Copyright and Technology

January 19, 2016

Eisner and Lubin Auditorium, Kimmel Center, New York University

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Program

(Agenda subject to change)

8:30 – 9:00 am    Registration and Breakfast

Morning Plenary Session

12:45 – 2:00 pm   Lunch

Afternoon Technology Track

Afternoon Law & Policy Track

 5:45 – 7:00 pm   Cocktail Reception – Sponsored by…

Session Descriptions

Plenary Presentations

• Incorporating Piracy Data into Everyday Business
  Beyond copyright compliance enforcement, piracy data offers a view into the demand for a digital product without consideration for difficult topics such as licensing arrangements or price sensitivity. P2P is a popular mechanism for sharing of digital content, becoming more important with BitTorrent browsers like Popcorn Time. With many of the same attributes as sales data, piracy data offers a glimpse into the demand for content in an area where the price is free.
  Whether it is understanding the drivers of demand or closing distribution loopholes, digital content owners have been using piracy data in a variety of forms. In this session you will see examples for how piracy data is mapped to more traditional metrics and used by content owners as a way of recapturing revenue lost to piracy.
• Notice and Takedown in Everyday Practice: Robots, Artisans, and the Fight to Protect Copyrights, Expression and Competition on the Internet
  Until now, very little empirical research has been done on the effectiveness of the DMCA’s notice and takedown provisions in addressing copyright infringement as well as due process for notice targets.  This talk will summarize research comprising three studies that draw back the curtain on notice and takedown: it gathers information on how online service providers and rightsholders experience and practice notice and takedown, examines over 100 million notices generated during a six-month period, and looks specifically at a subset of those notices that were sent to Google Image Search.
  The findings suggest that whether notice and takedown “works” is highly dependent on who is using it and how it is practiced, though all respondents agreed that the Section 512 safe harbors remain fundamental to the online ecosystem.  Perhaps surprisingly, a large portion of service providers still receive relatively few notices and process them by hand. For some major players, however, the scale of online infringement has led to automated systems that leave little room for human review or discretion, and in a few cases notice and takedown has been abandoned in favor of techniques such as content filtering. Further, surprisingly high percentage of notices raise questions about their validity.  The findings strongly suggest that the notice and takedown system is under strain but that there is no “one size fits all” approach to improving it.  We conclude with suggestions of various targeted reforms and best practices.

Afternoon Technology Track

• Is Personal Live Streaming Changing the Game for Live Video?
  Broadcasts of live events such as sports and concerts are major sources of revenue for traditional pay television operators as well as over-the-top Internet services.  Yet new free apps like Periscope and Meerkat, along with new live streaming capabilities on Facebook, enable consumers to stream these events from their mobile devices to followers around the world.  These new offerings present both threats as well as new business and creative opportunities for traditional pay and OTT services.  On this panel, we’ll discuss programming providers’ responses to these developments as well as various techniques to detect and thwart unauthorized rebroadcasts.
• From Takedown to Staydown
  The Digital Millennium Copyright Act is based on the idea of “notice and takedown,” in which service providers can remove allegedly infringing material to avoid copyright liability.  Copyright owners have become frustrated at the need to play “Whac-a-Mole” games when their content is repeatedly reposted after they send takedown notices.  Is it possible that when a copyright owner asks for material to be taken down, there’s a way to ensure that it stays down, or is that not reasonable?  Discussions of “notice and staydown” need to consider the effectiveness of technologies and processes that purport to solve the problem, as well as the relative burdens that they place on service provider and copyright owners alike.  The experts on our panel will tackle these issues and discuss whether sensible solutions are available.
• The Importance of Copyright Management Information
  The key to automating a lot of copyright-related processes – royalty payments, piracy monitoring, rights licensing, and others – is Copyright Management Information (CMI).  On this panel, we will look at CMI and its benefits to all participants in the content value chain.  We’ll discuss how it is created, managed, and communicated; laws such as Section 1202 of the Copyright Act that protect it; and why it’s so important to the future of online content.

Afternoon Law and Policy Track

• Pleasures of the Harbor: DMCA Safe Harbor Eligibility
  Although the DMCA has been law for over a decade and a half, legal requirements around service providers’ eligibility for the safe harbors remain unclear in various respects. Recent cases, including BMG v. Cox and the appeal of Capitol Records v. Vimeo, hold the promise of further clarity in certain areas, such as willful blindness, repeat infringer termination policies, and others. On this panel, we discuss the body of opinions that the courts have left us so far in helping to inform service providers’ operating policies, the ambiguities and risks that remain, and the prospects that future developments will make the water clearer rather than muddier.
• Collective Licensing: The Future of the ASCAP/BMI Consent Decrees
  The Justice Dept. consent decrees around ASCAP and BMI may have seemed simple enough back in the 1940s. Yet they are widely viewed as inadequate in today’s world of rapidly expanding licensing options for musical compositions, and movement is afoot to change or eliminate them. We’ll deliberate the pros and cons of abolishing, tinkering with, or maintaining the consent decrees from the perspectives of songwriters, PROs, and service providers alike.
• Mass Digitization: Progress, Goals, and Roadblocks
  Technology companies today are willing and able to digitize copyrighted works on a scale never imagined before. Copyright owners have raised concerns over their right to do so, and the consequences of mass digitization on publishers’ businesses and accessibility of copyrighted material to the public remain up in the air. On this panel, we will discuss recent developments such as the Second Circuit decision in Authors Guild v. Google and the Copyright Office report on Orphan Works and Mass Digitization, and consider how copyright law can accommodate mass digitization in the future.