Changes in Copyright Law Quiz

PDF page 124: digital video recorder (DVR), the Internet, iTunes media players, and now the streaming of music and movies all offered consumers new forms of creative content—and offered creators a new means of reproducing and distributing it. Each of these required an adjustment in U.S. copyright law. Take the advent of cable television in the 1960s and 1970s. Early court cases like Fortnightly Corp. v. United Artists (https://www.openstax.org/l/FortnightlyVUnited) in 1968 and Teleprompter v. CBS (https://www.openstax.org/l/TeleprompterVCBS) in 1974 held that the rebroadcast of broadcast television shows over cable television systems did not constitute a “performance” and therefore did not infringe the copyright in those shows. The Copyright Act of 1976—the most significant revision of copyright law since 1909—remedied this failure to see cable broadcasts as performances and extended copyright protection to works performed over cable TV.

PDF page 124: digital video recorder (DVR), the Internet, iTunes media players, and now the streaming of music and movies all offered consumers new forms of creative content—and offered creators a new means of reproducing and distributing it. Each of these required an adjustment in U.S. copyright law. Take the advent of cable television in the 1960s and 1970s. Early court cases like Fortnightly Corp. v. United Artists (https://www.openstax.org/l/FortnightlyVUnited) in 1968 and Teleprompter v. CBS (https://www.openstax.org/l/TeleprompterVCBS) in 1974 held that the rebroadcast of broadcast television shows over cable television systems did not constitute a “performance” and therefore did not infringe the copyright in those shows. The Copyright Act of 1976—the most significant revision of copyright law since 1909—remedied this failure to see cable broadcasts as performances and extended copyright protection to works performed over cable TV.

PDF page 124: The Copyright Act of 1976 made several other major changes to the law. It also codified “fair use” into the statutes rather than simply the common law, granted statutory copyright protection as soon as a work was reduced to a concrete form rather than only when registered, and began to bring the United States into xxxiv compliance with international copyright law rather than continue to stand apart from it.

PDF page 124: The next major copyright issue arose with the emergence of personal computer software in the 1980s. Software companies and independent developers lobbied Congress to curtail the illegal copying of copyrighted software. As a result, the Computer Software Rental Act of 1990 was passed, prohibiting the unauthorized rental, lease, or lending of a computer program for commercial gain. Individuals, however, could xxxv still make personal copies for their own use, and libraries were permitted to lend software.

PDF page 125: The hope was that this would curb the rampant software piracy then costing U.S. firms roughly $1 billion per year in lost sales and rentals. The law probably did slow piracy inside the United States. But by 2010, software piracy worldwide had grown into a $10 billion a year business.

PDF page 125: Hoping to prevent similar piracy in the emerging digital audio field, the Audio Home Recording Act of 1992 amended copyright law to require manufacturers and importers of digital audio recording devices to install technology to prevent the illegal copying of copyrighted music. It also mandated that royalties be paid to copyright owners for every device sold.

PDF page 125: Despite many attempts to take down and/or block the site, pr oxies still spring up. (credit: The Pirate Bay via Wikimedia Commons / Copyrighted free use) When it came to performance rights—one of the six exclusive rights of copyright owners—the last 150 years have witnessed major changes in the way musical performances are distributed and consumed. The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) was formed in 1914 to develop a system whereby royalties could be obtained for composers whose songs were performed live—and later on, over the newly invented technology of radio. Today, 435,000 U.S. composers, songwriters, lyricists, and music publishers rely upon ASCAP to secure royalties for their work performed over TV, CD, and every new media that has come after radio.

PDF page 125: The other three performing rights organizations are SESAC, formed in 1930; Broadcast Music, Inc. (BMI), formed in 1939; and SoundExchange, which in 2007 was granted the sole right by the Copyright Royalty Board to represent performers whose music airs on satellite radio (such as SIRIUS XM), Internet radio (like Pandora), cable TV music channels, and similar platforms for streaming sound recordings. The Recording Industry of America Association (RIAA), formed in 1952, represents record labels and music distributors and has played an important role in ensuring that their rights are respected even as new technologies for distributing recorded music have emerged.

PDF page 126: The RIAA lobbied Congress to enact the No Electronic Theft Act of 1997, for example, which made it a criminal offense to reproduce or distribute music by electronic means (i.e., over the Internet). Nonetheless, by 2002, some 3.6 billion songs a month were still being downloaded illegally, thanks to music sharing sites like Napster, which had been launched in 1999 and at its peak facilitated the downloading (much of it illegal) of 80 million songs. Indeed, many college dormitory networks became overloaded with MP3 musical file transfers.

PDF page 126: At the time, many Internet pundits, enthralled with the misquoted notion that “information wants to be free” online, insisted that downloading technology made it impossible for musicians and their labels to enforce their copyrights on the Internet. For its part, Napster claimed that they should not be held responsible for any illegal downloading committed by users. But the RIAA and musicians brought suits for contributory infringement. In court cases like A & M Records. v. Napster (https://www.openstax.org/l/AMVNapster) and Metallica v. Napster (https://www.openstax.org/l/ MetallicaVNapster), judges and juries repeatedly found Napster guilty of infringement and it was forced into bankruptcy in 2002. Music piracy still exists, of course. But in place of Napster, music consumers now have legal music download sites such as Apple’s iTunes music store that sell digital music with permission from, and appropriate royalties to, their copyright owners. Surveys show that most consumers don’t really want to steal music. They just want convenient, low-cost online access to it. Most consumers also appear to recognize that if music creators cannot make a living from their work, they won’t be able to keep making music. Meanwhile, digital rights management (DRM) technologies had been developed that have the potential to limit the piracy of copyrighted content. Companies in various content industries lobbied Congress to pass the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 (DMCA). This law made it a crime to disseminate technology or services that could circumvent DRM measures used to control access to copyrighted movies, music, and books. It also increased penalties for copyright infringement on the Internet.

PDF page 126: At the time, many Internet pundits, enthralled with the misquoted notion that “information wants to be free” online, insisted that downloading technology made it impossible for musicians and their labels to enforce their copyrights on the Internet. For its part, Napster claimed that they should not be held responsible for any illegal downloading committed by users. But the RIAA and musicians brought suits for contributory infringement. In court cases like A & M Records. v. Napster (https://www.openstax.org/l/AMVNapster) and Metallica v. Napster (https://www.openstax.org/l/ MetallicaVNapster), judges and juries repeatedly found Napster guilty of infringement and it was forced into bankruptcy in 2002. Music piracy still exists, of course. But in place of Napster, music consumers now have legal music download sites such as Apple’s iTunes music store that sell digital music with permission from, and appropriate royalties to, their copyright owners. Surveys show that most consumers don’t really want to steal music. They just want convenient, low-cost online access to it. Most consumers also appear to recognize that if music creators cannot make a living from their work, they won’t be able to keep making music. Meanwhile, digital rights management (DRM) technologies had been developed that have the potential to limit the piracy of copyrighted content. Companies in various content industries lobbied Congress to pass the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 (DMCA). This law made it a crime to disseminate technology or services that could circumvent DRM measures used to control access to copyrighted movies, music, and books. It also increased penalties for copyright infringement on the Internet.

PDF page 126: But in an appropriate concession to online services that merely hosted user content, the DMCA limited the liability of online services for copyright infringement committed by their users, so long as they acted to remove the offending content once informed of it.