The Washington, DC-based public interest group Public Knowledge has launched an initiative urging social media users to lobby for the adoption of reforms to copyright on the Internet.

Via the online lobbying platform Internet Blueprint, support is sought for six pending legislative bills:

• “Strengthening Fair Use Act” – which seeks to eliminate forced repayment of copyright owners’ legal fees in fair use cases and the expansion of examples of uses in fair use.
• “Shortening the Term of Copyright Act” – which would shorten US copyright protection terms to the life of the author plus 50 years from present 70 years.
• “Reducing Copyright Abuse and Overreach Act” – which is designed to prevent copyright owners from claiming powers that the law does not grant them, according to the accompanying explanation of the proposal.
• “Eliminating Barriers to Lawful Use Act” – which seeks to amend the anti-circumvention provision of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act by allowing the breaking of digital rights management (DRM) for lawful uses and enable the sale of tools for lawfully breaking DRM.
• “Transparency and Accountability in IP Trade Negotiations Act” – which calls for transparency in forging trade agreements on intellectual property and for any US Trade Representative (USTR) advisory group to include representatives from public interest groups.
• “Strengthening and Improving DMCA Safe Harbors Act” – which seeks to improve the notice-and-take down process in which an intermediary is obliged to pull down content upon receipt of a complaint and asks for higher penalties for the harmed party.

According to IP Watch, the two most-voted proposals so far are extending first-sale rights to users and for network providers who offer services that violate the internet neutrality standard to be prohibited from labelling their services as “internet services.”

In a decision handed down by Mr Justice Arnold on 20 February 2012, the High Court finds that UK users of The Pirate Bay website are liable for copyright infringement for communicating copyrighted sound recordings to the public and that the operators of The Pirate Bay authorise infringements of copyright by its users and are jointly liable for these copyright infringements: Dramatico Entertainment Limited & others v British Sky Broadcasting Limited & others [2012] EWHC 268 (Ch) (Herbert Smith)

The Federal Court of Australia has ruled that Optus does not infringe copyright in the TV programs recorded by users of its ’TV Now’ cloud-based recording service.

In Singtel Optus v National Rugby League Investments, Rares J found that a recording of a TV show using a cloud-based service is made by the individual user of the service, not by the provider of the service. This was significant because Australian copyright law permits individuals to record a TV broadcast if it is for “private and domestic use” for watching at a later time – i.e. for “time-shifting”. Because the TV recordings by the Optus service were found to have been made by Optus’s customer rather than Optus itself, the “time shifting” exception applied and the recordings did not infringe copyright.

Separately, the court found that the later streaming of recordings to a user’s viewing device was a communication made by the user, not by Optus. This finding is significant because copyright law prohibits communication of a copyright work “to the public”. If the ‘TV Now’ streaming was found to have been made by Optus, then it would have been a communication to the public – and thus an infringement. However, because the streaming was made by the user, the communication was by the user to his/herself and not to the public – and so was permitted.

The underlying rationale for this decision is that TV recordings made using a cloud-based service, such as ‘TV Now’, should be treated the same as recordings using home-based equipment, such as a VCR or a DVR – a rationale that has been adopted in similar cases in the US and Singapore.

Five major Australian Internet Service Providers have released details of a proposed scheme for assisting copyright owners to enforce their rights against customers downloading infringing material.  Under the so-called “Notice and Discovery” scheme, the ISPs will send, first, an “education notice” and then, subsequently, “warning notices” to customers whose IP addresses have been associated with infringing downloads. In the event that a customer is sent three warning notices in a 12-month period, the ISP will inform the copyright owner of that fact – which will enable the copyright owner to apply to a court for an order that the ISP disclose the identity of the customer (a necessary precursor to bringing a court action against the customer).

The business model for the music recording industry is changing quickly, and the viability of record labels in the new environment is an open question. On November 15, in Nashville, TN, a distinguished panel of business and academic experts will debate the role of record labels in the digital age, and will offer some provocative perspectives on the future of the music business.

The debate, the first of an ongoing series born of the Vanderbilt University-University of Melbourne partnership, will be held from 9:00-10:45 am in Flynn Auditorium at Vanderbilt Law School. The debate is free and open to the public.

Video of the event will be streamed live at the Vanderbilt website, and will be available for viewing after the event on YouTube.

The Australian telecommunications company Optus has filed Federal Court proceedings seeking a declaration that its ‘TV Now’ service does not infringe copyright.  TV Now provide Optus customers with the ability to order recordings of free-to-air TV shows for later downloading and viewing on mobile phones or computers. A similar service in Singapore, provided by RecordTV, was found to not to be an infringement of copyright: RecordTV Pte Ltd v. MediaCorp TV Singapore Pte Ltd [2011] 1 SLR 830 (CA). Source: SMH.com.au

The Australian Attorney-General has announced that his department will host an industry roundtable seeking a consensus solution to combatting online infringement of copyright material.  Despite the Attorney-General’s encouragement, copyright owners and ISPs have not been able to agree a procedure for removing the Internet access of repeat infringing downloaders.  The roundtable is an attempt to break this deadlock. The implication is that if a consensus solution is not obtained, the government will legislate for one. Source: Australian IT

The film companies suing internet service provider iiNet for copyright infringement have won leave to appeal to the High Court to overturn a recent Full Federal Court appeal decision in favour of iiNet. The case will be heard in 2012. Source: Copyright Society of Australia