create a thriving ecosystem.” Proposals to revamp the act to institute a “notice and staydown” system would “shift the responsibility of identifying infringing works from rightsholders to the parties least qualified to make legal determinations about the nature of a work,” IA said. “To avoid staggering liability, platforms would be forced to keep a broad array of potentially legal content offline, limiting the public’s ability to meaningfully access and distribute legitimate sources of creative works.”

A range of copyright stakeholder groups lauded the Senate's confirmation Wednesday of Carla Hayden to become librarian of Congress. Senate confirmation followed a behind-the-scenes effort to lift a Republican senator's anonymous hold (see 1607130061). American Library Association President Julie Todaro said the library community “is elated” at Hayden's confirmation. “There is no doubt that Dr. Hayden will have a positive impact by leading efforts to establish a more modern approach to serving” Library of Congress stakeholders, Todaro said in a statement. Hayden's confirmation is “of paramount importance to our organization, and to many other users of the Copyright Office services,” Copyright Alliance CEO Keith Kupferschmid said in a statement. “Before her lies a tremendous opportunity and challenge to redefine what our national library can and should be for the 21st century. We in the copyright community look forward to working with Dr. Hayden and hope that she continues the deference that the Librarian of Congress has historically demonstrated to the Register of Copyrights; and demonstrates a continued and deep respect for the value of copyright and creativity that was evidenced during her confirmation hearing.” The Music. Innovation. Consumers. Coalition said in a statement it plans to work with Hayden “to modernize [the CO] and bring balance to copyright policies that ensure all Americans can continue to enjoy the music they love.” MPAA said it “looks forward to working closely with Dr. Hayden in our shared mission of protecting and promoting our nation's collective wisdom and creativity.” The R Street Institute believes “it is a relief to see that an institution as important as [the LOC] will be run by an experienced administrator with a deep understanding of information management and a track record of managing information technology and modernization efforts,” said Senior Fellow Zach Graves in a statement. “While some conservatives were obstructing her confirmation to score a few cheap political points, this effort had no clear goal or end-game. And they were ultimately just shooting themselves in the foot.”

Electronic Frontier Foundation Special Adviser Cory Doctorow said the security research community should subject a World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) HTML Media Extensions Working Group recommendation on a standardized application programming interface for encrypted media extensions (EME) to the “closest possible scrutiny.” The working group's published recommendation is still a draft document and “does not imply endorsement” by W3C members, the consortium said. The HME Working Group's recommended application program interface (API) would be an interoperable open standard to enable communication between web browsers and digital rights management (DRM) software. The API also would allow HTML5 playback of streaming video and other DRM-protected content without the need for third-party plug-ins. The API “does not define a content protection [DRM] system,” the HME Working Group said in the recommendation: “Rather, it defines a common API that may be used to discover, select and interact with such systems" and with simpler content encryption systems. DRM implementation “is not required to be implemented as a common baseline,” the working group said. EFF repeatedly has objected to the HME Working Group's development of the EME API and sought W3C stakeholders' support for an EFF-proposed covenant that would obligate all consortium stakeholders not to file or join a lawsuit against entities under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and similar laws for circumventing technological protection measures for security research purposes (see 1603240055 and 1604050056). “We will keep working to persuade the W3C to adopt our sensible proposal” Doctorow said in a Wednesday blog post. Meanwhile, he said, scrutiny of the EMI API recommendation is needed because “the black hats who are already doing this are not bound by fear of the DMCA, and they are delighted to have an attack surface that white hats are not allowed to investigate in detail.”

Google-owned YouTube has paid out more than $2 billion to content owners who since 2007 claimed copyright violations via the website's Content ID software, Google said Wednesday in a report on its anti-piracy actions. Content owners can use Content ID both to claim copyright infringement and seek monetary compensation for claimed content. Google's report came amid an ongoing campaign led by Azoff MSG Entertainment CEO Irving Azoff seeking a revamp the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to rein in Google and others (see 1606200047). "The music industry chooses to monetize more than 95% of their claims, opting to leave the content up on the platform -- half of the music industry's YouTube revenue comes from fan content claimed via Content ID,” said Google lawyer Katie Oyama in a blog post. “Thanks to Content ID, YouTube is also the only platform that gives partners an automated way to directly monetize background/incidental use and covers.”

