riaa – Techdirt (original) (raw)

from the they-always-hated-the-internet dept

The RIAA just won’t quit in attacking users on the internet and trying to get them banned from using the internet entirely. The latest news is that all the major record labels have sued Verizon for not kicking users the RIAA accuses (but has not litigated) of being infringers off the internet.

But, there’s a long history here that needs to be understood to see why this case is so stupid and so dangerous to the internet.

Twelve years ago, we wrote about a secret plan by the RIAA to pretend that copyright law already required that ISPs shutdown the internet accounts of users caught infringing. The relevant copyright law, DMCA 512, does have an awkwardly worded section on “termination.” Specifically, it says that to be eligible for the DMCA safe harbors, a site:

has adopted and reasonably implemented, and informs subscribers and account holders of the service provider’s system or network of, a policy that provides for the termination in appropriate circumstances of subscribers and account holders of the service provider’s system or network who are repeat infringers; and

However, it provides no more guidance about many of the important definitions in there. What is “reasonably implemented?” What is “appropriate circumstances?” What constitutes “repeat infringers?”

While some people claim that the last question, in particular, is easy to determine, it’s not. False claims of copyright infringement are made all the time, as we’ve seen with DMCA claims (or even just YouTube’s ContentID). Sometimes, it’s for anti-competitive purposes. Sometimes it’s just to make life difficult for someone. Often, it’s because automated systems have gone haywire.

The only real way to know if someone is a “repeat infringer” is not based on a claimed copyright holder sending notices, but on a court ruling that an individual infringed on someone’s copyright. A service provider could have actual knowledge of infringement only after it has been adjudicated by a court.

However, some copyright holders disagree.

As is their wont, the RIAA has decided that all of these should be decided in the most extreme way possible, which is that if the RIAA sends a bunch of infringement notices to a service provider, that ISP should kick users off the internet entirely.

There are all sorts of problems with this. First, under the Supreme Court’s Packingham decision, it’s reasonable to argue any law that kicks people off the internet as a requirement is inherently unconstitutional. As Justice Kennedy wrote in that decision, citing Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition, “It is well established that, as a general rule, the Government ‘may not suppress lawful speech as the means to suppress unlawful speech.’”

Yet, as we’ve described for decades, when it comes to copyright, the courts show an uncanny willingness to ignore any First Amendment concerns and to give the industry all the power (rather than the public, who copyright law is supposed to benefit).

Given all that, the recording industry sued Cox Communications for failing to “reasonably implement” a policy to “terminate… repeat infringers.” That case was kind of a mess from the very start. It involved a firm, Rightscorp, that was famous for sending piles of questionable infringement notices based on flimsy evidence of infringement. The case ended up before a famously cranky judge, Liam O’Grady, who made it clear that he did not care about the public interest, or even the purpose of the DMCA.

It didn’t help that Cox’s own policies for handling copyright complaints were a bit of a mess, but O’Grady seemed wholly uninterested in the details and nuances and ruled against Cox. The case has bounced around for years, with the 4th Circuit Appeals court occasionally making a mess of things, occasionally fixing small parts of the lower court’s nonsense.

Earlier this year, the 4th Circuit threw out the massive $1 billion award that a jury had given the labels, saying the amount was not justified. But the case is still something of a mess, as Cox still believes (correctly, in my opinion) that it’s not violating the law at all. I believe that next month, both sides are planning to request the Supreme Court take a look. The labels will want the giant damages reinstated, while Cox will be arguing that the entire thing is ridiculous and it did nothing wrong.

Either way, the record labels apparently don’t want to wait for the Supreme Court to sort all this out. They have moved forward with a similar lawsuit against Verizon, one of the country’s largest ISPs, making the same basic arguments. The RIAA is always good about telling narratives:

The scope of repeat infringement on Verizon’s network is staggering. Thousands of Verizon subscribers were the subject of 20 or more notices from Plaintiffs, and more than 500 subscribers were the subject of 100 or more notices. One particularly egregious Verizon subscriber was single-handedly the subject of 4,450 infringement notices from Plaintiffs alone.

Verizon acknowledged that it received these notices of infringement sent by Plaintiffs’ representatives. Yet rather than taking any steps to address its customers’ illegal use of its network, Verizon deliberately chose to ignore Plaintiffs’ notices, willfully blinding itself to that information and prioritizing its own profits over its legal obligations.

It is well-established law that if a party materially assists someone it knows is engaging in copyright infringement, that party is fully liable for the infringement as if it had infringed directly. Further, when a party has a direct financial interest in the infringing activity, and the right and practical ability to stop or limit it, that party also faces liability. Flouting those basic responsibilities, Verizon deliberately turned a blind eye to its subscribers’ infringement. Verizon failed to terminate or otherwise take any meaningful action against the accounts of repeat infringers of which it was aware. Instead, Verizon routinely thumbed its nose at Plaintiffs by continuing to provide its service to subscribers it knew to be serially infringing Plaintiffs’ copyrighted sound recordings. In reality, Verizon operated its service as an attractive tool and safe haven for infringement.

And, so, of course, many of the headlines will be about that kind of narrative.

But, as always, it’s way more complicated than that. Just because someone sends notices does not mean that infringement has actually happened. I mean, this is the RIAA we’re talking about, and they have a bit of a history of sending trash, bogus DMCA notices. Or, a history of suing over songs it doesn’t hold the copyright on. Or on making totally baseless accusations about copyright infringement based on whims.

It’s only natural for a company like Verizon to choose to view RIAA notices with suspicion and not immediately assume they’re proof of infringement.

Anyway, given the status of the Cox fight and the decent chance the Supreme Court will take that issue up (not guaranteed, of course, but it wouldn’t be surprising), this case might end up sitting around while we wait for the Supreme Court to (hopefully, but unlikely) get these issues sorted out in that case first.

Either way, the RIAA is up to their usual anti-internet tricks. While they frame it as Verizon somehow ignoring notices, don’t believe that narrative. This is about the RIAA overclaiming copyright powers and trying to get people kicked off their entire internet connection (which is so necessary these days) for daring to download some songs.

