OSLO NORWAY Over 60 authors organizations met here this week to discuss strategies for defending authors' rights in the digitized world. Their call to action is reminiscent of the grassroots coalition that came together in the US last year to oppose the Orphan Works bill. In addition to concerns over anti-copyright legislation, authors around the world, including visual artists, face threats from piracy, unauthorized usage, all-rights contracts and, in the US, the loss and/or dissipation of their reprographic royalties.
The Oslo meeting was held concurrent with the anniversary of the founding of the International Federation of Reproduction Rights Organizations (IFRRO). IFRRO was born in Oslo 25 years ago. In the last quarter century, it has grown to 190 members and associate members, of which the Illustrators' Partnership is one.
IFRRO was founded by a small group of visionaries who believed that there was a need for an international organization of Reprographic Rights Organizations (RROs). RROs are collecting societies that monitor and clear rights to authors' creations in collective works such as books, magazines, etc. They grant rights, as mandated by authors, collect fees and return royalties to illustrators, artists, writers and others.
Collecting societies are a new concept to most American illustrators. They exist in countries around the world, but currently, there are none for illustrators in the US. Two years ago, the Illustrators' Partnership brought together 12 prominent visual arts organizations. These groups have incorporated as the American Society of Illustrators Partnership (ASIP).
ASIP, which has been chartered as a collecting society, hopes to begin the long-overdue process of bringing accountability to illustrators' reprographic rights. The 12 founding groups of ASIP also formed the nucleus of the 85 organizations that opposed the Orphan Works bill. In future reports, we'll tell you more about what illustrators can do individually to help us build this formal coalition into a functioning society.
Another Anniversary: The 1999 Santa Fe Conference
The meeting of authors this week in Oslo recalls another anniversary closer to home: the first Illustrators Conference, which opened 10 years ago this week in Santa Fe.
The Santa Fe Conference was a grassroots event founded by 8 artists and reps who believed that illustrators should not accept a slow evolution toward the dissolution of their rights. The conference led to the creation of the Illustrators' Partnership - founded by 3 of the same artists- to act on the initiatives first raised at that pioneering event.
So now, as authors worldwide issue a call for cooperative action, we're pleased to note that the spirit of Santa Fe, invoked by illustrators a decade ago, is still alive and well in the US. It's the spirit that guided artists in Washington last year and with luck, it may yet swell and aid in the preservation of copyright law, which is the legal means by which the distinctive expressions of individuals are themselves preserved.
Thursday, October 22, 2009
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Orphan Works and the Google Book Settlement / Part III
Compelling Arguments
On September 10, 2009, Marybeth Peters, Register of the US Copyright Office, testified before Congress in opposition to the Google Book Search Settlement. Her arguments on behalf of creators rights are compelling and we support them. However, we note with some irony that they are nearly identical to the arguments we made in opposing the Orphan Works bill last year. We don’t know what conclusions to draw from this fact, but we think it’s fair to draw attention to it.
We’ve picked several examples below and matched them with quotes from our own writings and testimony. In every case, the emphasis is ours.
Marybeth Peters on the Google Book Settlement: “The [Google] settlement is not merely a compromise of existing claims, or an agreement to compensate past copying and snippet display. Rather, it could affect the exclusive rights of millions of copyright owners, in the United States and abroad, with respect to their abilities to control new products and new markets, for years and years to come.”
IPA on the Orphan Works Bill: The bill’s sponsors say it’s merely a small adjustment to copyright law. In fact...its provisions have been drafted so broadly it will orphan the work of working artists. Its consequences will be far reaching, long lasting, perhaps irreversible and will strike at the heart of art itself.”
Marybeth Peters on the Google Book Settlement: “[The Book Rights Registry] is likely to have the unfortunate effect of creating a false database of orphan works, because in practice any work that is not claimed will be deemed an orphan.”
IPA on the Orphan Works Bill: “As clients come to rely on these [visual arts] registries as one-stop shopping centers for rights clearance, any works not found in the registries could be infringed as orphans.”
