On June 16th, the Copyright Claims Board (CCB) began their first proceedings. Created by the passage of the CASE Act in 2020, the CCB aims to resolve copyright disputes “of a relatively low economic value,” and will arbitrate copyright infringement claims of up to $30,000. 

Libraries and archives have been granted an opportunity to pre-emptively opt-out of claims brought to the CCB. If a qualifying organization opts out, any copyright infringement claims would need to be filed in federal court. The MLA Legislation Committee recommends talking with your scholarly communication, copyright, or administration teams to inquire if your organization is opting out. The ARL Case Act Toolkit is a helpful resource for organizations who want to understand implications for libraries and archives under the law. 

While libraries, archives, and their employees may pre-emptively opt-out, it’s important to know that there are members of our campus communities who will still be subject to claims brought to the CCB. This may include students, faculty, and non-library employees. The CASE Act Toolkit provides a helpful overview of how the CCB impacts different members of our communities.

In recent years, we have seen a number of legislative efforts brought forward that were introduced as anti-piracy measures, but whose design would go far beyond addressing copyright infringement, leading to significant censorship online.

The SMART Copyright Act of 2022 introduced in the Senate seeks to require new technology measures to act as a filter to prevent infringing content online. It’s unclear why this bill is necessary: the Digital Millenium Copyright Act already requires internet companies to have technological measures in place to address issues of copyright infringement. As the Library Copyright Alliance points out, civil and criminal penalties for violating rights holders’ technological prevention measures or trafficking in devices that enable circumvention of those measures already exist. Current law also prohibits the altering or removal of copyright management information from content. With these existing laws, it’s unclear why new, standardized technology is necessary.

This legislation could also disturb what’s already an uneasy balance between rights holders and content creators online. During COVID-19, our music communities relied entirely on the internet to share and collaborate on their art. However, even classical musicians found existing copyright management systems like those on Youtube and Facebook getting in their way of sharing work from the public domain. 

These kinds of erroneous copyright notices are harming musicians’ ability to legally share their work and legally monetize their labor. For scholars and artists who rely on transformative fair uses of copyrighted material, automated filters increase the chances that their work will be flagged as infringing. As the EFF points out, computers can't judge the difference between criticism, parody, and infringement. 

Youtube copyright claim for three different copyrighted sound recordings on a student performance of the public domain “Im wunderschönen Monat Mai from Dichterliebe” by Schumann

Not only would this proposed legislation impact the communities we serve, but it also will impact libraries. While the proposed legislation does give the Librarian of Congress the ability to exempt libraries and archives, an exemption is still required. Just as libraries are finding clarity in ways to share our rich music collections from the Music Modernization Act, we could find ourselves having to implement technology filters that could pre-empt our legal sharing of those collections. 

The act also calls for this technology to be revisited and potentially changed every three years. Libraries are already faced with changes to policy and access every three years through the DMCA 1201 rulemaking process, which often impacts the ways we can legally share materials from our collections in teaching and research. This new law would add an additional burden on our institutions and create significant, ongoing uncertainty about how we can achieve our mission under the law.

The efforts of the Copyright Office would be better served by continuing to work on expanding how their data is accessed and deployed by individual platforms and providers to ensure that we see fewer barriers to sharing the public domain and have less uncertainty about legally sharing collections. 

On Monday, April 25th, we invite MLA members to join in sending a message to our legislators that the SMART Copyright Act is not the best path to addressing issues of online infringement. Join our colleagues at Electronic Frontier Foundation, Public Knowledge, the Internet Archive, and the Library Copyright Alliance in opposing these efforts to create new censorship tools online.

Individuals can share their views by signing existing petitions, writing your congress persons, and joining efforts on Twitter on April 25 to raise awareness about this issue.

-Music Library Association Legislation Committee

Final Rule Regarding the Noncommercial Use Exception to Unauthorized Uses of Pre-1972 Sound Recordings

'Truly a Historic Moment': Music Business Reacts to Music Modernization Act Becoming Law

https://www.billboard.com/articles/business/8475876/music-modernization-act-passes-senate-unanimous-support

The full announcement:

We are pleased to introduce the Journal of Copyright in Education and Librarianship (https://www.jcel-pub.org/). The journal, founded by Carla Myers (University of Colorado, Colorado Springs), Tucker Taylor (University of South Carolina), and Andrew Wesolek (Clemson University), is a peer-reviewed open-access publication for original articles, reviews and case studies that analyze or describe the strategies, partnerships and impact of copyright law on public, school, academic, and digital libraries, archives, museums, and research institutions and their educational initiatives. The Journal’s founding Editorial Board includes some of the nation’s foremost experts in copyright and higher education, including: Kyle Courtney (Harvard University), Kenneth  D. Crews (Gipson Hoffman & Pancione), Donna Ferullo (Purdue University), Christine Fruin (University of Florida), Isaac Gilman (Pacific University), Dick Kawooya (University of South Carolina), Tomas Lipinski (University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee), Lisa Macklin (Emory University), Sarah McCleskey (Hofstra University), and Kevin Smith (University of Kansas).   The first issue features papers based on presentations delivered at the 2016 Kraemer Copyright Conference, held this past Spring at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs as well as an essay from Editorial Board member Kenneth D. Crews about the considerations the Board made in drafting the author agreement.   The Journal will be published bi-annually in the fall and spring and welcomes submissions for future issues, including original research and practitioner experience papers, legal analysis, as well as submissions in alternative formats. The Journal appreciates the sponsorship of University of Colorado, Colorado Springs and the support of the University of Kansas, Clemson University, and the University of South Carolina.   Contact: jcelpub@gmail.com  

Included in the report is a comparison of licensing provisions in other countries, as well as a draft and discussion of potential legislation.

The Music Library Association was among those parties that submitted comments, and at least one of our members participated in the public roundtables.

Read the full report here: Orphan Works and Mass Digitization: A Report of the Register of Copyrights