Hi folks,
As has been mentioned on this list before, the US Librarian of Congress is soliciting input to help her select the next Register of Copyrights https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Register_of_Copyrights[1]. The deadline to submit comments https://www.research.net/r/RegisterOfCopyrights[2] is January 31. I’m working on preparing comments for the Wikimedia Foundation, and I’m interested to hear from you about the themes you think are important to touch on.
The Register of Copyrights is in charge of the Copyright Office http://copyright.gov/[3] in the US. In addition to maintaining (and hopefully improving) the copyright registration system, the Copyright Office plays an important role in advising Congress on copyright-related matters. They gather information about copyright law and the functioning of the copyright system and they analyze and interpret that information for Congress. As such, they can have significant influence on the perspectives and considerations that form the basis of proposed changes to US copyright law.
I currently plan to emphasize that the Register should understand the full scope of the copyright landscape and who the stakeholders are and will be. Discussions of copyright law often involve simplified narratives of legacy rightsholders like movie studios versus online platforms like YouTube. The Register must see beyond those narratives. They need to recognize the creativity and expression that online platforms for individuals and other small creators. They also need to understand that copyright exists ultimately to benefit the public—to encourage people to create and share works in order for the rest of society to benefit from those works (including by sharing, building on, and remixing them).
What other themes do you think are important to Wikimedia? What should the Librarian of Congress be thinking about when looking for the next Register of Copyrights? There are a lot of potential topics to discuss, so we won’t be able to mention all of them, but your input will help us decide what to focus on. If you’re interested, I encourage you to submit your own comments as well.
- Charles
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Register_of_Copyrights
[2] https://www.research.net/r/RegisterOfCopyrights [3] http://copyright.gov/
== Charles M. Roslof Legal Counsel Wikimedia Foundation croslof@wikimedia.org (415) 839-6885
NOTICE: This message might have confidential or legally privileged information in it. If you have received this message by accident, please delete it and let us know about the mistake. As an attorney for the Wikimedia Foundation, for legal/ethical reasons I cannot give legal advice to, or serve as a lawyer for, community members, volunteers, or staff members in their personal capacity. For more on what this means, please see our legal disclaimer https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Legal_Disclaimer.
Possibly useful for you, here's what CC submitted:
https://creativecommons.org/2017/01/26/new-register-copyrights-put-public-ce...
timothy
On Wed, Jan 25, 2017 at 3:14 PM, Charles M. Roslof croslof@wikimedia.org wrote:
Hi folks,
As has been mentioned on this list before, the US Librarian of Congress is soliciting input to help her select the next Register of Copyrights https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Register_of_Copyrights[1]. The deadline to submit comments https://www.research.net/r/RegisterOfCopyrights[2] is January 31. I’m working on preparing comments for the Wikimedia Foundation, and I’m interested to hear from you about the themes you think are important to touch on.
The Register of Copyrights is in charge of the Copyright Office http://copyright.gov/[3] in the US. In addition to maintaining (and hopefully improving) the copyright registration system, the Copyright Office plays an important role in advising Congress on copyright-related matters. They gather information about copyright law and the functioning of the copyright system and they analyze and interpret that information for Congress. As such, they can have significant influence on the perspectives and considerations that form the basis of proposed changes to US copyright law.
I currently plan to emphasize that the Register should understand the full scope of the copyright landscape and who the stakeholders are and will be. Discussions of copyright law often involve simplified narratives of legacy rightsholders like movie studios versus online platforms like YouTube. The Register must see beyond those narratives. They need to recognize the creativity and expression that online platforms for individuals and other small creators. They also need to understand that copyright exists ultimately to benefit the public—to encourage people to create and share works in order for the rest of society to benefit from those works (including by sharing, building on, and remixing them).
What other themes do you think are important to Wikimedia? What should the Librarian of Congress be thinking about when looking for the next Register of Copyrights? There are a lot of potential topics to discuss, so we won’t be able to mention all of them, but your input will help us decide what to focus on. If you’re interested, I encourage you to submit your own comments as well.
- Charles
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Register_of_Copyrights
[2] https://www.research.net/r/RegisterOfCopyrights [3] http://copyright.gov/
== Charles M. Roslof Legal Counsel Wikimedia Foundation croslof@wikimedia.org (415) 839-6885
NOTICE: This message might have confidential or legally privileged information in it. If you have received this message by accident, please delete it and let us know about the mistake. As an attorney for the Wikimedia Foundation, for legal/ethical reasons I cannot give legal advice to, or serve as a lawyer for, community members, volunteers, or staff members in their personal capacity. For more on what this means, please see our legal disclaimer https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Legal_Disclaimer.