Marybeth Peters on the Google Book Settlement: “Compulsory licenses... are scrutinized very strictly because by their nature they impinge upon the exclusive rights of copyright holders...By its nature, a compulsory license ‘is a limited exception to the copyright holder’s exclusive right . . . As such, it must be construed narrowly.’ ”
IPA on the Orphan Works Bill: “[The Orphan Works bill] radically abridges the fundamental principal of exclusive rights granted to creators under the copyright law, and creates a sweeping compulsory license permitting large scale unauthorized use of not only older works, the provenance of which may be difficult to determine, but also of the valuable contemporary works that are the economic life blood of those in our profession.”
Marybeth Peters on the Google Book Settlement: “Compulsory licenses are generally adopted by Congress only reluctantly, in the face of a marketplace failure.”
IPA on the Orphan Works Bill: “The Copyright Office only received about 215 relevant letters to their Orphan Works Study. From this they deduced a claim of widespread market failure in commercial markets...” “But the Copyright Office studied the specific subject of orphaned work. They did not inquire about the workings of commercial markets and there is no evidence in their report that business clients are unable to find the living authors they wish to work with. No evidence whatsoever.”
Marybeth Peters on the Google Book Settlement: “In summary, the out-of-print default rules would allow Google to operate under reverse principles of copyright law...”
IPA on the Orphan Works Bill: “[The Orphan Works bill] creates the public’s right to use private property as a default position, available to anyone whenever the property owner fails to make himself sufficiently available.” “[I]ts logic reverses copyright law.”
Marybeth Peters on the Google Book Settlement: “In essence, the proposed settlement would give Google a license to infringe first and ask questions later...”
IPA on the Orphan Works Bill: “Since orphan works transactions would occur only after infringement, the rights holder would have no leverage to bargain for more than the infringer is willing or able to pay.”
Marybeth Peters on the Google Book Settlement: “[C]opyright law has always left it to the copyright owner to determine whether and how an out-of-print work should be exploited.”
IPA on the Orphan Works Bill: “Under copyright law, no author can be compelled to publish his or her work. So by what right of eminent domain can Congress give strangers the right to publish our work without our knowledge, consent or payment?”
Marybeth Peters on the Google Book Settlement: “The broad scope of the out-of-print provisions and the large class of copyright owners they would affect will dramatically impinge on the exclusive rights of authors, publishers, their heirs and successors.”
IPA on the Orphan Works Bill: “The fundamental problem with the Orphan Works Act is that it’s been drafted so broadly its use cannot be confined to real orphaned work situations.” “To redefine an orphaned work as “a work by an unlocatable author” is to radically re-define the ownership of private property...Since everybody can be hard for somebody to find, this voids a rights holder’s exclusive right to his or her own property.”
Marybeth Peters on the Google Book Settlement: “Some foreign governments have raised questions about the compatibility of the proposed settlement with Article 5 of the Berne convention, which requires that copyright be made available to foreign authors on a no less favorable basis than to domestic authors, and that the “enjoyment and exercise of these rights shall not be subject to any formality.”
IPA on the Orphan Works Bill: “[P]utting pressure on creators to subsidize the creation of privately-owned registries violates the intent of international copyright law, specifically Article 5(2) of the Berne Convention: “The enjoyment and the exercise of these rights shall not be subject to any formality.”
Marybeth Peters on the Google Book Settlement: “The ability of copyright owners and technology companies to share advertising revenue and other potential income streams is a worthy and symbiotic business goal that makes a lot of sense when the terms are mutually determined. And the increased abilities of libraries to offer on-line access to books and other copyrighted works is a development that is both necessary and possible in the digital age. However, none of these possibilities should require Google to have immediate, unfettered, and risk-free access to the copyrighted works of other people. They are not a reason to throw out fundamental copyright principles; they are a pretext to do so.”
