Washington Hotline


C&RL News July/August 2016 356

Emily Sheketoff is executive director of the ALA 
Washington Offi  ce, email: esheketoff @alawash.org

W a s h i n g t o n  H o t l i n eEmily Sheketoff

Wa s h i n g t o n  c o p y r i g h t  p l a t e  f u l l , 
though not of legislative fare
Studies: Earlier this year, the Copyright 
Offi ce announced studies of three aspects 
of copyright law and invited public input 
on each issue. ALA, in concert with library 
and/or other coalition partners, participated 
in each of them (see links to key fi lings 
at http://www.ala.org/advocacy/advleg
/federallegislation/copyright), which were 
augmented by the Copyright Offi ce with 
multi-stakeholder “roundtable” events on 
all three issues. 

Roundtables: The fi rst roundtables con-
cerned the controversial “triennial rulemak-
ing” proceeding through which exceptions 
to the law’s prohibition against “circumvent-
ing” a copyright protection mechanism or 
technology under Section 1201 of the Digital 
Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) may be 
requested. A second set were held to elicit 
comment on the so-called “safe harbor” 
provisions of the DMCA, pursuant to which 
online service providers are granted immu-
nity from liability for facilitating copyright 
infringement by their users if they agree to 
“take down” allegedly infringing material 
from their networks upon receipt of a statu-
torily dictated notice from a copyright owner. 
A third proceeding concerns the transfer-
ability of “embedded software,” which are 
increasingly incorporated in consumer goods 
and vehicles of every kind. 

ALA and several of its partners in the 
Re:Create Coalition (including PLA Past- 
President Jan Sanders), as well as the group’s 
executive director, participated actively in 
the roundtables, urging the Copyright Offi ce 
to make its processes, and the law, substan-
tially more fair use- and consumer-friendly to 
facilitate scholarship, creativity, and national 
economic health. 

Congress: In Congress, after holding 
more than two dozen hearings over two 
years, the full House Judiciary Committee 
is in the process of holding one last round 
of meetings with stakeholders. Committee 
Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-VA6) recently 
told the U.S. Chamber of Commerce that 
he intends to move some “consensus” leg-
islation, though it’s unclear to virtually all 
stakeholders what that might encompass. 
In the Senate, action is similarly stalled on 
possible ratifi cation of the Marrakesh Treaty. 
Finally, neither chamber has yet to address 
modernization of the Copyright Offi ce, or 
much more controversial proposals to re-
move it from the Library of Congress.

Courts: Finally, in mid-April the U.S. Su-
preme Court denied the Authors Guild’s ap-
peal from the Second Circuit’s late-October 
decision holding the Google Books project 
and database to be lawful fair use of books 
digitized and stored en masse. Fair use also 
scored a victory in Oracle America Inc. v. 
Google Inc. in which a jury ruled that Apple’s 
specifi c uses of an Oracle “application pro-
gramming interface” were fair use. Oracle 
sought $9 billion in damages. 

District Dispatch

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