Publicpolicy mailing list Publicpolicy@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/publicpolicy
Thanks for sharing, Timothy!
On Thu, Jan 26, 2017 at 10:27 AM, Timothy Vollmer tvol@creativecommons.org wrote:
Possibly useful for you, here's what CC submitted:
https://creativecommons.org/2017/01/26/new-register- copyrights-put-public-center-technology-policy-goals/
timothy
On Wed, Jan 25, 2017 at 3:14 PM, Charles M. Roslof croslof@wikimedia.org wrote:
Hi folks,
As has been mentioned on this list before, the US Librarian of Congress is soliciting input to help her select the next Register of Copyrights https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Register_of_Copyrights[1]. The deadline to submit comments https://www.research.net/r/RegisterOfCopyrights[2] is January 31. I’m working on preparing comments for the Wikimedia Foundation, and I’m interested to hear from you about the themes you think are important to touch on.
The Register of Copyrights is in charge of the Copyright Office http://copyright.gov/[3] in the US. In addition to maintaining (and hopefully improving) the copyright registration system, the Copyright Office plays an important role in advising Congress on copyright-related matters. They gather information about copyright law and the functioning of the copyright system and they analyze and interpret that information for Congress. As such, they can have significant influence on the perspectives and considerations that form the basis of proposed changes to US copyright law.
I currently plan to emphasize that the Register should understand the full scope of the copyright landscape and who the stakeholders are and will be. Discussions of copyright law often involve simplified narratives of legacy rightsholders like movie studios versus online platforms like YouTube. The Register must see beyond those narratives. They need to recognize the creativity and expression that online platforms for individuals and other small creators. They also need to understand that copyright exists ultimately to benefit the public—to encourage people to create and share works in order for the rest of society to benefit from those works (including by sharing, building on, and remixing them).
What other themes do you think are important to Wikimedia? What should the Librarian of Congress be thinking about when looking for the next Register of Copyrights? There are a lot of potential topics to discuss, so we won’t be able to mention all of them, but your input will help us decide what to focus on. If you’re interested, I encourage you to submit your own comments as well.
- Charles
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Register_of_Copyrights
[2] https://www.research.net/r/RegisterOfCopyrights [3] http://copyright.gov/
== Charles M. Roslof Legal Counsel Wikimedia Foundation croslof@wikimedia.org (415) 839-6885
NOTICE: This message might have confidential or legally privileged information in it. If you have received this message by accident, please delete it and let us know about the mistake. As an attorney for the Wikimedia Foundation, for legal/ethical reasons I cannot give legal advice to, or serve as a lawyer for, community members, volunteers, or staff members in their personal capacity. For more on what this means, please see our legal disclaimer https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Legal_Disclaimer.
Publicpolicy mailing list Publicpolicy@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/publicpolicy
-- Invest in an open future. Support Creative Commons today. https://creativecommons.org/donate/
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Hi Timothy,
I read your submission on the Registrar of Copyrights with great interest. I want to ask some questions about two passages in particular, and Creative Commons' positions generally.
The Register should also have a firm grasp of technology and understanding of how creators and users share over the internet, and be willing to reconsider policies that impede the sharing of content in the digital era.
Do you consider the use of compulsory licenses imposed on commercial content hosts an adequate response to the problem of mass illicit sharing of restricted works?
Do you think compulsory license distribution schedules designed to address compensating creators harmed by mass illicit sharing but not necessarily shared by the same commercial content hosts which pay them would impede or promote sharing?
Regarding authors’ rights, copyright policymaking should uphold a principle of “copyright neutrality”. This means that when copyright policy is made, it needs to treat all stakeholders (authors) equally and take all authorial needs into consideration, not just those who wish to maximize their protection under the law, or who have an outsized ability to influence the policy-making process.
I very strongly agree with that, but wonder whether it goes far enough to make a difference.
Some authors are interested in commercialization, while others wish to share widely under permissive terms.
What proportion of authors are able to afford the time and resources to create free content because they are supported financially by their production of commercial content?
In general does CC support transitioning to sliding-scale compulsory license fee incidences, to support the end result of paying authors and artists in the same relative amounts observed in the 1970s, prior to the advent of mass illicit copying and subsequent media conglomerate consolidation?
Do you and CC agree that the current compulsory license schedules result in unfair enrichment of the largest top-40 artists and bestselling authors promoted by the remaining relatively few media publishers, at the expense of small and emerging artists and authors?
What is the appropriate way to ask Creative Commons to make a formal decision on these questions as a whole?