IPA on the Orphan Works Bill: “The internet has created a culture of appropriation; and immediate global access to artistic works has facilitated piracy, unintentional infringement and plagiary. But instant and unrestricted access to work should not be construed as a necessity just because technology has made it a possibility. That an artist’s work now can be instantly transmitted around the world without the artist’s permission or control does not justify a user’s ‘right’ to take the work.”
Marybeth Peters on the Google Book Settlement: “[T]he settlement would inappropriately interfere with the on-going efforts of Congress to enact orphan works legislation in a manner that takes into account the concerns of all stakeholders as well as the United States’ international obligations.”
IPA on the Orphan Works Bill: “This bill has been drafted behind closed doors, without a needs-assessment study, an economic impact analysis, or an evaluation of how the public would be affected by this transfer of private property from individuals to giant commercial databases...For artists, the most troubling part has been our near-total exclusion from the legislative process.”
“On July 11th [2008], on behalf of all those who oppose this bill, [we] submitted Amendments to the Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet and Intellectual Property. Those Amendments would make this bill a true orphan works bill. The Amendments have never been considered...This is no way to re-write U.S. copyright law.”
Q.E.D.
The Register's full testimony from September 10, 2009 can be found here.
Our comments have been excerpted from various articles posted in 2008 on the IPA Orphan Works blog.
On September 10, 2009, Marybeth Peters, Register of the US Copyright Office, testified before Congress in opposition to the Google Book Search Settlement. Her arguments on behalf of creators rights are compelling and we support them. However, we note with some irony that they are nearly identical to the arguments we made in opposing the Orphan Works bill last year. We don’t know what conclusions to draw from this fact, but we think it’s fair to draw attention to it.
We’ve picked several examples below and matched them with quotes from our own writings and testimony. In every case, the emphasis is ours.
Marybeth Peters on the Google Book Settlement: “The [Google] settlement is not merely a compromise of existing claims, or an agreement to compensate past copying and snippet display. Rather, it could affect the exclusive rights of millions of copyright owners, in the United States and abroad, with respect to their abilities to control new products and new markets, for years and years to come.”
IPA on the Orphan Works Bill: The bill’s sponsors say it’s merely a small adjustment to copyright law. In fact...its provisions have been drafted so broadly it will orphan the work of working artists. Its consequences will be far reaching, long lasting, perhaps irreversible and will strike at the heart of art itself.”
* * * * *
Marybeth Peters on the Google Book Settlement: “[The Book Rights Registry] is likely to have the unfortunate effect of creating a false database of orphan works, because in practice any work that is not claimed will be deemed an orphan.”
IPA on the Orphan Works Bill: “As clients come to rely on these [visual arts] registries as one-stop shopping centers for rights clearance, any works not found in the registries could be infringed as orphans.”
* * * * *
Marybeth Peters on the Google Book Settlement: “Compulsory licenses... are scrutinized very strictly because by their nature they impinge upon the exclusive rights of copyright holders...By its nature, a compulsory license ‘is a limited exception to the copyright holder’s exclusive right . . . As such, it must be construed narrowly.’ ”
IPA on the Orphan Works Bill: “[The Orphan Works bill] radically abridges the fundamental principal of exclusive rights granted to creators under the copyright law, and creates a sweeping compulsory license permitting large scale unauthorized use of not only older works, the provenance of which may be difficult to determine, but also of the valuable contemporary works that are the economic life blood of those in our profession.”
* * * * *
Marybeth Peters on the Google Book Settlement: “Compulsory licenses are generally adopted by Congress only reluctantly, in the face of a marketplace failure.”
IPA on the Orphan Works Bill: “The Copyright Office only received about 215 relevant letters to their Orphan Works Study. From this they deduced a claim of widespread market failure in commercial markets...” “But the Copyright Office studied the specific subject of orphaned work. They did not inquire about the workings of commercial markets and there is no evidence in their report that business clients are unable to find the living authors they wish to work with. No evidence whatsoever.”
* * * * *
Marybeth Peters on the Google Book Settlement: “In summary, the out-of-print default rules would allow Google to operate under reverse principles of copyright law...”
