Mass “Address Unknown†NOI Loophole Continue Apace With Growing International Implications — Chris Castle examines a little-known problem that’s causing a lot of consternation for songwriters and music publishers. Castle says, “If a music user like Amazon wants to use the song compulsory license but can’t find the song owner in the public records of the Copyright Office (often the case for ex-US songwriters), a loophole from 1976 allows the user to file the required notification (often called an ‘NOI’) with the Copyright Office instead of with the song copyright owner. Assuming the filing was made correctly, the user can then allege that the user is entitled to all of the benefits of the compulsory license without the obligation to pay royalties until the song owner catches them.”
No, The Canadian Supreme Court Did Not Ruin the Internet — “Global takedown orders with no limiting principle are indeed scary. But Canada’s order has a limiting principle. As long as there is room for Google to say to Canada (or France), ‘Your order will put us in direct and significant violation of U.S. law,’ the order is not a limitless assertion of extraterritorial jurisdiction. In the instance that a service provider identifies a conflict of laws, the state should listen. Under longstanding conflicts of laws principles, a court would need to weigh the conflicting and legitimate governments’ interests at stake. The Canadian court was eager to undertake that comity analysis, but it couldn’t do so because the necessary ingredient was missing: there was no conflict of laws.”
CC files amicus brief explaining NC licenses in Great Minds v FedEx Office litigation — The Creative Commons organization steps into a legal dispute involving their noncommercial (NC) license. CC explains, “This is not to say that commercial copy shops can copy NC content without restrictions, but instead to clarify that when acting solely at the direction and request of an organization that is itself only using the work for non commercial purposes, as Great Minds has conceded the school district is, a third party like FedEx Office is sheltered by the non commercial user’s license.”
Copyright Office Announces Open Application Period for Ringer Fellowships — For recent law school grads interested in copyright law and policy, this is probably one of the best opportunities in the US.