Reps. Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., and Tom Marino, R-Pa., bowed their Copyright Alternative in Small-Claims Enforcement Act. As expected (see 1606080068), the bill mirrors a 2013 Copyright Office recommendation for establishing a voluntary process for adjudicating small copyright infringement claims. HR-5757 would establish the three-member Copyright Claims Board within the CO to “serve as an alternative forum in which parties may voluntarily seek to resolve certain copyright claims, regarding any category of copyrighted work.” The librarian of Congress would appoint the CCB's three members to a six-year term based on the register of copyrights' recommendation. The CCB's initial appointees would have shorter terms under HR-5757 to allow future board appointments to be staggered, with one CCB member having only a four-year term and one a five-year term. The bill would require CCB members to have at least seven years of legal experience. HR-5757 would mandate that at least two of the three CCB members have “substantial experience in the evaluation, litigation, or adjudication of copyright infringement claims and, between them, shall have represented or presided over a diversity of copyright interests, including those of both owners and users of copyrighted works.” The CCB also would include at least two full-time copyright claims lawyers under HR-5757. The bill requires the CCB lawyers to have at least three years of copyright-related legal experience. “It is time” for the House Judiciary Committee to “start moving forward with legislative measures that reflect the lessons we have learned in the context” of the committee's Copyright Act review, Marino said in a statement. “Providing a voluntary process to resolve small copyright disputes will result in increased registration, proper licensing and less infringement. This is good for our economy, it is good for the creative community, and it is good for” the CO. “Federal litigation is simply out of reach for many individual creators and small businesses, leaving them a right without a remedy,” said Copyright Alliance CEO Keith Kupferschmid in a Wednesday statement. “We are ... grateful for their willingness to look for ways to help individual creators who lack the resources to use the federal court system to enforce their copyrights.” Newspaper Association of America President David Chavern said in a letter the bill “will be particularly helpful for many of those individual creators and small businesses who face copyright issues, yet find federal litigation to be out of reach. The hard work of individuals who create content can be put in jeopardy, and many times they are left without a remedy.”

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.

NCTA criticisms of the FCC set-top plan are “based on a false rendition of copyright law,” said the Consumer Video Choice Coalition in a letter posted in docket 16-42 Thursday. “Time and again, NCTA mistakenly claims that the NRPM’s [sic] proposed approach grants rights to 'unlicensed parties,' when in fact the NPRM simply gives consumers meaningful choices in how they access and view the MVPD programming packages they have paid ever-growing amounts to subscribe to.” NCTA’s copyright “attack” on the NPRM is based on “claims to rights that are held by others -- the subscribers who buy access to programming for personal viewing and recording, and the public at large,” CVCC said. “Empowering subscribers to view the content they pay for is not copyright infringement,” CVCC said. “There is no exclusive right in the Copyright Act that gives an MVPD the power to require subscribers to forfeit their First Amendment rights to find the same or other programming from competitive sources.” Multichannel video programming distributor representatives, including from NCTA, recently lobbied the FCC for MVPDs' alternative proposal to the NPRM (see 1607060043).

ICANN CEO Göran Marby assured the Coalition for Online Accountability that his organization is "fully committed" to vigorously enforcing its contracts with domain name registries after the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority transition, including provisions to protect IP rights and country code top-level domains (ccTLDs). COA, which represents Disney, MPAA and five other top entertainment industry entities, raised concerns last month in letters to Marby and the leaders of the House and Senate Judiciary committees about how ICANN's IANA transition plans would affect the nonprofit's enforcement of contracts (see 1606280062). IP owners will continue to have multiple mechanisms available for enforcing their rights post-transition, including the Public Interest Commitments Dispute Resolution Procedure, Marby said Thursday in a letter. COA's representation to the House and Senate Judiciary leaders of ICANN's process for delegating ccTLDs "misstates NTIA's current role, and reflects a common misunderstanding among various parties in the community," Marby said. "NTIA's role is largely clerical, and does not conduct a substantive review to approve redelegations." The agency "has always concluded that ICANN followed its verification/processing procedures appropriately, and NTIA has never failed to authorize a redelegation request (or other change request for that matter)," he said.