IPA on the Orphan Works Bill: “[The Orphan Works bill] creates the public’s right to use private property as a default position, available to anyone whenever the property owner fails to make himself sufficiently available.” “[I]ts logic reverses copyright law.”
* * * * *
Marybeth Peters on the Google Book Settlement: “In essence, the proposed settlement would give Google a license to infringe first and ask questions later...”
IPA on the Orphan Works Bill: “Since orphan works transactions would occur only after infringement, the rights holder would have no leverage to bargain for more than the infringer is willing or able to pay.”
* * * * *
Marybeth Peters on the Google Book Settlement: “[C]opyright law has always left it to the copyright owner to determine whether and how an out-of-print work should be exploited.”
IPA on the Orphan Works Bill: “Under copyright law, no author can be compelled to publish his or her work. So by what right of eminent domain can Congress give strangers the right to publish our work without our knowledge, consent or payment?”
* * * * *
Marybeth Peters on the Google Book Settlement: “The broad scope of the out-of-print provisions and the large class of copyright owners they would affect will dramatically impinge on the exclusive rights of authors, publishers, their heirs and successors.”
IPA on the Orphan Works Bill: “The fundamental problem with the Orphan Works Act is that it’s been drafted so broadly its use cannot be confined to real orphaned work situations.” “To redefine an orphaned work as “a work by an unlocatable author” is to radically re-define the ownership of private property...Since everybody can be hard for somebody to find, this voids a rights holder’s exclusive right to his or her own property.”
* * * * *
Marybeth Peters on the Google Book Settlement: “Some foreign governments have raised questions about the compatibility of the proposed settlement with Article 5 of the Berne convention, which requires that copyright be made available to foreign authors on a no less favorable basis than to domestic authors, and that the “enjoyment and exercise of these rights shall not be subject to any formality.”
IPA on the Orphan Works Bill: “[P]utting pressure on creators to subsidize the creation of privately-owned registries violates the intent of international copyright law, specifically Article 5(2) of the Berne Convention: “The enjoyment and the exercise of these rights shall not be subject to any formality.”
* * * * *
Marybeth Peters on the Google Book Settlement: “The ability of copyright owners and technology companies to share advertising revenue and other potential income streams is a worthy and symbiotic business goal that makes a lot of sense when the terms are mutually determined. And the increased abilities of libraries to offer on-line access to books and other copyrighted works is a development that is both necessary and possible in the digital age. However, none of these possibilities should require Google to have immediate, unfettered, and risk-free access to the copyrighted works of other people. They are not a reason to throw out fundamental copyright principles; they are a pretext to do so.”
IPA on the Orphan Works Bill: “The internet has created a culture of appropriation; and immediate global access to artistic works has facilitated piracy, unintentional infringement and plagiary. But instant and unrestricted access to work should not be construed as a necessity just because technology has made it a possibility. That an artist’s work now can be instantly transmitted around the world without the artist’s permission or control does not justify a user’s ‘right’ to take the work.”
* * * * *
Marybeth Peters on the Google Book Settlement: “[T]he settlement would inappropriately interfere with the on-going efforts of Congress to enact orphan works legislation in a manner that takes into account the concerns of all stakeholders as well as the United States’ international obligations.”
IPA on the Orphan Works Bill: “This bill has been drafted behind closed doors, without a needs-assessment study, an economic impact analysis, or an evaluation of how the public would be affected by this transfer of private property from individuals to giant commercial databases...For artists, the most troubling part has been our near-total exclusion from the legislative process.”
“On July 11th [2008], on behalf of all those who oppose this bill, [we] submitted Amendments to the Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet and Intellectual Property. Those Amendments would make this bill a true orphan works bill. The Amendments have never been considered...This is no way to re-write U.S. copyright law.”
Q.E.D.
The Register's full testimony from September 10, 2009 can be found here.
Our comments have been excerpted from various articles posted in 2008 on the IPA Orphan Works blog.