Filed Under: copyright, dmca, isps, repeat infringer, termination policy
Companies: cox, riaa, sony, sony bmg, umg, universal music group, verizon

RIAA Of Six Years Ago Debunks RIAA Of Today’s AI Lawsuit Claims

from the insert-spiderman-v.-spiderman-meme dept

There have been a bunch of lawsuits over the last couple of years from traditional content industries suing AI providers, claiming copyright infringement. We’re still a long way from figuring out how all of these lawsuits will shake out. We’ve made it clear that we’re skeptical of these lawsuits, largely because you would have to basically ignore a bunch of important and useful copyright precedents to reach the conclusion that training on copyright-covered works infringes on copyright.

Of course, this is copyright, where logic and precedent are often ignored based on who a judge hates more. So, we shall see. But, we’ve definitely seen a lot of people cheering on these lawsuits, mainly in the false belief that it’s about “artists” vs. “big evil tech companies” and therefore the “artists” should win.

Reality is always a lot more complex and nuanced. If these lawsuits succeed, it will not help artists get paid. Instead, it will again increase the reliance on middlemen who have a long history of screwing over the artists. Just the fact that the RIAA is currently run by a guy who famously got his job at the RIAA just months after sneaking language into a bill to fuck over musicians should tell you all you need to know about the RIAA’s actual interests.

Also, if the cases decide that training is a licensable scenario, it will kill smaller and open source AIs and make it so only the largest of the largest tech companies can create LLMs. So instead of being a victory over “big tech,” it will hand the market to big tech.

And that’s not even getting into the damage it would do to the ability to read the open internet (which itself could be judged a licensable event) or the ability of researchers to scan and collect data about the open internet.

Just be careful what you wish for.

Earlier this week, the RIAA gleefully announced that it was suing two of the bigger music generator AI services. It filed one lawsuit against Suno in Massachusetts and another against Udio in New York.

Both lawsuits are effectively the same. And, they’re both ridiculously weak. They are both based on the premise that training on copyright-covered works requires permission. But, again, we’ve been there and done that. Training is a form of scanning or reading, and that’s either not a copyright-triggering event at all, or it’s fair use.

The lawsuits do not name what copyright covered content was actually copied beyond some handwaving about “all of it.” This is not sufficient for a copyright claim. The lawsuits argue that because it can tell these apps to make songs like musicians on RIAA member labels, that proves it’s infringing. From the Suno complaint:

Plaintiffs could have proceeded with this action based solely on eliciting that reasonable inference of copying. Nevertheless, Plaintiffs’ claims are based on much more. In particular, Plaintiffs tested Suno’s product and generated outputs using a series of prompts that pinpoint a particular sound recording by referencing specific subject matter, genre, artist, instruments, vocal style, and the like. Suno’s service repeatedly generated outputs that closely matched the targeted copyrighted sound recording, which means that Suno copied those copyrighted sound recordings to include in its training data. In addition, the public has observed (and Plaintiffs have confirmed) that even less targeted prompts can cause Suno’s product to generate outputs that resemble specific recording artists and specific copyrighted recordings. Such outputs are clear evidence that Suno trained its model on Plaintiffs’ copyrighted sound recordings.

Which… doesn’t matter? Again, training is clearly fair use, and “specific subject matter, genre, artist, instruments, vocal styles, and the like are not copyright-covered expression. All of those things are not elements subject to copyright.

If you want proof of that, just look at what the RIAA itself has said in cases a few years ago, following the Blurred Lines decision that initially suggested that music “styles” should be covered by copyright. The RIAA realized, quite quickly, that this might make a huge portion of the labels’ catalogues infringing and freaked out. In one case, the RIAA filed an amicus brief noting that such overprotection would be incredibly damaging.

… new songs incorporating new artistic expression influenced by unprotected, pre-existing thematic ideas must also be allowed.

That’s the RIAA’s own argument just six years ago. And now they’re arguing that such unprotected thematic ideas are protected. But only when tech companies are making use of them apparently.

Again, in that brief, the RIAA cogently argues against what the RIAA is now arguing in these complaints:

Most compositions share some elements with past compositions—sequences of three notes, motifs, standard rhythmic passages, arpeggios, chromatic scales, and the like. Likewise, all compositions share some elements of “selection and arrangement” defined in a broad sense. The universe of notes and scales is sharply limited. Nearly every time a composer chooses to include a sequence of a few notes, an arpeggio, or a chromatic scale in a composition, some other composer will have most likely “selected” the same elements at some level of generality.

To keep every work from infringing — and to keep authors from being able to claim ownership of otherwise unprotected elements — this Court has stressed that selection and arrangement is infringed only when there is virtual identity between two works, not loose resemblance. The same principle should be recognized for music.

Um. So, considering that the complaints are not showing “virtual identity between two works” then the RIAA itself has made the case for why these models are not infringing.

In that same brief, the RIAA itself admits that there can be only “thin” copyright coverage on general themes at most, to avoid making music inspired by others to be infringing:

To prevent nearly every new composition being at risk for liability, copyright claims based on “original contributions to ideas already in the public domain,” Satava v. Lowry, 323 F.3d 805 (9th Cir. 2003), are seen as involving a “thin copyright that protects against only virtually identical copying.” Id. at 812; see also Ets-Hokin v. Skyy Spirits, Inc., 323 F.3d 763, 766 (9th Cir. 2003) (“When we apply the limiting doctrines, subtracting the unoriginal elements, Ets-Hokin is left with . . . a ‘thin’ copyright, which protects against only virtually identical copying.”); Rentmeester v. Nike, Inc., 883 F.3d 1111, 1128-29 (9th Cir. 2018). This Court has long recognized this principle in claims involving visual art that allegedly creatively combines public domain elements, as with the sculptures in Satava or the photographs in Ets-Hokin and Rentmeester. The same should apply to music.

Perhaps Suno and Udio should take a page from the RIAA’s own legal arguments in responding to these complaints against them.

I am sure RIAA folks (and anti-AI folks) will rush in to explain why “this is different,” but it’s not. It’s literally the same argument. Does copyright actually protect genre, themes, and the like? Of course not. It would be a ridiculous and dangerous outcome should that come to pass.

Now, I know the RIAA will claim that it’s not suing over the output of these tools, but rather just pointing to those things as proof of infringement on the training side. But, again, training by scanning copyright-covered material for a totally transformative use (which includes learning from or being inspired by) is quintessential fair use.

The training is fair use. The fact that it can output songs with a similar theme matters not one bit to the copyright question, as the RIAA itself admits.

Of course, this case will go on for years and years. You can never predict how courts will rule on copyright issues, but these two cases seem particularly weak and silly. This is especially true given how it shows the RIAA going back on its own previous claims from just a few years ago.

