Copyright Office calls for congress to reconsider royalties for artists (NYT, 16 Dec 2013) – The last time the United States Copyright Office examined the issue of whether visual artists should receive a share of the profits when their work is resold, in 1992, it concluded that resale royalties – known internationally by the French term droit de suite – were not a good idea. Now, after a recent re-examination of the issue, the Copyright Office has reversed itself. In a report issued Friday, it recommended that painters, illustrators, sculptors, photographers and the like deserve a royalty when their work is resold at a profit. Acknowledging that the current system leaves visual artists at a practical disadvantage relative to other creators such as writers or composers, the office urged Congress to “consider ways to rectify the problem” and give artists a financial interest in the future sale of their work. The office noted that in the past two decades, resale royalties have become more common around the globe, with more than 70 countries adopting some version of the droit de suite rule. A bill to institute a resale royalty was introduced in 2011 by New York Representative Jerrold Nadler, but it failed to gain support. Mr. Nadler is supporting a revised version of his bill, named the Equity for Visual Artists Act. The only state to have a resale royalty law was California, but in 2012, a federal judge struck down the law as unconstitutional.

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Image courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net/Grant Cochrane.

The foreign policy essay: Cheng Li and Ryan McElveen on “NSA revelations have irreparably hurt US corporations in China” (Lawfare, 8 Dec 2013) – Lawfare readers have followed and discussed the Snowden revelations with a mixture of dread and excitement. Our focus, understandably, is on the impact of the leaks on the intelligence community and on U.S. national security policy. The seemingly endless disclosures and associated news stories, along with the many declassified documents from the ODNI, have sparked discussions on technological change, government accountability and oversight, FISA reform, and other important issues. For many Americans, however, the bigger problem is the leaks’ impact on the U.S. economy and on American businesses-many of whom do business overseas. European allies may eventually shrug off their frustrations with the NSA, but my Brookings colleagues Cheng Li and Ryan McElveen argue that China is far less likely to do so. The revelations are leading to a policy shift that may hinder U.S. technology firms in China for years or even decades. Cheng Li is director of research and a senior fellow at the John L. Thornton China Center in the Foreign Policy program at Brookings, and is a director of the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations. Ryan McElveen is a research assistant at the Thornton Center.

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Image courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net/Keattikorn.

9th Circuit to provide live Internet coverage of en banc oral arguments (ABA Journal, 4 Dec 2013) – In what is believed to be the first such effort by a federal appeals court, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals will launch live streaming Internet coverage of its en banc oral arguments in San Francisco on Monday. “The 9th Circuit has a long history of using advances in technology to make the court more accessible and transparent,” said Chief Judge Alex Kozinski said in a written statement provided to Courthouse News . “Video streaming is a way to open the court’s doors even wider so that more people can see and hear what transpires in the courtroom, particularly in regard to some of our most important cases.” A page on the court’s website provides further details.

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Image courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net/Kookkai_nak.