United States Documents

On September 7, 2006, the Library Copyright Alliance, wrote in support of the Orphan Works Act. The Act will help resolve issues surrounding orphan works, works whose owners are difficult or impossible to locate. Resolving the orphan works issue will present significant new educational opportunities because these works will be publicly accessible and available to students, faculty and the public.

On July 20, 2006, members of the Library Copyright Alliance signed on to a legal brief in support of Google in Perfect 10 Inc., v. Google, Inc. The brief addresses three issues of essential importance for the future of the internet, (1) whether providing a link to an image hosted on a third party website directly infringes a copyright owner’s...

On June 21, 2006, the Library Copyright Alliance and others sent a letter to the Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation concerning the of S. 2686 portion about the broadcast video flag, it identified three areas where the flag could negatively affect lawful non-commercial uses of broadcast content: distance education; other educational and research uses permitted by the Copyright Act;...

On January 24, 2006, Jonathan Band testified on behalf of the Library Copyright Alliance (LCA) on Broadcast and Audio Flag. The LCA testimony explains specific concerns with the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) broadcast flag rule, and urges the Committee to address these concerns before adopting legislation authorizing the FCC to promulgate the rule.

On December 1, 2005, the Library Copyright Alliance (LCA) and the Music Library Association (MLA) submitted comments on exceptions that the Library of Congress should grant pursuant to 17 U.S.C. § 1201(a)(1)(C), pursuant to the Notice of Inquiry (NOI) published by the Copyright Office. LCA and MLA are pleased to observe that in the NOI, the Office seems to have...

On November 16, 2005, Prudence S. Adler gave a statement on behalf of the LCA in a Hearing on “Fair Use: Its Effects on Consumers and Industry.” The statement was presented to the Subcommittee on Commerce, Trade, and Consumer Protection, U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on Energy and Commerce. Fair use is central to libraries ability to achieve many facets...

On September 19, 2005, the Library Copyright Alliance delivered a letter to Senator Stevens, Chair of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation. The letter urges the committee to hold hearings before adopting any legislation authorizing the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to promulgate Broadcast Flag. If Broadcast Flag went into effect, it would, at minimum, hamper the use of...

June 27, 2005–In a unanimous ruling in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios v. Grokster, the U.S. Supreme Court declared that distributors of peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing systems may be held liable if they actively induce copyright infringement by users of those P2P systems. Importantly, the Court strongly reaffirmed its earlier ruling in Sony Corp of America v. Universal City Studios which held that technologies...

On May 9, 2005, The Library Copyright Alliance (LCA) provided additional comments to the Copyright Office’s Notice of Inquiry concerning orphan works.

On March 25, 2005, The Library Copyright Alliance (LCA) responded to the Copyright Office’s timely Notice of Inquiry concerning orphan works. In response to the Notice of Inquiry, the associations in LCA contacted their members to gather information concerning their experience with the orphan work problem. These responses indicate that the problem exists at large research libraries affiliated with universities...