Copyright Alliance CEO Backs CO Modernization, Independence
Congress needs to support the “Next Great Copyright Office,” Copyright Alliance CEO Sandra Aistars said in an op-ed for The Hill Thursday. “Step one in any review of the [Copyright] Act needs to focus on modernizing the Copyright Office itself.”…
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All the witnesses and most House Judiciary Committee members at a hearing Thursday expressed support for CO modernization and independence (see 1502260057). Copyright experts told us last week that separating the CO from the Library of Congress has as much broad-based support as any issue in copyright (see 1502200040). “Copyright issues tend not to split across partisan lines, though there can be a so-called ‘copyright/copyleft’ split on certain substantive issues,” Aistars said. “The one area many seem to agree on regardless of their other views is that the Copyright Act has become progressively less comprehensible to ordinary people at the same time that copyright issues are becoming ubiquitous in our day-to-day lives,” she said. “All of these stakeholders require a modern, efficiently functioning Copyright Office with appropriate regulatory and adjudicatory powers,” but the CO “lacks administrative control over even its own budget and infrastructure needs,” Aistars said. “Because no agency exists with comprehensive, independent rulemaking authority in the copyright sphere, issues better suited for regulatory action continue to be resolved directly in the Act, or worse -- are ignored entirely.”