And, just to close out this piece, I’ll note that RIAA CEO Mitch Glazer, again, the very guy who snuck words into a totally unrelated bill to literally take copyrights away from artists and hand them to music labels, is quoted in the press release about this lawsuit talking about how it’s not fair to “exploit” an “artist’s life’s work” for profit, even though that’s exactly what all of his member labels have done for nearly all of their existence.

Filed Under: ai, copyright, fair use, music, music generators, training
Companies: riaa, suno, udio, universal music group

Recording Industry Forces Important Video Downloading Tool’s Website Offline

from the get-over-it-riaa dept

When will the legacy entertainment industry get it through their thick skulls that recording content is legal. We’ve done this. We’ve done it at the highest level. Tools that have substantial non-infringing uses are legal.

Well, at least in the US.

Which explains why the legacy companies often go overseas to do their dirty work. And that’s the case here.

For a while now, the recording industry has been absolutely furious that it was possible to download YouTube videos, with their ire directed mainly at one tool that enables such downloads, youtube-dl, a command line video downloader, that is also a plugin component for other download tools. It’s a useful tool. Journalists use it all the time. I have used it multiple times myself, most often when I’m trying to generate a transcript of a YouTube video, and the transcript tool I use requires an upload file.

It has, as the Supreme Court notes, substantial non-infringing uses.

That didn’t stop the RIAA from sending a totally bogus DMCA takedown demand to GitHub three years ago. After some public outcry, GitHub reinstated the code.

But, of course, the RIAA never gives up its quixotic efforts to attack the open internet. So, it went to Germany, where copyright law is pretty consistently stupid. Sony Music, Warner Music, and Universal Music went after the hosting company, Uberspace, who was hosting the youtube-dl webpage in Germany.

Using the European equivalent of their argument in the US that failed (here it was that the code violated Section 1201 of the DMCA that forbids “circumvention” technologies), a German court sided with the labels back in April, but the site remained online until just recently, when, as TorrentFreak notes, the labels put up a bond that allowed for the enforcement of the original order, even while Uberspace appealed the ruling.

The ruling was published in March but Uberspace wasn’t required to take action right away. The hosting company decided to appeal, which meant that the youtube-dl.org site remained online, unless the music companies posted a €20,000 bond.

Initially, it didn’t appear that the labels would enforce the order, but that changed a few days ago. The plaintiffs informed Uberspace that they had posted the security, leaving the company no other choice than to take the site offline.

Torrentfreak spoke to Uberspace’s owner, Jonas Pasche, who seems (quite understandably) pissed off about this, but noted that his hands were legally tied:

“I received that information from the plaintiff’s side on July 27, with proof that they did the security deposit at a bank. So I no longer have a choice but to follow the judgment. Otherwise, I would face a fine of €250,000 or jail time,” Pasche notes.

The appeals fight continues in the meantime:

Uberspace will continue the legal battle and is prepared to fight the order up to the highest court possible. If the appeal is successful, Pasche will gladly unblock the site.

“We are confident that a higher court will overturn the judgment of the Hamburg Regional Court, so we will be able to unblock the site as soon as this happens,” he says.

All of this is basically just the major record labels being a fucking nuisance. The (again, perfectly useful for non-infringing purposes) youtube-dl code is still on GitHub where it can be downloaded. And, even if the labels somehow managed to kill youtube-dl, people would figure out other ways to download video content. It’s not going to stop piracy. And, really, at a time when the record labels are making record revenue thanks to the internet, maybe they could lighten up a bit on this infatuation with trying to make everything suck just because some tools might be used for infringing uses in some cases.

Get over it. Some people are going to infringe. If the industry and its lawyers spent like 20% of the time and effort they currently spend on “anti-piracy” efforts on just providing better content in more convenient ways to eager music fans, they’d do so much better.

But the whole industry has built up this stupid faith-based belief that “piracy” is the problem, rather than their failure to better serve their customers.

Filed Under: circumvention, copyright, germany, youtube-dl
Companies: riaa, sony music, uberspace, universal music, warner music, youtube

RIAA Piles On In The Effort To Kill The World’s Greatest Library: Sues Internet Archive For Making It Possible To Hear Old 78s

On Friday, the Internet Archive put up a blog post noting that its digital book lending program was likely to change as it continues to fight the book publishers’ efforts to kill the Internet Archive. As you’ll recall, all the big book publishers teamed up to sue the Internet Archive over its Open Library project, which was created based on a detailed approach, backed by librarians and copyright lawyers, to recreate an online digital library that matches a physical library. Unfortunately, back in March, the judge decided (just days after oral arguments) that everything about the Open Library infringes on copyrights. There were many, many problems with this ruling, and the Archive is appealing.

However, in the meantime, the judge in the district court needed to sort out the details of the injunction in terms of what activities the Archive would change during the appeal. The Internet Archive and the publishers negotiated over the terms of such an injunction and asked the court to weigh in on whether or not it also covers books for which there are no ebooks available at all. The Archive said it should only cover books where the publishers make an ebook available, while the publishers said it should cover all books, because of course they did. Given Judge Koeltl’s original ruling, I expected him to side with the publishers, and effectively shut down the Open Library. However, this morning he surprised me and sided with the Internet Archive, saying only books that are already available in electronic form need to be removed. That’s still a lot, but at least it means people can still access those other works electronically. The judge rightly noted that the injunction should be narrowly targeted towards the issues at play in the case, and thus it made sense to only block works available as ebooks.

But, also on Friday, the RIAA decided to step in and to try to kick the Internet Archive while it’s down. For years now, the Archive has offered up its Great 78 Project, in which the Archive, in coordination with some other library/archival projects (including the Archive of Contemporary Music and George Blood LP), has been digitizing whatever 78rpm records they could find.

78rpm records were some of the earliest musical recordings, and were produced from 1898 through the 1950s when they were replaced by 33 1/3rpm and 45rpm vinyl records. I remember that when I was growing up my grandparents had a record player that could still play 78s, and there were a few of those old 78s in a cabinet. Most of the 78s were not on vinyl, but shellac, and were fairly brittle, meaning that many old 78s are gone forever. As such there is tremendous value in preserving and protecting old 78s, which is also why many libraries have collections of them. It’s also why those various archival libraries decided to digitize and preserve them. Without such an effort, many of those 78s would disappear.