Orphan Works and the Google Book Settlement / Part II
A Reversal of Copyright Law
Last Friday we summarized the basic details of the Google Book Search Settlement. Like the visual arts "databases" we opposed last year, this agreement would allow both Google and a yet-to-be-created Book Rights Registry to commercially profit from an author's work whenever they say they can't locate the author.
Both schemes would force authors to opt out of commercial operations that infringe their work - or to "protect" their work by opting-in to privately owned databases run by infringers. This Hobson's Choice for authors reverses the principle of copyright law.
The by-product of the Google settlement (again like the Orphan Works bill) would be to establish public access to private property as the default position in copyright law. In other words, it presumes:
a.) that the public is entitled to use your work as a primary right,
b.) that it's your legal obligation to make your work available, and
c.) that if you fail to do so, you forfeit your exclusive right to control access to your work.
If you're an author and you wish to keep the book you write from becoming a potential orphan, you'd therefore have to register it with the Book Rights Registry run by the parties that settled with Google (and who will receive an award of $30 million for cutting themselves in).
Advocates of the deal try to justify it by saying it will make more books available to more people than at any other time in history - a claim that's no doubt true - but therefore they say, as Andrew Albanese writes in Publishers Weekly, "the massive public good of the deal far outweigh[s] the individual greivances [sic] of rightsholders."
Yet it's in this very argument that the danger lies.
Once the Copy Left has established a legal precedent that the property rights of authors can be subordinated to the assertion of public interest, they can build on that principle to enact further statute and case laws to benefit commercial interests. To do this, they'll have to chip away further at the inherent property rights of individuals.
Orphan Works: "Half a Loaf"
An example of the agenda that underlies both the Google book search settlement and the Orphan Works bill came in May, 2008, at a time when the Orphan Works bill looked to be a shoo-in by early summer. Anticipating a quick mopping up operation, the bill's advocates were high-fiving one another. But as James V. DeLong of the Convergence Law Institute reminded them, there was still much work ahead.
Calling the Orphan Works bill just "half a loaf," he hinted at what it would take to permit commercial interests to take the whole loaf:
Both the Google Book settlement and the Orphan Works bill have their intellectual rationale in the war on authors that began decades ago in the obscure theories of Postmodern literary critics. Their fundamental premise is that all creativity is communal and that authors are only the agents through which the community creates. This has led a handful of activist legal scholars to demand changes in the law requiring artists, writers and others to affirm and reaffirm the rights to use their own work by, in effect, licensing it from the public "commons."
This argument, Marxist in its origins, has found its unlikely champion in those large commercial Internet interests that hope to build Information Age empires supplying businesses and the public with creative "content." By defining millions of works as orphans on the premise that some might be, both the Google Book settlement and the Orphan Works bill would allow these opportunists to profit by harvesting the work of others, providing their databases with content they could never afford to create themselves nor license from authors.
Next: Orphan Works and the Google Book Settlement /Part III: Compelling Arguments
The Register of the US Copyright Office has condemned the Google settlement in terms nearly identical to our condemnation last year of the Orphan Works bill. In Part III, we'll examine those similarities to see the patterns that are emerging from this insidious effort to change copyright law.
Last Friday we summarized the basic details of the Google Book Search Settlement. Like the visual arts "databases" we opposed last year, this agreement would allow both Google and a yet-to-be-created Book Rights Registry to commercially profit from an author's work whenever they say they can't locate the author.
Both schemes would force authors to opt out of commercial operations that infringe their work - or to "protect" their work by opting-in to privately owned databases run by infringers. This Hobson's Choice for authors reverses the principle of copyright law.
The by-product of the Google settlement (again like the Orphan Works bill) would be to establish public access to private property as the default position in copyright law. In other words, it presumes:
a.) that the public is entitled to use your work as a primary right,
b.) that it's your legal obligation to make your work available, and
c.) that if you fail to do so, you forfeit your exclusive right to control access to your work.
If you're an author and you wish to keep the book you write from becoming a potential orphan, you'd therefore have to register it with the Book Rights Registry run by the parties that settled with Google (and who will receive an award of $30 million for cutting themselves in).