Best regards, Jim Salsman
On Thu, Jan 26, 2017 at 11:27 AM, Timothy Vollmer tvol@creativecommons.org wrote:
Possibly useful for you, here's what CC submitted:
https://creativecommons.org/2017/01/26/new-register-copyrights-put-public-ce...
timothy
On Wed, Jan 25, 2017 at 3:14 PM, Charles M. Roslof croslof@wikimedia.org wrote:
Hi folks,
As has been mentioned on this list before, the US Librarian of Congress is soliciting input to help her select the next Register of Copyrights[1]. The deadline to submit comments[2] is January 31. I’m working on preparing comments for the Wikimedia Foundation, and I’m interested to hear from you about the themes you think are important to touch on.
The Register of Copyrights is in charge of the Copyright Office[3] in the US. In addition to maintaining (and hopefully improving) the copyright registration system, the Copyright Office plays an important role in advising Congress on copyright-related matters. They gather information about copyright law and the functioning of the copyright system and they analyze and interpret that information for Congress. As such, they can have significant influence on the perspectives and considerations that form the basis of proposed changes to US copyright law.
I currently plan to emphasize that the Register should understand the full scope of the copyright landscape and who the stakeholders are and will be. Discussions of copyright law often involve simplified narratives of legacy rightsholders like movie studios versus online platforms like YouTube. The Register must see beyond those narratives. They need to recognize the creativity and expression that online platforms for individuals and other small creators. They also need to understand that copyright exists ultimately to benefit the public—to encourage people to create and share works in order for the rest of society to benefit from those works (including by sharing, building on, and remixing them).
What other themes do you think are important to Wikimedia? What should the Librarian of Congress be thinking about when looking for the next Register of Copyrights? There are a lot of potential topics to discuss, so we won’t be able to mention all of them, but your input will help us decide what to focus on. If you’re interested, I encourage you to submit your own comments as well.
- Charles
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Register_of_Copyrights
[2] https://www.research.net/r/RegisterOfCopyrights
== Charles M. Roslof Legal Counsel Wikimedia Foundation croslof@wikimedia.org (415) 839-6885
NOTICE: This message might have confidential or legally privileged information in it. If you have received this message by accident, please delete it and let us know about the mistake. As an attorney for the Wikimedia Foundation, for legal/ethical reasons I cannot give legal advice to, or serve as a lawyer for, community members, volunteers, or staff members in their personal capacity. For more on what this means, please see our legal disclaimer.
Publicpolicy mailing list Publicpolicy@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/publicpolicy
-- Invest in an open future. Support Creative Commons today. https://creativecommons.org/donate/
Publicpolicy mailing list Publicpolicy@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/publicpolicy
Thank you for sharing CC's comments, Timothy, and thank you to all those who emailed me off-list to provide additional input. I have attached the comments we submitted, as well as pasted them below.
- Charles
------
The Wikimedia Foundation appreciates the opportunity to provide input on the Librarian of Congress’s search for the next Register of Copyrights. We are a non-profit and charitable organization that operates a family of websites https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Our_projects, including Wikipedia https://www.wikipedia.org/, the internet's largest and most popular general reference work, and Wikimedia Commons https://commons.wikimedia.org, a database of millions of freely usable media files. The direction of the Copyright Office is important to the many Wikimedia sites that rely on the contributions of users who choose to freely license their contributions for public use and benefit.
Below we have outlined the top priorities we feel the next Register should have in leading the Copyright Office. I. Engaging with and understanding all stakeholders
It is important for the Register to be aware of and understand the full scope of the copyright landscape, including who the stakeholders are and will be. The Register should engage with stakeholders on all levels and strive to ensure the makeup of the Copyright Office reflects a diversity of experiences with copyright. In crafting copyright policy, it is as important to consider the perspectives of independent creators and the general public as those of legacy rightsholders and large online platforms.
In furtherance of this goal, the Register should be committed to providing a variety of avenues, especially less formal ones, for engaging with stakeholders. The current process of notice and comment is an effective method for gaining detailed responses to specific questions. However, it can only touch on a limited number of topics, it does not allow for efficient back-and-forth communication, and it is limited in the audiences it will reach.