If you’ve ever gone through the Great78 project, you know quite well that it is, in no way, a substitute for music streaming services like Spotify or Apple Music. You get a static page in which you (1) see a photograph of the original 78 label, (2) get some information on that recording, and (3) are able to listen to and download just that song. Here’s a random example I pulled:

Also, when you listen to it, you can clearly hear that this was digitized straight off of the 78 itself, including all the crackle and hissing of the record. It is nothing like the carefully remastered versions you hear on music streaming services.

Indeed, I’ve used the Great78 Project to discover old songs I’d never heard before, leading me to search out those artists on Spotify to add to my playlists, meaning that for me, personally, the Great78 Project has almost certainly resulted in the big record labels making more money, as it added more artists for me to listen to through licensed systems.

It’s no secret that the recording industry had it out for the Great78 Project. Three years ago, we wrote about how Senator Thom Tillis (who has spent his tenure in the Senate pushing for whatever the legacy copyright industries want) seemed absolutely apoplectic when the Internet Archive bought a famous old record store in order to get access to the 78s to digitize, and Tillis thought that this attempt to preserve culture was shameful.

The lawsuit, joined by all of the big RIAA record labels, was filed by one of the RIAA’s favorite lawyers for destroying anything good that expands access to music: Matt Oppenheim. Matt was at the RIAA and helped destroy both Napster and Grokster. He was also the lawyer who helped create some terrible precedents holding ISPs liable for subscribers who download music, enabling even greater copyright trolling. Basically, if you’ve seen anything cool and innovative in the world of music over the last two decades, Oppenheim has been there to kill it.

And now he’s trying to kill the world’s greatest library.

Much of the actual lawsuit revolves around the Music Modernization Act, which was passed in 2018 and had some good parts in it, in particular in moving some pre-1972 sound recordings into the public domain. As you might also recall, prior to February of 1972, sound recordings did not get federal copyright protection (though they might get some form of state copyright). Indeed, in most of the first half of the 20th century, many copyright experts believed that federal copyright could not apply to sound recordings and that it could only apply to the composition. After February of 1972, sound recordings were granted federal copyright, but that left pre-1972 works in a weird state, in which they were often protected by an amalgamation of obsolete state laws, meaning that some works might not reach the public domain for well over a century. This was leading to real concerns that some of our earliest recordings would disappear forever.

The Music Modernization Act sought to deal with some of that, creating a process by which pre-1972 sound recordings would be shifted under federal copyright, and a clear process began to move some of the oldest ones into the public domain. It also created a process for dealing with old orphaned works, where the copyright holder could not be found. The Internet Archive celebrated all of this, and noted that it would be useful for some of its archival efforts.

The lawsuit accuses the Archive (and Brewster Kahle directly) of then ignoring the limitations and procedures in the Music Modernization Act to just continue digitizing and releasing all of the 78s it could find, including those by some well known artists whose works are available on streaming platforms and elsewhere. It also whines that the Archive often posts links to newly digitized Great78 records on ex-Twitter.

When the Music Modernization Act’s enactment made clear that unauthorized copying, streaming, and distributing pre-1972 sound recordings is infringing, Internet Archive made no changes to its activities. Internet Archive did not obtain authorization to use the recordings on the Great 78 Project website. It did not remove any recordings from public access. It did not slow the pace at which it made new recordings publicly available. It did not change its policies regarding which recordings it would make publicly available.

Internet Archive has not filed any notices of non-commercial use with the Copyright Office. Accordingly, the safe harbor set forth in the Music Modernization Act is not applicable to Internet Archive’s activities.

Internet Archive knew full well that the Music Modernization Act had made its activities illegal under Federal law. When the Music Modernization Act went into effect, Internet Archive posted about it on its blog. Jeff Kaplan, The Music Modernization Act is now law which means some pre-1972 music goes public, INTERNET ARCHIVE (Oct. 15, 2018), https://blog.archive.org/2018/10/15/the-music-modernization-act-is-now-law-which-means-some-music-goes-public/. The blog post stated that “the MMA means that libraries can make some of these older recordings freely available to the public as long as we do a reasonable search to determine that they are not commercially available.” Id. (emphasis added). The blog post further noted that the MMA “expands an obscure provision of the library exception to US Copyright Law, Section 108(h), to apply to all pre-72 recordings. Unfortunately 108(h) is notoriously hard to implement.” Id. (emphasis added). Brewster Kahle tweeted a link to the blog post. Brewster Kahle (@brewster_kahle), TWITTER (Oct. 15, 2018 11:26 AM), https://twitter.com/brewster_kahle/status/1051856787312271361.

Kahle delivered a presentation at the Association for Recorded Sound Collection’s 2019 annual conference titled, “Music Modernization Act 2018. How it did not go wrong, and even went pretty right.” In the presentation, Kahle stated that, “We Get pre-1972 out-of-print to be ‘Library Public Domain’!”. The presentation shows that Kahle, and, by extension, Internet Archive and the Foundation, understood how the Music Modernization Act had changed federal law and was aware the Music Modernization Act had made it unlawful under federal law to reproduce, distribute, and publicly perform pre-1972 sound recordings.

Despite knowing that the Music Modernization Act made its conduct infringing under federal law, Internet Archive ignored the new law and plowed forward as if the Music Modernization Act had never been enacted.

There’s a lot in the complaint that you can read. It attacks Brewster Kahle personally, falsely claiming that Kahle “advocated against the copyright laws for years,” rather than the more accurate statement that Kahle has advocated against problematic copyright laws that lock down, hide, and destroy culture. The lawsuit even uses Kahle’s important, though unfortunately failed, Kahle v. Gonzalez lawsuit, which argued (compellingly, though unfortunately not to the 9th Circuit) that when Congress changed copyright law from opt-in copyright (in which you had to register anything to get a copyright) to “everything is automatically covered by copyright,” it changed the very nature of copyright law, and took it beyond the limits required under the Constitution. That was not an “anti-copyright” lawsuit. It was an “anti-massive expansion of copyright in a manner that harms culture” lawsuit.

It is entirely possible (perhaps even likely) that the RIAA will win this lawsuit. As Oppenheim knows well, the courts are often quite smitten with the idea that the giant record labels and publishers and movie studios “own” culture and can limit how the public experiences it.

But all this really does is demonstrate exactly how broken modern copyright law is. There is no sensible or rationale world in which an effort to preserve culture and make it available to people should be deemed a violation of the law. Especially when that culture is mostly works that the record labels themselves ignored for decades, allowing them to decay and disappear in many instances. To come back now, decades later, and try to kill off library preservation and archival efforts is just an insult to the way culture works.

