[Crosstalk] Enabling public interest uses of copyrighted material - a Talk by Pamela Samuelson

[Phillip Long]

Crosstalk friends: I wanted to bring to your attention a talk that is  
scheduled for Nov. 6 by Pamela Samuelson which will be of interest to  
anyone concerned about copyright and the Digital Millennium Copyright  
Act.  I think many of you with interests in technology, education,  
and digital content will find this worthwhile.



A Reverse Notice and Takedown Regime to Enable Public Interest Uses  
of Technically Protected Copyrighted Works

When: Tuesday, November 6 , 4:30-5:30 PM
Where: MIT Stata Center, Room 32-G449 (Kiva Seminar Room)
Who: Pamela Samuelson School of Law University of California, Berkeley

Abstract:
The WIPO Copyright Treaty (WCT) recognized the need to maintain a  
balance between the rights of authors and the larger public interest  
in updating copyright law in light of advances in information and  
communications technologies. But the translation of this balance into  
the domestic laws of the United States and European Union has not  
been fully successful.

In the DMCA, Congress achieved a reasonable balance of competing  
interests in its creation of safe harbors for internet service  
providers. However, contrary to its apparent intention, Congress  
failed to achieve a similar balance of interests when establishing  
new rules forbidding circumvention of technical protection measures  
(TPMs) used by copyright owners to control access to and use of their  
works.

We propose adoption of a “reverse notice and takedown” procedure to  
help achieve some of the balance in anti-circumvention rules that the  
WCT endorsed, but which implementing legislation has thus far failed  
to deliver. Under this regime, users would be able to give copyright  
owners notice of their desire to make public interest uses of  
technically protected copyrighted works, and rights holders would  
have the responsibility to take down the TPMs or otherwise enable  
these lawful uses.


Speaker:
Pamela Samuelson -- Distinguished Professor of Law and Information  
Management at the University of California, Co-Director of the  
Berkeley Center for Law and Technology, and advisor for the Samuelson  
Law, Technology and Public Policy Clinic -- is one of the world's  
foremost authorities on information technology and intellectual  
property law. She has written and spoken extensively about the  
challenges that new information technologies are posing for public  
policy and traditional legal regimes. Samuelson is a Fellow of the  
Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), a Contributing Editor of  
Communications of the ACM, a past Fellow of the John D. & Catherine  
T. MacArthur Foundation, an Honorary Professor of the University of  
Amsterdam and received the Woman of Vision Award for Social Impact in  
2005 from the Anita Borg Institute. She is a member of the Board of  
Directors of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and of the Open  
Source Applications Foundation, as well as a member of the Advisory  
Board for the Electronic Privacy Information Center.

Host: Hal Abelson, hal at mit.edu


Regards,
	Phil



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Phillip D. Long, Ph.D. (RL)           Radar Radio  
(SL)                 email: longpd at mit.edu
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