Mozilla is pushing the EU to revamp copyright laws to reflect changes in the internet's development, launching a petition Wednesday asking the EU to use its planned update of its copyright legal framework to “bring copyright law into the 21st century.” The European Commission is to release its copyright law rewrite proposal this fall as part of its larger digital single market policy strategy (see 1606010011). “The current copyright legal framework is outdated,” said Mozilla Chief Innovation Officer Katharina Borchert in a blog post. “It stifles opportunity and prevents, and in many cases legally prohibits, artists, coders and everyone else creating and innovating online.” Borchert focused on the need for the inclusion of an EU-wide fair-use exception in any copyright law revision, saying “in some parts of the EU, making a meme is technically unlawful.” The EU needs to “update and harmonise the rules so we can tinker, create, share and learn on the internet,” Borchert said. “Education, parody, panorama, remix and analysis shouldn't be unlawful.” Some proposals for the EU's copyright law update would threaten innovation, including “licensing fees and restriction on internet companies for basic things like creating hyperlinks or uploading content,” Borchert said. “Others are calling for new laws that would establish gatekeepers and barriers to entry online, and would risk undermining the internet as a platform for economic growth and free expression.”

The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative is seeking comment for its 2016 notorious markets list (see 1601110051) by Oct. 7, replies by Oct. 21, for its out-of-cycle review based off the annual Special 301 Report, says a notice scheduled to be published in Thursday's Federal Register. The list identifies “online and physical marketplaces that reportedly engage in and facilitate substantial copyright piracy and trademark counterfeiting,” the notice says.

The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation pushed back against oft-repeated claims that anti-piracy efforts like the failed 2012 Stop Online Piracy Act would “break the internet,” saying in a report there's little evidence to substantiate such claims. ITIF said Monday its analysis of five years of data from 25 countries found there were no “dire outcomes” from those countries' efforts to block piracy websites. ITIF referenced an April Carnegie Mellon University study saying the U.K.'s blockage of 53 piracy websites in 2014 caused a 90 percent reduction in visits to piracy websites and a rise in visits to websites legally featuring content.

Cox Communications said Friday it's appealing a U.S. District Court ruling in BMG Rights Management's lawsuit against the cable company to the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. An Alexandria, Virginia, federal jury in 2015 found against Cox in BMG's lawsuit alleging the cable company failed to penalize its internet customers who repeatedly infringed copyrighted materials (see 1512180012). District Judge Liam O'Grady denied Cox's motion for judgment or for a new trial of the case, rejecting the ISP's argument that BMG's claims against the cable company failed from lack of proof (see 1608090047). Cox faces paying $25 million in damages to BMG. Cox's appeal hadn't appeared in the 4th Circuit's docket at our deadline, but Cox advised the Alexandria district court of its appeal in a notice (in Pacer). BMG didn't comment Friday.

Turkish CE giant Vestel was one of six companies to recently join the UHD Alliance, the group told the FTC and Attorney General Loretta Lynch in July 19 written notifications, said a notice in Thursday’s Federal Register by DOJ’s Antitrust Division. Other companies joining the alliance were Amlogic, Eutelsat, Ittiam Systems, Quatius and SPI International, the notice said. The notifications were required to extend antitrust protections to UHD Alliance members under the 1993 National Cooperative Research and Production Act, it said.

The leaders of five Virginia universities’ libraries urged House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., to proceed with caution in evaluating the Copyright Office’s anticipated legislative recommendation on a digital-age revamp of Copyright Act Section 108, which includes an exemption allowing libraries and archives to reproduce and distribute copyrighted works. The CO told stakeholders in meetings earlier this summer that it plans to proceed with the rewrite recommendation (see 1608100054). The suggestion “may not be the best approach for seeking consensus, which has proved elusive over the past decade,” the Virginia university libraries wrote Tuesday. “While Section 108 may show its age in some ways, it adequately protects core library activities like preservation and interlibrary loan, and includes enough flexibility to accommodate digital innovation, especially in combination with Section 107, the fair use doctrine.” Signatories were College of William & Mary Dean-University Libraries Carrie Lynn Cooper, Virginia Commonwealth University Librarian John Ulmschneider, University of Virginia Librarian John Unsworth, Virginia Tech Dean-University Libraries Tyler Walters and George Mason University Librarian John Zenelis.

U.S. District Judge Liam O'Grady's ruling last week denying Cox Communications' motion for judgment or a new trial of the BMG Rights Management copyright infringement lawsuit (see 1608090047) shouldn't worry “law-abiding” ISPs, said Tom Sydnor, visiting scholar at American Enterprise Institute’s Center for Internet, Communications and Technology, in a blog post Wednesday. A federal jury in Alexandria, Virginia, found against Cox in BMG's lawsuit, which alleged Cox failed to penalize its Internet customers who repeatedly infringed copyrighted materials. The jury awarded BMG $25 million in damages (see 1512180012). O’Grady said Cox was right that there was no evidence on how its users ended up using the content of more than 100,000 copies of BMG works, but there was enough proof "from which a reasonable jury could find Cox users violated BMG's reproduction right." Sydnor countered Public Knowledge’s assertions that O’Grady’s ruling threatens reliable internet access, saying the ruling “merely” confirms that law-abiding ISPs should now “cooperate with copyright owners and others to use new technologies to deter internet infringement more efficiently than take-down or service-termination remedies devised in the mid-1990s do,” as devised in Copyright Act Section 512. BMG v. Cox likely will be appealed, but the evidence presented in the district court “must now be interpreted in the way most favorable to the jury’s verdict,” Sydnor said: Cox’s “thirteen-strike” user-access termination program meant “a family could pay Cox for years without learning that Cox had long known that their teenager was using their account to pirate hundreds or thousands of songs and movies. The problems with such a program go well beyond the copyright laws. For example, concealing from parents offers to settle potentially devastating claims for a few dollars could violate the many U.S. laws that outlaw deceptive or unfair trade practices.” PK “just misses the point of Section 512,” Sydnor said. “Congress intended to create a set of rough, even mutually inconvenient, ground rules that would strongly encourage responsible copyright owners and ISPs to work together, through open, fair, and voluntary multi-industry standard-setting processes, to create the sort of ‘standard technical measures’ envisioned in Section 512.” The termination-of-service policy required by Section 512 “is really just one of many efforts to encourage ISPs to cooperate, rather than litigate, terminate or use their subscribers as human shields,” Sydnor said. “If the result in BMG v. Cox reminds ISPs of the many advantages of cooperating, then it is entirely consistent with congressional intent.” PK didn't comment.

