p2pnet - rss feed: Senator Orrin Hatch -
"The music industry [read RIAA and Big Five labels] has sometimes been criticized for being too slow to adapt its business models to new technologies," says senator Orrin Hatch, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
However, he’s going to help them out by expanding an, "existing antitrust exemption so that record companies and music publishers can negotiate royalty rates and bring to consumers innovative new forms of physical phonorecords".
This announcement came on November 22 when Hatch introduced his Enhancing Federal Obscenity Reporting and Copyright Enforcement Act of 2003.
"Today, an antitrust exemption in the Copyright Act gives record companies and music publishers the flexibility they need to negotiate mechanical royalty rates in the rapidly evolving market for legal music downloading," he said. "These parties now need the same flexibility to ensure that they can negotiate royalties associated with innovative forms of physical phonorecords, like enhanced compact disks and DVD audio disks."
Physical phonorecords. Hmmmm.
By that wasn’t all. Hatch’s bill - which by a remarkable coincidence breaks down to the EnFORCE Act [Get it? EnFORCE?]- will also help resolve other knotty problem facing the hapless recording industry - ie:
"Some accused [copyright] infringers have tried to avoid liability for statutory damages by challenging the accuracy of the information in copyright registrations". EnFORCE will sort that out by clarifying, "that courts should resolve such challenges by applying the existing judicial doctrine of fraud-on-the-Copyright-Office".
On another issue, the music industry, "has received inconsistent adjudications about whether an album consisting of ten songs counts as one or ten works for statutory-damages computation," he says. However, his bill, "gives courts discretion to conform the law of statutory damages to changing market realities".
That’ll be a relief.
But EnFORCE, "also provides additional tools to protect our children from perverts and pedophiles on the Internet," continued Hatch. It will provide the Department of Justice with, "enhanced enforcement capabilities and additional reporting requirements that will facilitate both federal enforcement and Congressional oversight of federal criminal laws relating to intellectual property and sexual exploitation of children".
Or, put another way, "the bill authorizes appropriations to ensure that all Department of Justice units that investigate intellectual property crimes have the support of at least one agent specifically trained in the investigation of such crimes. The bill also requires the Department of Justice to report to Congress detailed information about the scope of its efforts to investigate and prosecute crimes involving the sexual exploitation of minors or intellectual property."
Hatch mentions in passing that the bill was co-sponsored by Senators Diane Feinstein (D-CA) and John Cornyn (R-TX) whose Artists’ Rights and Theft Prevention Act is much liked by the entertainment industry.
