House Judiciary's Santa Clara Copyright Roundtable Focuses on DMCA Section 1201 Revamp
The House Judiciary Committee’s copyright roundtable Monday at Santa Clara University generated significant discussion about the need for fixes to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, stakeholders who participated in and attended the meeting told us. The Santa Clara roundtable, the first of two such sessions that House Judiciary plans this week in California, drew prominent interest from Silicon Valley’s tech sector, as expected (see 1511060052). Although content creators and other copyright stakeholders also made a significant impact during the Santa Clara roundtable, a Tuesday roundtable at the University of California, Los Angeles was expected to feature a bigger presence from those stakeholders.
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The Santa Clara roundtable turned out to be “a very inclusive and productive conversation” that went beyond perspectives from major tech firms, said Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) Senior Staff Attorney Mitch Stoltz, who attended the roundtable but didn’t participate. EFF Staff Attorney Kit Walsh spoke on the group’s behalf during the panel. House Judiciary had “made no bones about” its intent to target the Santa Clara roundtable as a way to collect feedback from Silicon Valley stakeholders, and they did end up outnumbering other stakeholders, said independent filmmaker Ellen Seidler. Executives from Oracle, Pandora, Pinterest and Yahoo were among those slated to speak at Santa Clara. But Seidler said she and others representing content creators had an “equal opportunity” to talk to House Judiciary members. Stoltz said other public interest groups like Creative Commons and Lighthouse for the Blind of San Francisco were also active participants in the roundtable.
EFF and others raised concerns about the need for a revamp of the DMCA’s Section 1201 rules prohibiting circumvention of technological protection measures, during the Santa Clara event. Copyright interests have long sought a DMCA Section 1201 revamp, but those calls have returned to public consciousness since the Copyright Office and Library of Congress signed off in October on 10 Section 1201 exemptions (see 1510270056 and 1510280071). “I didn’t hear anyone quibbling with the notion that Section 1201 shouldn’t be interfering with” noninfringing activities like car repair, Stoltz said.
Although every panelist at the roundtable had limited time to speak, both they and House Judiciary members provided detail about possible DMCA revamp measures, including “procedural fixes” to the CO’s triennial review of Section 1201 exemptions, an industry lobbyist who attended the meeting told us. Other “substantive” proposals included possible removal of the requirement that entities apply for renewal of existing Section 1201 exemptions ever three years, Stoltz said.
It wasn’t clear how much weight House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., and others were giving to a proposed Section 1201 revamp over other legislative priorities in the committee’s ongoing Copyright Act review, Stoltz and others said. “I didn’t get much of a sense of [House Judiciary’s] overall agenda or even any member’s overall agenda,” Stoltz said. “But, I got the impression that members of the committee are taking seriously the impact that copyright law has on innovation and speech. That’s frankly a change from past years.”
House Judiciary members also indicated continued interest in addressing the CO’s future placement within the federal government, with House IT Subcommittee Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., showing interest in moving CO from the LOC to the Patent and Trademark Office, an industry lobbyist told us. Seidler said she discussed the need for moving CO out of the LOC during her testimony. and said House Judiciary members were “receptive” to the idea. Seidler said she also brought up the continued need for a “small claims” copyright court.
The Santa Clara roundtable also included a push from several parties for reforms to the current framework for copyright infringement statutory damages, Seidler said. Despite repeated mentions of the issue, there appears to be a consensus “that nothing is going to change on statutory damages, at least for now,” an industry lobbyist told us.