Advocates of the deal try to justify it by saying it will make more books available to more people than at any other time in history - a claim that's no doubt true - but therefore they say, as Andrew Albanese writes in Publishers Weekly, "the massive public good of the deal far outweigh[s] the individual greivances [sic] of rightsholders."
Yet it's in this very argument that the danger lies.
Once the Copy Left has established a legal precedent that the property rights of authors can be subordinated to the assertion of public interest, they can build on that principle to enact further statute and case laws to benefit commercial interests. To do this, they'll have to chip away further at the inherent property rights of individuals.
Orphan Works: "Half a Loaf"
An example of the agenda that underlies both the Google book search settlement and the Orphan Works bill came in May, 2008, at a time when the Orphan Works bill looked to be a shoo-in by early summer. Anticipating a quick mopping up operation, the bill's advocates were high-fiving one another. But as James V. DeLong of the Convergence Law Institute reminded them, there was still much work ahead.
Calling the Orphan Works bill just "half a loaf," he hinted at what it would take to permit commercial interests to take the whole loaf:
"These possibly-orphan, sort-of-orphan, and gray literature works simply cannot be made available if the digitizers are required to make one-by-one judgments and seek permission before copying. If they are to be retrieved in useful form, then sooner or later Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and some others must be permitted to digitize on a massive scale."Of course he acknowledged that the new reverse copyright law should not deprive intellectual property owners of their "legitimate rights." But he reaffirmed the Copy Left's fundamental premise that intellectual property owners should not be entitled to legitimate rights except in situations where they've registered their works:
"At some point, some kind of grand grandfathering proceeding will probably be required, a window in which holders of existing rights must reaffirm them or lose them." (Italics added)Again, this is the same premise we see at work in the Google book settlement. As Lynn Chu, a principal at Writers Representatives LLC, wrote in the Wall Street Journal, March 28, 2009:
"Under the settlement, every rights-owner in America is supposed to hand over all their private contract data, on every edition of every work they ever wrote -- and every excerpt permission ever granted to others -- at the peril of losing the money Google will be making on their backs. This is a massive burden on everyone in the book industry, making us all, in effect, Google's data-entry slaves. Indeed, in most cases such information about every permission ever granted is unlocatable. It opens a Pandora's box of disputes and mistaken claims about who actually owns what." (Italics added)This is identical to our warning last year about the Orphan Works bill:
"[The Orphan Works bill] would force artists either to entrust their entire life's work to privately owned commercial databases or see it exposed to widespread infringement. It would let giant image banks access our commercial inventory and metadata - and enter our commercial markets as clearinghouses to compete with us for our own clients. I can think of no other field where small business owners can be pressured to supply potential competitors with their content, business data and client contact information." - Brad Holland, Small Business Administration Roundtable, August 8, 2008The War on Authors
Both the Google Book settlement and the Orphan Works bill have their intellectual rationale in the war on authors that began decades ago in the obscure theories of Postmodern literary critics. Their fundamental premise is that all creativity is communal and that authors are only the agents through which the community creates. This has led a handful of activist legal scholars to demand changes in the law requiring artists, writers and others to affirm and reaffirm the rights to use their own work by, in effect, licensing it from the public "commons."
This argument, Marxist in its origins, has found its unlikely champion in those large commercial Internet interests that hope to build Information Age empires supplying businesses and the public with creative "content." By defining millions of works as orphans on the premise that some might be, both the Google Book settlement and the Orphan Works bill would allow these opportunists to profit by harvesting the work of others, providing their databases with content they could never afford to create themselves nor license from authors.
Next: Orphan Works and the Google Book Settlement /Part III: Compelling Arguments
The Register of the US Copyright Office has condemned the Google settlement in terms nearly identical to our condemnation last year of the Orphan Works bill. In Part III, we'll examine those similarities to see the patterns that are emerging from this insidious effort to change copyright law.
