The copyright holders of the Dallas Buyers Club are suing an array of Comcast broadband customers for allegedly pirating the film via the Popcorn Time software program. The suit, filed Sunday in U.S. District Court in Portland, Oregon, asks for a permanent injunction stopping the John Doe defendants from using the Internet to distribute the film or make it available for distribution, as well as a permanent injunction enjoining them from using any peer-to-peer software like Popcorn Time to download or distribute content without a license, and unspecified financial damages. Dallas Buyers Club LLC said it plans to use initial discovery to subpoena Comcast for the identities of each of the Oregon defendants, based on their IP addresses. Comcast isn't a defendant in the suit and declined to comment.

The House Judiciary's planned Tuesday Copyright Act review “listening tour” roundtable in Nashville is to be at Belmont University, the committee said Friday. The discussion, targeted at music industry stakeholders (see 1509110063 and 1509100041), is to begin at 9 a.m. CDT in Belmont's Wedgewood Academic Center, Room 4094. Judiciary's copyright roundtables are meant to be part of the committee's larger set of meetings with copyright stakeholders to “provide additional input on copyright policy issues,” the committee said. It said it already has held or is scheduled to hold 50 meetings with stakeholders since the House began its August recess. Those meetings are to take several additional weeks, House Judiciary said.

Broadcast Music Inc. (BMI) generated more than $1 billion revenue during FY 2015, which ended June 30, the music rights management company said Thursday. BMI said its FY 2015 revenue total is the highest in the company's history and the “most public performance revenue generated for songwriters, composers and publishers by any music rights organization in the world.” BMI's revenue from digital performances rose 65 percent from FY 2014 to more than $100 million. U.S. media licensing generated $484 million revenue, while licensing to U.S. bars, hotels and other facilities totaled $137 million, BMI said. An additional $292 million revenue came from international licenses, the company said. BMI distributed $877 million to its affiliated songwriters, composers and music publishers -- up almost 4.5 percent from FY 2014. BMI CEO Mike O’Neill in a news release said the results are "even more impressive when you consider the negative impact to our international revenues brought on by the strengthening dollar.”

SAG-AFTRA officials reached a tentative three-year successor recording royalties deal Thursday with five major record labels. It includes a “groundbreaking payment formula for online streaming and non-permanent digital downloads that encompasses revenue from these types of exploitations generated outside the” U.S., the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists and the labels said. The deal with the five labels -- Capitol Records, Hollywood Records, Sony Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group and affiliates of Warner Music Group -- “is a significant expansion of the obligations the industry undertook in a deal originally struck in 1994, and it represents the first time the labels have included revenue generated outside the United States in any payment streams under the union's contract,” SAG-AFTRA and the labels said. All parties to the proposed deal “recognize the need for change in order to deal with the challenges and opportunities presented by new economic models in the industry,” SAG-AFTRA National Vice President-Recording Artists Dan Navarro said in a news release. “This deal starts us down that road.” SAG-AFTRA members will now need to ratify the deal.

Daniel Marti, the White House Office of Management and Budget’s intellectual property enforcement coordinator, just approved a notice for the Federal Register soliciting feedback on what should go into the 2016 joint strategic plan on IP enforcement, he told attendees of the Technology Policy Institute meeting here in Aspen, Colorado, Monday. “Most if not all” of what went into the administration’s 2013 plan is “evergreen in nature,” Marti said. He anticipates the notice will be posted in the Federal Register in the next week or two, he said. Marti emphasized the interest in collecting data and hopes the 2016 plan continues “to be data-driven,” he said. When considering legacy achievements for his position, Marti mentioned the development of a three-year plan for IP “the deliverable that is most on my mind.”

Flo & Eddie, who own the copyright to The Turtles' “Happy Together” and the rest of that band's music library, objected in the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to motions by NAB, Pandora and others to file amicus briefs in support of Sirius XM’s appeal of U.S. District Court rulings in New York that Sirius owed performance royalties on the performance of the Turtles’ pre-1972 recordings. Other parties that have petitioned to file in support of Sirius include the Electronic Frontier Foundation, New York State Broadcasters Association, Public Knowledge and two groups of law professors (see 1508060052). All seven proposed amicus briefs “are deeply flawed from a merits perspective, almost universally joining with Sirius XM in relying upon inapposite principles of federal copyright law to urge for limitations on state law property rights” or “urging the court to rule based on policy arguments instead of the actual law before it,” Flo & Eddie said Friday. They objected to proposed briefs from NAB, Pandora and the two groups of law professors, saying they “cross the line from merely being erroneous in their advocacy to not even coming close to satisfying the standard for leave being granted.” Pandora and one group of law professors “mimic” Sirius XM’s opening brief and arguments in the appeal, while NAB and the second group of law professors “raise arguments that were not raised by Sirius XM and are thus waived and not before” the 2nd Circuit, Flo & Eddie said. Amicus briefs that essentially supplicate a party’s brief “fail” to provide additional insights in a case and “should not be entertained by the courts,” Flo & Eddie said.