It’s doubly stupid given that the RIAA, and Oppenheim in particular, spent years trying to block music from ever being available on the internet. It’s only now that the very internet they fought developed systems that have re-invigorated the bank accounts of the labels through streaming that the RIAA gets to pretend that of course it cares about music from the first half of the 20th century — music that it was happy to let decay and die off until just recently.

Whether or not the case is legally sound is one thing. Chances are the labels may win. But, on a moral level, everything about this is despicable. The Great78 project isn’t taking a dime away from artists or the labels. No one is listening to the those recordings as a replacement for licensed efforts. Again, if anything, it’s helping to rejuvenate interest in those old recordings for free.

And if this lawsuit succeeds, it could very well put the nail in the coffin of the Internet Archive, which is already in trouble due to the publishers’ lawsuit.

Over the last few years, the RIAA had sort of taken a step back from being the internet’s villain, but its instincts to kill off and spit on culture never went away.

Filed Under: brewstere kahle, copyright, culture, great 78s, libraries, matt oppenheim, music, preservation, recordings
Companies: internet archive, riaa, universal music

from the revolving-door-keeps-revolving dept

I have to admit that I’d lost track of the whole White House IP Czar position. Officially, the “Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator” or IPEC, the job was created by the “Pro-IP Act” in 2008, and we warned that the whole thing was an attempt to turn the White House into Hollywood’s private copyright police force. The first IPEC didn’t come until after President Obama was elected, and while he was in office, there were two IPECs who served under him, with somewhat mixed results. The first one, got off to a rocky start, but was willing to listen to non-maximalist opinions, and eventually produced some more balanced reports on “IP enforcement.”

His second czar kicked off his job with a scary speech, misusing a bunch of stats to imply that “intellectual property laws” were directly responsible for anything “protected by” those laws.

But… after that… not much happened? I have no idea if Trump even had an IPEC. And, apparently it wasn’t a huge priority for Biden either. In 2022 the required report from IPEC was released, but it’s from “the office of the IPEC” and as far as I can tell, there was no human being who was actually the IPEC at that time. Even as some copyright-maximalist lobbyists would publicly whine about how Biden needed to nominate someone for the job, he’s only just done so now. Not surprisingly, but disappointingly, he’s pulled someone directly out of Hollywood, continuing the unfortunate revolving door between the legacy entertainment industries and the US government when it comes to roles around copyright policy.

Remember, copyright law, under the Constitution, is required to benefit the public. The monopoly rights grants under copyright are only a means to benefiting the public, not the ends themselves. Tragically, too many in Hollywood believe that the copyrights and the gatekeepers who control them are what’s important and should be the main beneficiaries. They often care little about whether or not they benefit the public. This does not mean that anyone from Hollywood will automatically support copyright maximalism — I’ve met enough people from those companies with a more open mind — but it certainly should lead to some amount of skepticism.

The bio of the person Biden has chosen at least does not suggest someone who is willing to recognize and support the important roles of fair use and the public domain in enabling creativity and innovation:

Deborah Robinson is an attorney with extensive experience protecting intellectual property rights on a global scale. Her career includes leadership roles as a corporate attorney and in public service as a prosecutor. As head of intellectual property enforcement at Paramount Global (formerly ViacomCBS), Robinson developed and implemented anti-piracy protocols to protect music, television, digital, and consumer-products properties. She built the global content protection group, amassed evidence for criminal prosecutions and directed civil litigation matters. She also coordinated regularly with social media and app platforms to create specialized enforcement workflows and forged alliances among several trade associations and industry coalitions.

Prior to joining Paramount Global, Robinson spent five years protecting music creators’ rights at the Recording Industry Association of America and seven years as an Assistant District Attorney for the city of Philadelphia.

This is not the bio of someone who is out there trying to protect the rights of the public, generally speaking. It’s someone who is protecting the profits of corporations against actual artists and the public.

But, who knows, perhaps she will surprise us. But I’m not holding my breath.

Filed Under: copyright, copyright enforcement, deborah robinson, enforcement, ip czar, ipec, joe biden, revolving door
Companies: paramount, riaa

from the that-extension-infringes? dept

There are a number of different tools out there that let you download YouTube videos. These tools are incredibly useful for a number of reasons and should be seen as obviously legal in the same manner that home video recording devices were declared legal by the Supreme Court, because they have substantial non-infringing uses. But, of course, we’re in the digital age, and everything that should be obviously settled law is up for grabs again, because “Internet.”

In this case, a company named Yout offered a service for downloading YouTube video and audio, and the RIAA (because, they’re the RIAA) couldn’t allow that to happen. Home taping is killing music, y’know. Rather than going directly after Yout, the RIAA sent angry letters to lots of different companies that Yout relied on to exist. It got Yout’s website delisted from Google, had its payment processor cut the company off, etc. Yout was annoyed by this and filed a lawsuit against the RIAA.

The crux of the lawsuit is “Hey, we don’t infringe on anything,” asking for declaratory judgment. But it also seeks to go after the RIAA for DMCA 512(f) (false takedown notices) abuse and defamation (for the claims it made in the takedown notices it sent). All of these were going to be a longshot, and so it probably isn’t a huge surprise that the ruling was a complete loser for Yout (first posted to TorrentFreak).

But, in reading through the ruling there are things to be concerned about, beyond just the ridiculousness of saying that a digital VCR isn’t protected in the same way that a physical one absolutely is.

In arguing for declaratory judgment of non-infringement, Yout argues that it’s not violating DMCA 1201 (the problematic anti-circumvention provisions) because YouTube doesn’t really employ any technological protection measures that Yout has to circumvent. The judge disagrees, basically saying that even though it’s easy to download videos from YouTube, it still takes steps and is not just a feature that YouTube provides.

The steps outlined constitute an extraordinary use of the YouTube platform, which is self-evident from the fact that the steps access downloadable files through a side door, the Developer Tools menu, and that users must obtain instructions hosted on non-YouTube platforms to explain how to access the file storage location and their files. As explained in the previous section, the ordinary YouTube player page provides no download button and appears to direct users to stream content. I reasonably infer, then, that an ordinary user is not accessing downloadable files in the ordinary course.