The DOJ and FTC jointly sought comment Friday on a proposed update of their 1995 guidelines for enforcing antitrust policy on IP licensing matters protected by relevant copyright, patent and trade secret laws. The revisions are intended to “modernize” the existing IP guidelines to reflect recent IP-related court cases, the 2016 Defend Trade Secrets Act and changes in the lengths of copyright and patent terms, the agencies said. The update also addresses issues that the government raised in the pair's 2007 report on antitrust IP issues and in the FTC's 2011 IP marketplace report, including language that reflects the agencies' view that “the antitrust laws generally do not impose liability upon a firm for a unilateral refusal to assist its competitors, in part because doing so may undermine incentives for investment and innovation.” The agencies also are updating the guidelines to reflect an analysis of markets affected by licensing arrangements that mirrors their approach for horizontal mergers. The new language retains the idea of “innovation markets” but refers to them as “research and development markets” to better reflect how the DOJ and FTC defined them in enforcement actions, the agencies said. The IP licensing guidelines “have been invaluable to the department’s investigative and enforcement efforts since they were issued in 1995,” said Antitrust Division head Renata Hesse in a news release. “They have also guided business planning, and they have been cited by courts, in numerous government briefs, business review letters, and policy documents. Although the Guidelines are sound, it is time to modernize them to reflect changes in the law since they were issued.” Comments on the guidelines revamp are due Sept. 26. FTC members voted 3-0 to issue the request for modernization.

The Copyright Royalty Board sought comment Wednesday on an additional technical amendment to rules on how noncommercial broadcasters must report streamed sound recordings to SoundExchange for royalty purposes. The amendment is aimed at reinstating rules that ease the reporting requirements for both noncommercial broadcasters and commercial broadcasters when either pays no more than the $500 minimum annual royalty, the CRB said in a notice in the Federal Register. The reporting requirements relief requires “minimum fee” entities to only report two weeks of sound-recording figures per quarter and to report a playlist of sound recordings streamed during a specific period and the aggregate tuning hours for that period. An amendment to the rules that the CRB released in June, was aimed at expanding the reporting relief to noncommercial educational webcasters, appeared to inadvertently exclude noncommercial broadcasters from its definition of entities eligible for reporting relief, the CRB said. Comments on the amendment are due Sept. 9, the CRB said. “We’re not expecting any fierce or widespread opposition to the [CRB’s] proposed amendment, which would restore the prior status quo for noncommercial broadcasters,” said copyright and music licensing lawyer Karyn Ablin of Fletcher Heald in a blog post Wednesday. Ablin represented NAB and the National Religious Broadcasters Noncommercial Music License Committee in the CRB proceeding. “It’s hard to argue that noncommercial broadcasters should be treated more harshly under the reporting rules than commercial broadcasters," Ablin said. "In fact, both types of radio broadcasters face unique reporting challenges that merit special consideration because broadcasters’ main business is over-the-air radio, not streaming, and their systems were designed with over-the-air radio, not streaming, in mind.”

Broadcast Music Inc.’s claim that DOJ’s final decision in its review of the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers and BMI consent decrees “marks a radical departure from existing practice is belied by its own statements, is disproven by its own practices, and, if accepted, would undermine the value of BMI’s license,” said Justice’s Antitrust Division in a court filing Tuesday. Antitrust made its filing (in Pacer) to rebut BMI’s legal challenge to the consent decrees decision in U.S. District Court in New York. BMI is leading the legal challenge via its rate court proceeding (64-03787) with Judge Louis Stanton, claiming in part that DOJ’s decision to issue language clarifying that the department continues to believe the existing decrees mandate 100 percent licensing “would contradict decades of historical practice” (see 1608040066). “As BMI itself acknowledged more than a year ago, BMI’s consent decree ‘has been construed to compel BMI to grant licenses to perform the "composition" -- not merely the partial interest in the composition owned by BMI’s affiliate,’” Antitrust said in its filing. “BMI’s unilateral request for modification, far from identifying the ‘significant change in circumstances’ required to modify a consent decree, expressly denies that the requested modification ‘is proposed to adapt the decree to changed circumstances in law or fact.’” BMI-granted licenses “never granted rights to ‘interests in compositions,’ and always granted licensees the ability to ‘perform’ the compositions,” Antitrust said. “BMI does not explain how a licensee could ‘perform’ an interest in a composition.” BMI’s “recognition last year of the decree’s ‘apparent requirement of mandatory licensing of the entire composition’ should end any argument that the Division’s interpretation marks some sort of radical departure,” Antitrust said. “And BMI’s consistent practice of granting licenses to perform works, and describing them as such, should make clear that it would be a departure not to provide full-work licenses.”