World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) member nations and nongovernmental organizations should strengthen IP rights in all new and existing treaties, said a coalition of 85 free market-oriented groups Monday in a joint letter to WIPO Director General Francis Gurry. The letter, organized by Americans for Tax Reform affiliate Property Right Alliance (PRA), urges the European Commission, WIPO, other intergovernmental organizations and NGOs to protect IP rights in all trade agreements, protect IP rights on the Internet and enhance IP rights as a tool to promote free markets. “Advanced societies have long understood that by protecting the proprietary rights of artists, authors, entrepreneurs, innovators, and inventors, they were promoting the greater public welfare,” the PRA-led coalition said in the letter. “The continued protection of these fundamental rights is essential to global innovation, creativity and competitiveness.” The coalition wants the letter to “encourage the leaders of international organizations and governments to work together to promote the rule of law and protect strong IP rights as the engine of fair, prosperous and transparent societies,” PRA Executive Director Lorenzo Montanari said in a statement. “Ensuring that intellectual property rights are respected and protected in every nation will promote prosperity, innovation and creativity around the globe.”

NPR's Policy and Representation Division left the Music. Innovation. Consumers. (MIC) Coalition Tuesday amid ongoing pressure from advocates of the Fair Play Fair Pay Act (HR-1733) to leave the group. CEA, Google and NAB are members of the MIC Coalition. NAB and some other MIC Coalition members oppose HR-1733, but the MIC Coalition itself hasn’t taken a position on the bill. HR-1733, introduced in April, would require most terrestrial radio stations to begin paying performance royalties and would require digital broadcasters to begin paying royalties for pre-1972 sound recordings. The bill also would require satellite broadcasters to pay royalties at market rates (see 1504160050). The Content Creators Coalition (c3), which urged NPR Monday to leave the MIC Coalition, said in a statement Tuesday that "withdrawing was the right thing to do once NPR understood the negative impact its membership in the lobbying group had on artists and their interests." MusicFIRST, which had also urged NPR to leave the MIC Coalition, also praised the decision. "We applaud NPR for its willingness to listen and engage in a dialogue with musicians’ advocates," said MusicFIRST Executive Director Ted Kalo in a statement. “And we commend NPR’s decision to leave the MIC Coalition, separating itself from both the Coalition and its anti-artist agenda.” MIC Coalition “members ensure that American music consumers can access music through platforms, venues and innovations of their choice; that music gets heard in legal and accessible ways and that artists get paid for their work,” the group said in a statement. “It's unfortunate that some continue to try to mischaracterize that mission, and we invite all stakeholders to instead join this most important conversation about how we together create a transparent music ecosystem that benefits all of us.”

The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative removed Paraguay from its 2015 Special 301 Watch List after the U.S. signed an intellectual property rights (IPR) agreement with the country Thursday, USTR said in a statement. The agency plans an out-of-cycle review of Paraguay in the near future, the statement said. USTR released its most recent edition of the Special 301 Report in late April (see 1505010009). Paraguay has "stepped up its efforts to strengthen IPR protection and enforcement" over the past 18 months, said USTR.

The U.S. Trade Representative’s 2015 Special 301 Report “is another one-sided and harmful missive to the rest of the world that names and shames countries for not mirroring, or even exceeding, the United States’ restrictive copyright rules,” said Electronic Frontier Senior Global Policy Analyst Jeremy Malcolm and Global Policy Analyst Maira Sutton in a blog post Thursday. The report, released Thursday, said USTR kept China and India among the 13 countries on its priority watch list for copyright and other IP rights violations. USTR had elevated Ecuador and Kuwait to the priority watch list since it published its 2014 report (see 1504300061). The 2015 report places a high importance on trade secret protections as criteria for criticizing other countries’ IP rights practices, with the USTR never specifically defining what it considers a trade secret protection. That means the term “can encompass a wide range of information that it encourages nations to protect with heavy-handed enforcement,” EFF said. The Trans-Pacific Partnership’s most recent draft IP language is “dangerously broad,” and if “this is the kind of language that the USTR holds as a minimum standard for enforcement, we should expect to see the agency to increasingly push for draconian rules that would threaten critical reporting published online,” EFF said. The 2015 report also includes a renewed emphasis on domain name disputes, calling on countries to protect U.S. trademarks.