That alone is basically an attack on the nature of the open internet. There are tons of features that original websites don’t provide, but which can be easily added to any website via add-ons, extensions, or just a bit of simple programs. But, the judge here is basically saying that not providing a feature in the form of a button directly means that there’s a technological protection measure, and bypassing it could be seen as infringing.

Yikes!

Of course, part of DMCA 1201 is not just having a technological protection measure in place, but an effective one. Here, it seems like there’s an argument that it’s not a strong one. It is not at all a strong protection measure, because basically the only protection measure is “not including a download button.” But, the court sees it otherwise. Yout points out that YouTube makes basically no effort to block anyone from downloading videos, showing that it doesn’t encrypt the files, and the court responds that it doesn’t need to encrypt the files, because other technological protections exist, like passwords and validation keys. But, uh, YouTube doesn’t use either of those either. So the whole thing is weird.

As I have already explained, the definition of “circumvent a technological measure” in the DMCA indicates that scrambling and encryption are prima facie examples of technological measures, but it does not follow that scrambling and encryption constitute an exhaustive list. Courts in the Second Circuit and beyond have held that a wide range of technological measures not expressly incorporated in statute are “effective,” including password protection and validation keys.

So again, the impression we’re left with is the idea that if a website doesn’t directly expose a feature, any third party service that provides that feature may be circumventing a TPM and violating DMCA 1201? That can’t be the way the law works.

Here, the court then says (and I only wish I were kidding) that modifying a URL is bypassing a TPM. Let me repeat that: modifying a URL can be infringing circumvention under 1201. That’s… ridiculous.

Moreover, Yout’s technology clearly “bypasses” YouTube’s technological measures because it affirmatively acts to “modify[]” the Request URL (a.k.a. signature value), causing an end user to access content that is otherwise unavailable. … As explained, without modifying the signature value, there is no access to the allegedly freelyavailable downloadable files. Accordingly, I cannot agree with Yout that there is “nothing to circumvent.”

Then, as Professor Eric Goldman notes, the judge dismisses the 512(f) claims by saying that 512(f) doesn’t apply to DMCA 1201 claims. As you hopefully remember, 512(f) is the part of the DMCA that is supposed to punish copyright holders for sending false notices. In theory. In practice, courts have basically said that as long as the sender believes the notice is legit, it’s legit, and therefore there is basically never any punishment for sending false notices.

Saying that 512(f) only applies to 512 takedown notices, and not 1201 takedown notices is just yet another example of the inherent one-sidedness of the DMCA. For years, we’ve pointed out how ridiculous 1201 is, in which merely advertising tools that could be used to circumvent a technical protection measure is considered copyright infringement in and of itself — even if there’s no actual underlying infringement. Given how expansive 1201 is in favor of copyright holders, you’d think it only makes sense to say that bogus notices should face whatever tiny penalty might be available under 512(f), but the judge here says “nope.” As Goldman highlights, this will just encourage people to send takedowns where they don’t directly cite 512, knowing that it will protect them from 512(f) responses.

One other oddity that Goldman also highlights: most of the time if we’re thinking about 1201 circumvention, we’re talking about the copyright holder themselves getting upset that someone is routing around the technical barriers that they put up. But this case is different. YouTube created the technical barriers (I mean, it didn’t actually, but that’s what the court is saying it did), but YouTube is not a party to the lawsuit.

So… that raises a fairly disturbing question. Could the RIAA (or any copyright holder) sue someone for a 1201 violation for getting around someone else’s technical protection measures? Because… that would be weird. But parts of this decision suggest that it’s exactly what the judge envisions.

Yes, some may argue that this tool is somehow “bad” and shouldn’t be allowed. I disagree, but I understand where the argument comes from. But, even if you believe that, it seems like a ruling like this could still lead to all sorts of damage for various third party tools and services. The internet, and the World Wide Web were built to be module. It’s quite common for third party services to build tools and overlays and extensions and whatnot to add features to certain websites.

It seems crazy that this ruling seems to suggest that might violate copyright law.

Filed Under: 512f, circumvention, copyright, dmca, dmca 1201, technical protection measures, video recording
Companies: riaa, yout, youtube

Study Shows Anti-Piracy Ads Often Made People Pirate More

from the the-sky-is-not-falling dept

Thu, Aug 11th 2022 01:02pm - Karl Bode

As it turns out, people would download a car.

For decades, Techdirt has highlighted the wide array of incredibly stupid anti-piracy ads the entertainment industry has used to try and steer people away from piracy. Usually these ads were being run at the same time the industry was busy fighting against evolution (providing less expensive, more convenient alternatives piracy) or demonizing new technologies (Home Taping Is Killing Music!).

Would you be shocked to learn that these ads not only didn’t work, they, in some instances, resulted in people pirating content more? That’s the finding of a new paper (hat tip, TorrentFreak and Motherboard) that studied several decades of anti-piracy advertising by the entertainment industry.

The study is filled with advice for industry, such as don’t bother to run anti-piracy ads in the theater (pirates just cut them out), don’t use rich spokespeople to profess poverty from piracy (users won’t buy your claims of financial harm), and don’t throw too many (often ludicrous) claims at a user lest the message get lost in transmission:

“The most striking example might be the (in)famous ‘You would not steal a car’ awareness video aired in cinemas and on DVDs worldwide during the 2000s. It compared downloading a movie to various forms of stealing, including reasonably relevant ones (stealing a DVD in a store) and somewhat absurd others (stealing handbags, TVs, cars), which diluted down the message.”

The paper points to instances where some ads, like an Indian entertainment industry anti-piracy ad featuring wealthy celebrities, can actually have the inverse effect and convince users to pirate even more:

“All videos starred well-known actors, whose net worth is estimated to be 22–22–22–400 million dollars, in a country where the annual per capita income is a bit less than $2,000. This can offer to pirates a moral justification: they only steal the rich to ‘feed the poor’, a form of ‘Robin Hood effect’ that makes even more sense with some cultural or sport-related goods,” the researchers add.

In short, a lot of these ads may make entertainment executives feel like they’re doing something productive in fighting piracy, but in reality the ads were often busy doing something else: either making pirates feel morally justified, making the industry look stupid and out of touch, or turning the message into little more than meme fodder.

