Friday’s Endnotes – 03/18/16

Protecting copyright without stifling innovation — Paul Doda writes, “[C]ertain hosting platforms that did not exist in 1998 have structured their businesses to exploit the DMCA cloak from liability. They do so by taking material down while at the same time rendering the notices meaningless by encouraging the reappearance of the same infringing works from a sea of ready replacements. These structural infringers cannot be counted on to voluntarily adopt anti-piracy measures, such as the reasonable filtering techniques currently being deployed by other platforms, because that would cripple their free-riding business model, which depends on their users’ posted infringements to sell subscriptions and generate advertising revenue.”

Did pirates kill ‘Hannibal’? — Only so many names can fit onto a marquee, film poster, TV show’s credits or in a movie’s trailer. Maybe the millions of people who illegally download movies and TV shows are thinking only of the top-billed stars, excusing their actions with the notion that one viewing will not do much harm to a superstar. But on a set, every last crew member and creative — right down to the person who designed that poster or edited that trailer — is affected if the fruits of their labor are stolen.”

Creative Strategies for Beefing up Copyright Enforcement — Michael Carroll reviews a paper by professor Eric Priest, Acupressure: The Emerging Role of Market Ordering in Global Copyright Enforcement. In his paper, Priest examines two case studies which use market pressure, one through voluntary initiatives and the other through state unfair competition laws, to minimize copyright infringement. He then abstracts the key elements that make these types of strategies for copyright enforcement work.

Govt has ‘bungled’ copyright costs — When the Trans-Pacific Partnership was being finalized, the New Zealand government concluded that the changes it would need to make to its copyright law to comply with the agreement would cost the country $55 million. Now, economist Dr. George Barker is telling the government that estimate is incorrect. “Dr. Barker said that estimate was based on erroneous research in 2009 by an Australian economist. Officials were unable to provide access to the data behind the estimate, and Dr. Barker said one possibility was a decimal point could have been put in the wrong place.”

Apple Music, Dubset Partner to Stream Previously Unlicensed Remixes and DJ Mixes: Exclusive — A new service is using technology to automatically identify and clear the dozens of separate sound recordings that may make up previously unlicensed remixes and DJ mixes to enable them to be legally distributed through platforms like Apple Music.

“Dancing Baby” Appeals Court Decision Stands Minus the “Fair Use” Algorithms — This week, the Ninth Circuit refused EFF’s petition to overrule existing precedent and impose an unworkable objective standard on misrepresentation claims under Section 512(f). Or, to put it simply, you don’t need a lawyer to stop your work from being pirated online. Hollywood Reporter has more details on the latest in Lenz v. Universal Music, which also includes an amended opinion.