Bits and pieces

A new podcast has arrived at the headquarters of the 1709 Blog from Copyright Clearance Center’s Beyond the Book site. It features Sree Sreenivasan (Dean of Student Affairs at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism; former technology reporter) discussing about new media and innovation in the realm of copyright. He focuses on the topics of Hulu [note for non-US readers -- Hulu is a website offering commercial-supported streaming video of TV shows and movies from NBC, Fox, ABC, and many other networks and studios; these videos are currently offered only to users in the United States and, to ensure that no international users outside the US have access to them, Hulu blocks many anonymous proxies and virtual private networks] and new media copyright (podcast here; transcript here).


Also from the Copyright Clearance Center comes news of this article in Ad Age which offers a thorough yet concise summary of the CCC's OnCopyright conference -- an event designed to explore how copyright applies in the digital age. Judy Shapiro, author of the article, highlights sessions with Google’s Senior Copyright Counsel Bill Patry, entrepreneurs, artists and media people who are all coping with working within a copyright compliant manner while being able to monetise their works (photo, left, by Duncan Davidson).


"Copyright's Private Domain" is the title of the Fifth Annual international Intellectual Property Lecture (funded by the Herchel Smith bequest), which will be held on Tuesday, April 27 5.30 pm for 6 pm. The speaker is Professor Graeme W. Austin (University of Arizona). What's this all about? Explains the publicity information:

"The public domain is valorised as the repository of raw material that makes all creativity possible, but it is not the only counterpoint to copyright's system of exclusive rights. With the current emphasis on the public domain in copyright commentary and political activism, we risk losing sight of the importance to creative processes of private imaginative activity, including private engagement with copyright-protected works. This lecture will examine ways that copyright and privacy law work together to create a "private domain," in which intellectual, imaginative and artistic experimentation and creativity can occur, away from public scrutiny and judgement. In the era of YouTube and MySpace and the like, with their relentless encouragement of public dissemination and display, it is useful to recall the importance of private contemplation and experimentation to the "learning" that copyright is meant to encourage.

Key copyright doctrines and policies map out copyright's private domain: copyright's protective attitude toward unpublished manuscripts, its exclusion of "private" performances from copyright owners' exclusive rights, defences for research and study, private copying provisions. On the privacy side, there are venerable links with copyright: copyright's solicitude toward privacy interests contributed to the development in some jurisdictions of a common law privacy right. Copyright's private domain is not a substitute for the public domain. Even so, recognition of the links between copyright and privacy, including of the ways that both foster creative and imaginative activity, might usefully contribute to debates about how best to fashion copyright law in a manner that serve the interests of both owners and users of copyright-protected works".

This lecture is by invitation only. Those wishing to receive an invitation should write to Carol Hosmer here.


A reminder for our readers: judgment will be given on Thursday 15 April in Case C-518/08 Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí, Visual Entidad de Gestión de Artistas Plásticos v Société des Auteurs dans les arts graphiques et plastiques, Juan-Leonardo Bonet Domenech, Eulalia-María Bas Dalí, María Del Carmen Domenech Biosca, Antonio Domenech Biosca, Ana-María Busquets Bonet, Mónica Busquets Bonet, a reference to the Court of Justice for a preliminary ruling on the legitimacy of the French provisions relating to the artist's resale right. The questions which the court is asked to address are:

"1. Can France, subsequent to [Directive 2001/84/EC] of 27 September 2001, retain a resale right allowed only to the heirs to the exclusion of legatees or successors in title?
2. Do the transitional provisions of Article 8(2) and (3) of [Directive 2001/84/EC] of 27 September 2001 allow France to have a derogation?".

The Advocate General's Opinion, delivered on 17 December last year, can be found here (noted by the IPKat here).