Filed Under: antipiracy ads, copyright, download a car, piracy
Companies: riaa

from the lying-liars dept

We’ve talked about the many, many problems of the “SMART Copyright Act” from Senators Thom Tillis and Pat Leahy, and highlighted how a ton of public interest groups, academics, companies, and more have spoken out against the bill. Perhaps realizing that their dream of sneaking through legislation that will mandate upload filters is facing a slightly rockier road than they hoped, the various legacy copyright industry lobbyists all got together and put together their own letter in support of the bill. Except, the letter is not just wrong, it seems to deliberately lie to Senators Leahy and Tillis. The letter appears to have been put together by the Copyright Alliance, one of a number of groups organized by the largest legacy copyright providers, but they got all the usual suspects to sign on: the RIAA, the MPA, ASCAP, IFTA, NMPA, SGA, DGA, the Authors Guild and more.

The list is impressive and many of those lobbyists represent the organizations that exploit creative people of all kinds — but that’s no excuse for them to be creative with the facts. And yet, they are creatively lying to Tillis and Leahy.

Specifically, the second paragraph of the letter says the following:

The Strengthening Measures to Advance Rights Technologies (SMART) Copyright Act of 2022 addresses one of the major failures of the DMCA: the fact that, after nearly twenty years, not one “Standard Technical Measure” has been officially identified as Congress originally intended and expected to occur. We applaud your effort to breathe new life into what the Copyright Office recently identified as the “untapped potential” of STMs.

That link to “recently identified” is to the Copyright Office report that came out back in May of 2020. Back when that report first came out, we had raised many concerns about it, because it already made some pretty embarrassing mistakes. However, it’s important to note that even in a report as biased towards the legacy industry’s views as it was, the report does not support what the lobbyists are saying in this letter.

Did the Copyright Office suggest that Congress should breathe new life into the “untapped potential” of STMs? Nope. The Copyright Office (again, in a report that HEAVILY favors the legacy copyright industry’s narratives) does talk about untapped potential, but explicitly says that potential is not in regulations from Congress. Indeed, the report’s reference to “untapped” potential is explicitly for non-statutory approaches:

In addition to the foregoing list of approaches that Congress may wish to consider, the Copyright Office notes that there is untapped potential for additional approaches that would not require congressional intervention

Huh. So the Copyright Office notes there’s untapped potential that would not require congressional intervention, and the legacy copyright lobbyists run to Congress to say that supports congressional intervention. How… interesting.

Perhaps they meant somewhere else in the report that the Copyright Office referred to “untapped potential” of STMs? Well, “untapped potential” (which, again, these lobbyists used in quotes, suggesting a direct quotation of the Copyright Office) appears four times in the report. Not once is it referring to (1) standard technical measures, or (2) congressional action.

The second mention is talking about Section 512(j), which has to do with injunctions, and not 512(i) which is about STMs. So that can’t be it. The third mention of untapped potential is again explicitly in a section about non-statutory approaches (i.e., those that don’t involve congressional intervention):

In particular, the Office notes that there is some degree of untapped potential in various nonstatutory approaches to mitigating the limitations of section 512. There are hurdles to effectively implementing such measures, of course. And in many cases, a measure that relies upon voluntary cooperation between parties will primarily benefit those parties large enough to pose a credible litigation threat in the absence of such cooperation

Huh. So, again, they’re talking about “untapped potential” for voluntary cooperation and not a new law from Congress. And this section isn’t about STMs either. It’s about the notice-and-takedown process. So, that can’t be it. That’s now three out of four. Let’s look at the 4th one.

Finally, finally, this one actually is about standard technical measures. But, uh, oh:

The Office also recommends several non-statutory areas of untapped potential to increase the efficacy of the section 512 system and recommends additional stakeholder and government focus in the areas of education, voluntary cooperation, and the use of standard technical measures.

Ooops. The Copyright Office is talking about STMs here, but the “untapped potential” it discusses is not having Congress create a law, but rather non-statutory approaches, including “education” and “voluntary cooperation.”

So why, exactly, would the Copyright Alliance, with an assist from the RIAA, MPA, and all those other groups just flat out misrepresent what the Copyright Office said in a report that was already extraordinarily favorable to their interests?

Well, perhaps because they’ve spent decades misrepresenting things to Congress in order to get their way, so now it’s just baked in that they’ll say whatever they want to say and hope that no one will ever check.

But some of us are going to check.

Meanwhile, much of the rest of their letter is utter nonsense too.

Critics wrongly claim the bill introduces new technology mandates – a distortion of your legislation, which includes no standards or mandates. The SMART Copyright Act simply creates a process by which expert agencies can gather information, vet ideas through rigorous and transparent processes, and engage stakeholders in identifying antipiracy approaches that have proven safe, practical, and effective in the marketplace.

Critics wrongly claim that the bill introduces technology mandates, when all it really does is introduce the process by which we will get our technology mandates.

Indeed, the fact that these lobbyists are lying their way forward in support of this bill debunks this very paragraph as well. For all their talk of “rigorous and transparent processes,” the legacy copyright players, led by the likes of the Copyright Alliance, the RIAA, and the MPA, have zero compunction about lying and misrepresenting things to get their way. They want this “process” so they can get their upload filter mandate, and then brush off any legitimate concerns by saying “but the process was “rigorous and transparent.”

That’s wrong. The process is rigged and you have players, like the Copyright Alliance, that have zero compunction about misrepresenting things and pretending that others like the Copyright Office support their views. That fits right in with Tillis, who pretended that Creative Commons supported this bill when it did not, but it’s no way to craft laws that anyone will respect.

Filed Under: copyright, copyright office, misrepresentations, smart copyright act, standard technical measures, untapped potential
Companies: copyright alliance, mpa, riaa

Senator Tillis Holds Secret Meeting With IP Maximalists To Discuss A Single US 'IP' Agency

from the that-would-be-a-problem dept

Senator Thom Tillis is chock full of bad ideas about copyrights and patents — mostly focused on making things worse for the public by expanding the monopoly powers granted to patent and copyright holders. So I guess it comes as little surprise that he held a secret meeting that appears to have only been attended by copyright maximalists to talk about trying to merge the Copyright Office into the US Patent & Trademark Office.

In a previously unreported meeting Friday, staffers from the office of Sen. Thom Tillis, the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Intellectual Property, met with representatives from across the content industries to discuss consolidating America?s three main IP regulators into one sprawling, catch-all agency.

?I think we could look at the organizational structure and ask questions about what?s the most effective way of doing it,? Tillis told National Journal on Tuesday. ?At the end of the day, I want a fair, predictable, and lean IP apparatus?whether it?s patents, trademarks, copyrights.?