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).

MPAA Senior Vice President-Government and Regulatory Affairs Neil Fried took issue with Internet Association CEO Michael Beckerman's Medium opinion piece last week that warned against legislative proposals that would revamp the existing safe harbor provisions and notice-and-takedown framework in Digital Millennium Copyright Act Section 512 (see 1606230029). The current DMCA language places too much of the burden for identifying copyright infringement on content creators while putting little onus on online service providers like YouTube, Fried said in a blog post. “Congress did not intend the DMCA to create a relentless game of Whac-A-Mole,” he said. “But that's what we're left with, because technology companies are not truly collaborating.” The best way for Beckerman to accomplish his goal of forestalling legislative changes to DMCA is for tech firms “to work together with creators, rather than just offering more of the same,” Fried said Sunday. He said MPAA's Where to Watch search engine directs viewers to fully legal online sources for movies and TV shows “since other search engines continue to direct audiences to unlawful sites.” If tech firms “would engage voluntarily and collaboratively with the creative community on solutions that work for everyone, we might be able to meet Congress's objectives for the DMCA without having to change the law,” Fried said. IA didn't comment.

The Donuts domain name registry said it believes its participation in the anti-piracy Trusted Notifier partnership with MPAA "is a useful and efficient manner for addressing blatant online piracy, and we encourage others in the domain name community to follow suit with similar programs." Donuts and MPAA began their anti-piracy partnership in February, agreeing to a set of strict standards for making anti-piracy referrals (see 1602090029). MPAA has since also expanded the Trusted Notifier program to include UAE-based registry Radix (see 1605130053). MPAA has sent Donuts referrals against six websites using Donuts domain names for potentially infringing content, the registry said Wednesday in a blog post. Donuts suspended two of the domain names, and the registrar for two others deleted those domains. Another registrar took action against one of the referred domains, while another domain remains under MPAA investigation and potential Donuts enforcement action, the registry said. The Trusted Notifier program will hopefully “be a pre-cursor to a more streamlined industry-wide process that all interested parties can develop collaboratively,” Donuts said. MPAA Deputy General Counsel Dean Marks said in a blog post Wednesday “we share Donuts’ enthusiasm and positive evaluation of the constructive and cooperative voluntary relationship that we are building together. Furthermore, we share the same hope for future collaboration with more operators of domain name registries and registrars.”

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act has been crucial to the development of the internet over the past two decades, said Internet Association CEO Michael Beckerman in a Medium opinion piece Thursday. “While a few players are pushing a divisive narrative and attacking the laws that form the economic foundation of the internet, the reality is that we are all in this together,” Beckerman said. DMCA “is working,” he said. “The internet sector is now a global driver of the economy, reaching nearly $1 trillion  --  or 6 percent  --  of our GDP in 2014 alone. An era of previously unimagined cultural diversity is available globally at the touch of a finger.” The internet’s overall growth “surpasses the growth of infringing activity on a percentage basis,” Beckerman said. “DMCA has ensured that legal platforms can scale: studies indicate that the introduction of lawful online video and music platforms is typically followed by reductions in online infringement by 50 percent and 80 percent, respectively.” Beckerman said top internet companies have demonstrated their “commitment to holding up our end of the bargain” in the DMCA-created notice-and-takedown system via a “plethora of voluntary ‘DMCA-plus’ programs in use today” like Facebook’s Rights Manager and YouTube’s Content ID program. “Rather than spending their time lobbying Congress for wholesale legislative rewrites, our hope is all sides can come together and focus efforts on doing everything possible to improve the system,” Beckerman said. The Internet Association previously defended the DMCA Section 512 Tuesday, when the group said it opposes legislative proposals that would revamp the statute’s safe harbor provisions and the framework for the notice-and-takedown system (see 1606210040). An advertising campaign by almost 200 recording artists and music industry entities urging Congress to enact a DMCA revamp to rein in Internet Association member Google and other internet companies is underway (see 1606200047). Free State Foundation President Randolph May and Senior Fellow Seth Cooper supported the recording industry’s DMCA revamp campaign Thursday in a blog post for The Hill. A DMCA revamp “shouldn't be about taking sides in the disputes,” Cooper and May said. “Online service providers should retain a safe harbor for good-faith efforts to remove infringing content. But songwriters and recording artists deserve an easier and more efficient means for curtailing online posting of copyrighted music. And reforms should include simpler ways to combat multiple postings by repeat infringers.”