The Copyright Royalty Board finalized approval of a settlement between the top three performing rights organizations and The Harry Fox Agency on distribution of 2012 and 2013 Digital Audio Recording Technology (DART) Musical Works Fund royalties. Harry Fox and the PROs -- the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers, Broadcast Music Inc. and the Society of European Stage Authors and Composers -- jointly sought distribution of 95 percent of the 2012 and 2013 DART Musical Works Fund royalties (see 1605170059). CRB's OK took effect Monday, the board said in Tuesday's Federal Register.

The Internet Association hailed a recent U.K. Intellectual Property Office report on online copyright infringement, saying in a blog post Friday the report shows “internet piracy has dropped to record lows with the rise of internet companies that offer streaming services such as Spotify and Netflix.” The U.K. IPO report said the “meteoric rise” of streaming services “may be having a chilling effect on illegal copyright infringement according to new research.” Fifty-two percent of U.K.-based internet users reported using streaming services to consume online content, with 44 percent of all users indicating they're consuming “exclusively legal” content. Five percent of users reported exclusively consuming illegally obtained content.

Apple wants to register the trademark “Night Shift” for a class of “computer software for controlling computer and mobile device display screens,” the company said in a June 28 application (serial number 87086665) filed at the Patent and Trademark Office. Apple filed a similar application (number 69112) with Jamaican trademark authorities in January, PTO records show. Apple doesn't intend to rely on Section 44(e) of the trademark law on foreign trademark ownership as a basis for registering the same trademark in the U.S., “but wishes only to assert a valid claim of priority,” said the application, signed by Apple Director-Legal Thomas La Perle. “The application should not be suspended to await the submission of the foreign registration,” it said. Apple representatives didn’t comment Wednesday.

U.S. District Court in Boston entered a final judgment Friday in favor of Akamai in the company’s long-running patent infringement lawsuit against Limelight Networks, awarding Akamai $51 million damages. The Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled in August that Limelight was liable for direct infringement of an Akamai-owned content delivery system patent (see 1508140059). The Federal Circuit’s 2015 en banc ruling, which remanded the case to the Boston district court, reversed an earlier circuit court decision from the same year. The Supreme Court ruled against the Federal Circuit in 2014 in Limelight v. Akamai (see report in the June 3, 2014, issue). The $51 million damages award announced Friday includes the initial $45.5 million damages a jury awarded Akamai in 2008 and $5.4 interest on the award, District Judge Rya Zobel said in the judgment (in Pacer). “We are extremely pleased after ten years of litigation to have a final judgment entered in Akamai's favor that recognizes Limelight's infringement and the harm it caused," said Akamai General Counsel Aaron Ahola in a statement. "We will continue to vigorously protect our intellectual property to maximize shareholder value." Limelight didn’t comment.

The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals punted a decision Wednesday on an appeal of a 2015 U.S. District Court ruling in Miami saying no specific Florida law allows for the pre-1972 sound recording royalties sought by the owners of The Turtles' “Happy Together” and the rest of the band's music. The 11th Circuit referred Flo & Eddie's lawsuit against Sirius XM to the Supreme Court of Florida, saying the case “presented issues that have not been addressed” by the state court, “we believe the issues are appropriate for resolution by Florida’s highest court and defer our decision in this case pending” a state Supreme Court decision. Circuit Judge Lanier Anderson said a 1943 Supreme Court of Florida decision involving magician Charles Hoffman's lawsuit against fellow magician Maurice Glazer for infringing one of Hoffman's magic tricks "indicates that there is at least a significant argument that Florida common law may recognize a common law property right in sound recordings," but isn't definitive absent a state Supreme Court ruling. The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals similarly deferred a decision in April on its review of Flo & Eddie's lawsuit against Sirius XM in New York until the New York Court of Appeals rules on whether New York state law recognizes a public performance right for pre-1972 sound recordings and the scope of the state's law (see 1604130063).

Warner Bros. Entertainment joined HEVC Advance as both an H.265 licensor and licensee, the patent pool said in a Monday announcement. Warner becomes the second new member, after MediaTek last fall, to join HEVC Advance since its 2015 inception (see 1509230066). It's the first since founding member Technicolor bolted the group in early February because it disagreed with the HEVC Advance royalty structure and because it decided it wanted to license its H.265 patent portfolio on its own (see 1602040042). Having Warner’s backing will help eliminate H.265 intellectual property “barriers and greatly accelerate UHD adoption,” said HEVC Advance CEO Pete Moller in a statement.