Tillis spokesperson Adam Webb said in a statement that the senator ?hosted initial meetings on creating a unified, independent intellectual-property agency and on how to resolve online copyright piracy.? Webb said 35 participants attended the two Friday meetings, which he stressed were preliminary in nature and not guaranteed to result in new legislation.

It seems weird that, if you were exploring such a thing that you wouldn’t bring in folks outside of the copyright maximalist industries, but apparently that’s of less interest to Tillis?

The idea of “consolidating” the Copyright Office into the PTO has long been a dream for many copyright maximalists — mainly because they’re extraordinarily upset that the Copyright Office is a part of the Library of Congress, and they hate the fact that the Librarian of Congress sometimes wants to actually live up to the mission of making sure that copyright is there to “promote the progress” of learning. They’d much rather it be connected with the USPTO, which is under the Commerce Department and clearly designed to be in the interests of the big companies that control it.

It’s already kind of a travesty that the PTO is one agency for both patents and trademarks, since those two things serve extraordinarily different purposes. Trademarks, again, are supposed to be a form of consumer protection — making sure that when you’re buying something from a certain company, you’re aware of who really made it, and aren’t being tricked into buying a copycat. Patents, on the other hand, are supposed to be (though rarely are) about incentivizing innovation. Copyright is supposed to be for the encouragement of learning. It’s just that over the centuries, certain industries have bastardized all three to pretend that they’re about helping a few giant businesses collect as much monopoly rent as possible. Tillis shouldn’t be helping that.

About the only reassuring quote in the piece comes from Mitch Glazier, who now runs the RIAA, but got his initial job at the RIAA just months after he snuck four words into an unrelated piece of legislation that effectively took away the ability of musicians to get control over their works (enabling the RIAA to have much greater control). In the article, Glazier worries that a consolidated agency would focus too much on patents at the expense of copyrights:

Glazier said his office is ?agnostic? about the notion of a unified IP agency, but noted it could kick off a turf war between the three agencies. He also said a single agency could end up focusing largely on patents?far and away the greatest moneymaker?to the detriment of key copyright issues.

Still, there’s literally no need for this move to happen at all, and I don’t understand why Tillis is exploring the idea, nor why he is holding secret meetings with the copyright industry to try to get their buy in.

Filed Under: copyright, copyright office, hollywood, library of congress, maximalists, thom tillis, uspto
Companies: mpa, riaa

RIAA Launches Brand New Front Group Pretending To Represent Independent Artists

from the oh-come-on dept

A few days ago, a friend asked if I’d ever heard of the “Digital Creators Coalition,” an apparently new group that claimed to be representing independent artists. I was unfamiliar with it, and its website provided basically no information about who was actually behind it, beyond this vague statement on its “who we are” page:

The Digital Creators Coalition (DCC) is a group of associations, companies and organizations that represent individual creators, independent producers, small-and-medium-size enterprises (SMEs), large businesses, and labor organizations from the American creative communities. We contribute significantly to U.S. GDP, exports and employment ? collectively employing or representing millions of American creators, and contributing billions of dollars to the U.S. economy.

Right… but… uh… who? There’s no named staff. There’s nothing that shows who these associations, companies, and organizations actually are. Though, if you click through on the website to their “comments” page, it takes you to two separate letters that were sent nearly a year ago to negotiators trying to sort out a US-UK trade agreement, asking for the most extreme versions of copyright possible, including copyright term extension, secondary liability on websites that host content, no language on “balance” or “fair use” (yes, they explicitly say neither term should be mentioned). It’s insanity.

Of course, that letter also reveals who they are, and it’s a who’s who of industry associations that lobby for the interests of the largest gatekeepers, and not, as the organization’s website suggests, small and independent creators:

I mean, you’ve got basically all the copyright maximalist extremist groups there: the RIAA, the MPA, the Author’s Guild, Creative Future, the Recording Academy, ASCAP, SoundExchange, NMPA, the IIPA. Not surprisingly, but incredibly disappointing is that the News Media Alliance is there. The News Media Alliance used to be the Newspaper Association of America, and, as such, you’d think would be supportive of free speech and the 1st Amendment. Considering how much newspapers rely on fair use, you’d think it would be odd that they’re now against fair use. But, over the past few years, the leaders of the News Media Alliance have become so obsessed and infatuated with “GOOGLE BAD!” that apparently they have no problem throwing their lot in with copyright maximalists against their own members’ interests. The organization literally came out against fair use a few years ago, and has since become just as bad (in some ways worse!) than some of the other organizations here.

But, just as if to prove that this group has nothing to do with small and independent creators, and is just a front for the big gatekeepers who screw over small and independent creators, the RIAA itself put out a press release announcing this group’s official launch. Oh, and in case there was any doubt who is really behind this group, a simple whois lookup on who registered the website reveals all:

Yup. This organization set up to supposedly support small and independent artists… was literally set up by the RIAA itself.

This would be the same RIAA whose chairman and CEO’s key claim to fame is that while he was a Congressional staffer, he snuck four words into an unrelated bill that literally would take the copyrights from artists and give them to record labels. No one realized he had done this until after it was passed and became law, at which point, the RIAA immediately hired him, and where he’s moved up the ranks until he was in charge. This move set off a huge fight with tons of artists screaming about how the RIAA had actually “stolen” their copyrights out from under them, and Congress had to go in and fix this.

That’s who’s protecting the interests of small and independent creators? Don’t make me laugh.

This is also the same RIAA made up of the major labels who have a long and detailed history of screwing over some of its biggest artists through creative accounting (the only thing the RIAA really does that is creative) to make sure it never needs to pay artists and to keep them tied to the system. These are not the friends of independent artists.

Notice who is not a part of this coalition? Any of the companies who have made it possible for actual small and independent artists to make, distribute, promote, build an audience, and make a living these days. No Apple. No YouTube. No TikTok. No Kickstarter. No Patreon. No Spotify. No Bandcamp. No Substack. Odd, isn’t it? Then again, maybe not.

But seeing as this group is now officially “launched” you can expect to see a bunch of bullshit quotes from them that gullible reporters will repeat without question, saying that it’s a group to support artists. Don’t believe them. This is an organization to support the copyright maximalism of groups that have spent decades screwing over independent artists.

Filed Under: copyright, front group, independent artists, lobbying, music
Companies: dcc, digital creators coalition, mpa, riaa