A jury in U.S. District Court in San Francisco found in favor of Google Thursday in the second trial related to Oracle’s software copyright infringement lawsuit against the company. The jury said Google’s use of the coding and names contained in Oracle’s Java application programming interface (API) technology in its Android mobile operating system qualifies under the fair use doctrine. Google faced up to $9.3 billion in Oracle-proposed damages. The U.S. tech industry was closely watching the second Oracle v. Google trial, given its major implications for the scope of fair use and the financial implications for the U.S. software market (see 1605090048). The jury’s verdict is "a win for the Android ecosystem, for the Java programming community, and for software developers who rely on open and free programming languages to build innovative consumer products,” Google said in a statement. Oracle plans to appeal the jury’s verdict because the company believes “Google developed Android by illegally copying core Java technology to rush into the mobile device market,” Oracle General Counsel Dorian Daley said in a statement. “Oracle brought this lawsuit to put a stop to Google’s illegal behavior.” The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit remanded the fair use question in Oracle v. Google to the San Francisco district court in 2014, also saying Oracle’s APIs are copyrightable (see 1405120040). The Supreme Court declined last year to grant Google’s petition for a writ of certiorari on the Federal Circuit’s API copyright ruling (see 1506290062).

The American Society for Composers, Authors and Publishers reached a proposed settlement Thursday with DOJ that ends the department’s investigation into whether the performing rights organization (PRO) was violating its 1941 consent decree by signing about 150 contracts with songwriters and music publishers that made ASCAP their exclusive licensor for performances. Justice’s consent decree prohibits ASCAP from interfering with its members’ ability to directly license their songs. The department began its investigation in 2013 while ASCAP was settling its rate-setting proceeding with Pandora in the U.S. District Court in New York. U.S. District Judge Denise Cote said then that Pandora had a right to perform all compositions in ASCAP’s repertory (see report in the March 17, 2014, issue). Justice is reviewing both the ASCAP consent decree and a separate consent decree with PRO Broadcast Music Inc. Justice filed the proposed settlement Thursday in the U.S. District Court in New York City in conjunction with a petition for the district court to hold ASCAP in civil contempt for violating its consent decree. ASCAP agreed to pay a $1.75 million fine but didn’t admit any wrongdoing related to DOJ’s allegations. ASCAP promised to not sign any further exclusive contracts with its members and will reform its licensing practices so they don’t allow music publishers to oversee ASCAP licensing. The proposed settlement also requires ASCAP to improve its consent decree compliance program to minimize the likelihood it will violate the consent decree in the future, Justice said. “By blocking members’ ability to license their songs themselves, ASCAP undermined a critical protection of competition contained in the consent decree,” said Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Renata Hesse, head of DOJ’s Antitrust Division, in a news release. “The Supreme Court said that ASCAP’s consent decree is supposed to provide music users with a ‘real choice’ in how they can access the millions of songs in ASCAP’s repertory -- through ASCAP’s blanket license or through direct negotiations with individual songwriters and publishers. Today’s settlement restores that choice and thereby promotes competition among the songwriters, the publishers and ASCAP.” The settlement “was the right thing to do for our members," said ASCAP CEO Elizabeth Matthews in a news release. "With these issues resolved, we continue our focus on leading the way towards a more efficient, effective and transparent music licensing system and advocating for key reforms to the laws that govern music creator compensation.”