The Copyright Office can improve the responsiveness and accessibility of its communications by putting existing channels, such as its blog http://blogs.loc.gov/copyrightdigitization/ and Twitter account https://twitter.com/CopyrightOffice, to better use, https://twitter.com/CopyrightOfficeas https://twitter.com/CopyrightOffice w https://twitter.com/CopyrightOfficeel https://twitter.com/CopyrightOfficel https://twitter.com/CopyrightOffice as https://twitter.com/CopyrightOffice by experimenting with n https://twitter.com/CopyrightOfficeew https://twitter.com/CopyrightOffice s https://twitter.com/CopyrightOfficeoc https://twitter.com/CopyrightOfficeia https://twitter.com/CopyrightOfficel https://twitter.com/CopyrightOffice me https://twitter.com/CopyrightOfficedi https://twitter.com/CopyrightOfficea https://twitter.com/CopyrightOffice an https://twitter.com/CopyrightOfficed https://twitter.com/CopyrightOfficeco https://twitter.com/CopyrightOfficemm https://twitter.com/CopyrightOfficeun https://twitter.com/CopyrightOfficeic https://twitter.com/CopyrightOfficeat https://twitter.com/CopyrightOfficeio https://twitter.com/CopyrightOfficen https://twitter.com/CopyrightOffice to https://twitter.com/CopyrightOfficeol https://twitter.com/CopyrightOffices. For example, the White House's consultation on the Federal Open Source Policy https://github.com/WhiteHouse/source-code-policy on Github showed both the policymakers' understanding of modern software technology and a willingness to meet technologists in the online spaces where they already are. The Copyright Office should be prepared to take a similar approach to working with the next generation of creators on the internet. The next Register should have the expertise to lead the Copyright Office in revitalizing communication on existing channels, as well as the drive to seek new opportunities to engage stakeholders left behind by formal notice-and-comment processes. II. Focusing on copyright as a public benefitThe Register should understand that copyright exists to benefit the public and that it is the Copyright Office’s responsibility to represent the public interest. The ultimate goal of copyright is to expand the public domain. It first encourages the creation of new works with economic incentives for creators in the form of monopolies over the reproduction and distribution of their works. It then allows those monopolies to expire, so all of society can share and build on those works without limitation.
As the forum for many discussions about copyright law, the Copyright Office often finds itself in the middle of heated debates. The Register must stay grounded in the fundamental questions of copyright when evaluating the current state of and proposed changes to the copyright system. Are people creating and able to create new works? Are people able to access, build upon, and remix existing works? Would a proposed change to copyright law increase or decrease the number and variety of new works being created? How would it burden or enable free expression? It is the Register’s responsibility to ensure that the Copyright Office bases its analysis and proposals on the answers to these questions. III. Keeping up with technological advances and new uses of current technology
It is no small feat to keep track of the rapid changes in both technology and the way people use that technology, and the Register should be committed to implementing procedures to stay informed. Doing so is crucial for the Register to be equipped to decide which policy studies the Copyright Office should undertake and where the copyright law is lagging behind technological advancements.
Further, the Register should understand that technological innovations are just as likely to create new avenues for creativity and legal uses of copyrighted work as they are to create opportunities for infringement. A Register who embraces this perspective will be better able to account for the needs of all communities that are affected by copyright law. IV. Creating and improving educational resources
As technology makes it ever easier for people to create and share works, it is all the more important for there to be accessible and reliable sources of information about copyright. Currently, many of the more prominent resources that independent content creators and individual users can look to in order to understand their rights and protections under copyright law are created by online platforms. For example, the YouTube Copyright Center https://www.youtube.com/yt/copyright/ educates visitors about copyright issues that users may encounter when creating content for YouTube. While resources like this can be helpful and informative, they are necessarily focused on the type of content hosted on a specific platform and that platform’s particular concerns.
The Copyright Office is well-positioned to offer stakeholders, particularly those who are unfamiliar with the intricacies of copyright law, with guidance on the topics and issues that they are most likely to encounter in the current technological and cultural environment. As a representative of the public interest, the Copyright Office should be able to create neutral and comprehensive resources for the public to rely on. Existing features of the Copyright Office’s website, such as the Fair Use Index https://www.copyright.gov/fair-use/ and Frequently Asked Questions https://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/index.html, are a step in the right direction and should be regularly updated to reflect concerns of modern copyright stakeholders. The next Register of Copyrights should be committed to redoubling such efforts and improving their accessibility for stakeholders of all levels of sophistication.
Thank you again for requesting public input as part of the search for the next Register of Copyrights. We look forward to the Librarian of Congress’s decision and to the Register’s leadership of the Copyright Office.
Sincerely,
Wikimedia Foundation
== Charles M. Roslof Legal Counsel Wikimedia Foundation croslof@wikimedia.org (415) 839-6885
NOTICE: This message might have confidential or legally privileged information in it. If you have received this message by accident, please delete it and let us know about the mistake. As an attorney for the Wikimedia Foundation, for legal/ethical reasons I cannot give legal advice to, or serve as a lawyer for, community members, volunteers, or staff members in their personal capacity. For more on what this means, please see our legal disclaimer https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Legal_Disclaimer.
publicpolicy@lists.wikimedia.org