Former Congressman John Conyers, Jr. (D-Michigan) passed away today, October 27, 2019. He was 90. According to The Washington Post, Conyers, one of the longest-serving members of Congress and the longest-serving African American member of Congress, died from natural causes.
Although Conyers is most frequently associated with civil rights issues and as one of the founding members of the Congressional Black Caucus, he was also an ardent supporter of copyright and the rights of creatives. In his capacity as ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, a position Conyers held from 2001 to 2017 (and had held previously from 1995 to 2007), he worked closely with chairman Bob Goodlatte to spearhead the copyright review, which would become the most comprehensive examination of U.S. copyright law since the passage of the Copyright Act of 1976.
Conyers also served as chairman of the House Judiciary Committee from 2007 to 2011, and chairman of the House Oversight Committee from 1989 to 1995. He left Congress in late 2017 following allegations of sexual harassment.
He is survived by his wife and two sons.
To date, the copyright review that he helped start has produced one successful piece of legislation, the Music Modernization Act (see Chapter 7 of The Unrealized Promise of the Next Great Copyright Act), and one other bill, the Copyright Alternative in Small-Claims Enforcement (CASE) Act just passed the House and is awaiting a floor vote in the senate.
As I wrote back in June, the Copyright Alternative in Small-Claims Enforcement (CASE) Act, which had been introduced in the 115th Congress, was reintroduced on May 1st of this year as H.R. 4246. On October 22, it passed the House on a vote of 410-6. It now goes on to the Senate, where companion bill S. 1273 awaits a floor vote (it was reported out of the Judiciary Committee on September 12, 2019).
Discussed more fully in Chapter 6 of The Unrealized Promise of the Next Great Copyright Act, the CASE Act calls for the establishment of a tribunal within the Copyright Office to adjudicate relatively minor copyright infringement claims. The procedure is intended to provide alternative path to adjudication for small, independent creative professionals who typically do not have the resources to bring full-fledged federal infringement litigation. Damages would be capped at $15,000 per claim (and $30,000 per total). The streamlined adjudicatory process would be entirely voluntary — plaintiffs would remain free to file infringement actions in feral district court, just as they do now, and defendants may opt out, effectively requiring the plaintiff to bring the action in federal district court.
On July 5, 2019 the U.S. Copyright Office announced that pursuant to its authority under the Orrin G. Hatch-Bob Goodlatte Music Modernization Act, it has appointed the aptly named Mechanical Licensing Collective, Inc., to serve as the designated mechanical licensing collective (MLC) and Digital Licensee Coordinator, Inc., to serve as the digital license coordinator.
As one might expect, the Mechanical Licensing Collective, Inc. board comprises representatives from the music publishing and songwriting community, while the board of Digital Licensee Coordinator, Inc. is composed of representatives from the titans of digital music distribution: Amazon, Apple, Google, Sirius XM, and Spotify.
On June 26, Karyn Temple, the Register of Copyrights and Director of the U.S. Copyright Office, appeared before the House Judiciary Committee as the sole witness in a hearing on Oversight of the U.S. Copyright Office.
Oversight hearings are fairly routine in Washington, but this one was notable because it was the first time that Register Temple has appeared before the Committee since her permanent appointment to the Register post back in March, giving her an opportunity to present her vision for the future of the Office and her policy priorities.
Not surprisingly, much of the discussion centered around the modernization of the Office’s IT systems, and the Library’s meddling in the Office’s IT affairs. As described throughout The Unrealized Promise, the relationship between the Library’s IT department and the Copyright Office has been fraught (to put it mildly), but Register Temple appeared confident that the Library’s CIO would adhere to the statutory mandate to use funding allocated specifically for the Copyright Office for Office-specific IT enhancements.
Other topics of discussion included the recently re-introduced CASE Act, which would provide copyright owners with an alternative to full-blown federal court litigation for infringements of relatively small value; and the upcoming expiration of the section 119 license for satellite retransmissions which, as readers of The Unrealized Promise‘s chapter 8 know, has traditionally been extended at the last minute. The Copyright Office has long supported the phasing out of the various statutory licenses for broadcast retransmissions, and Register Temple reiterated that view on Wednesday.
In Chapter 5, I briefly discuss a case brought by the Electronic Frontier Foundation challenging the constitutionality of the anticircumvention provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (better known as “Section 1201”). At the time the book was written, the plaintiffs’ motion for a preliminary injunction and the defendants’ motion to dismiss were pending.
On June 27, 2019, the court granted in part and denied in part the defendants’ motion to dismiss, leaving intact only an as-applied challenge on grounds that the government failed to establish that the anti-circumvention and anti-trafficking provisions do not burden more speech than necessary to achieve their intended ends. The court did not rule on the motion for preliminary injunction. The full opinion is below.
The case is Green, et al. v. U.S. Department of Justice, et al., Civil No. 16-01492, pending before the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
In Chapter 6 of The Unrealized Promise of the Next Great Copyright Act, I discuss the Copyright Alternative in Small-Claims Enforcement Act which was introduced in the 115th Congress but did not make it through the legislative process before the end of the term. Intended to alleviate the burden on small, independent creative professionals who often do not have the resources to bring full-blown traditional federal litigation, the bill would have established a tribunal within the Copyright Office to adjudicate certain infringement claims of relatively low value. Participation would be voluntary, though the timing and mechanism by which a defendant would opt in (or opt out) of the procedure was a matter of some consternation among stakeholders.
The measure has been re-introduced in the 116th Congress in both houses: H.R. 2426 in the House and S. 1273 in the Senate. As with last term, the bill enjoys broad support, especially from the visual arts industry.