Friday, September 25, 2009
Orphan Works and the Google Book Settlement / Part I
We’ve been asked for news about the Orphan Works bill. Last June Intellectual Property Watch warned that it would be back during the summer. And on June 11th, Senator Orrin Hatch confirmed his intent to reintroduce the bill. We immediately put out a notice to artists. But summer’s over and we’ve had no further news. So far, so good.
Of course Congress has had other priorities: the ongoing financial mess, the health care debate and – on the copyright front – the Google book search controversy. For those who haven’t followed the news about this Google assault on copyright, we’ll try to summarize it.
The World’s Largest Library (Or is it Bookstore?)
In 2004, Google announced its intent to digitize all of the world’s 80-100 million books – and to make most of them commercially available as orphaned works. The plan has been controversial since its inception.
Google began with the cooperation of several major libraries. The libraries gave Google access to their holdings. The problem is that libraries are libraries; they don’t own the copyrights to the books they hold. In short, they gave Google the rights to other people’s work. So far, Google has scanned over 10 million books.
In 2004, the Authors Guild and Association of American Publishers sued Google for copyright infringement. Last October the parties settled. The resulting agreement is 141 pages long, with 15 appendices of 179 pages. The implications for copyright holders are not clear, but what the litigants would get is breathtaking. As Lynn Chu, a principal at Writers Representatives LLC, wrote in the Wall Street Journal, March 28, 2009:
The US federal court was scheduled to hold a fairness hearing October 7. But over 400 objections from around the world have been filed by rightsholders, competitors to Google and (in addition to the US government) the governments of France and Germany. Yesterday we received news that the fairness hearing has been delayed.
The Google settlement has also been condemned by Marybeth Peters, Register of the US Copyright Office. Testifying before the House Judiciary Committee last Wednesday, Ms. Peters stated that it would allow Google to “operate under reverse principles of copyright law,” adding “it could affect the exclusive rights of millions of copyright owners, in the United States and abroad, with respect to their abilities to control new products and new markets, for years and years to come.” http://www.copyright.gov/docs/regstat091009.html
We haven’t had much to say about this agreement because, with the notable exception of childrens’ book illustrations (which for purposes of the settlement are considered part of the text) the agreement doesn’t include visual art. Yet like the Orphan Works bill itself, the Google Book Settlement would be a radical change to copyright law.
Tomorrow we’ll examine some of the ways in which this settlement parallels the Orphan Works bill.
Of course Congress has had other priorities: the ongoing financial mess, the health care debate and – on the copyright front – the Google book search controversy. For those who haven’t followed the news about this Google assault on copyright, we’ll try to summarize it.
The World’s Largest Library (Or is it Bookstore?)
In 2004, Google announced its intent to digitize all of the world’s 80-100 million books – and to make most of them commercially available as orphaned works. The plan has been controversial since its inception.
Google began with the cooperation of several major libraries. The libraries gave Google access to their holdings. The problem is that libraries are libraries; they don’t own the copyrights to the books they hold. In short, they gave Google the rights to other people’s work. So far, Google has scanned over 10 million books.
In 2004, the Authors Guild and Association of American Publishers sued Google for copyright infringement. Last October the parties settled. The resulting agreement is 141 pages long, with 15 appendices of 179 pages. The implications for copyright holders are not clear, but what the litigants would get is breathtaking. As Lynn Chu, a principal at Writers Representatives LLC, wrote in the Wall Street Journal, March 28, 2009:
“[I]f approved by the federal court, [it would] permit Google to post out-of-print books for reading, sales, institutional licensing, ad sales, and other publishing exploitations, by Google, online. The settlement gives the class-action attorneys $30 million; a new, quasi-judicial bureaucracy called the Book Rights Registry $35 million...and $45 million for owners infringed up to now -- about $60 a title.” http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123819841868261921.htmlGoogle would keep just over a third of the profits generated by selling these books online. The rest would go to the Book Rights Registry run by publishers’ and authors’ representatives. In other words, 63% would go to the parties that sued Google. In theory, the Registry would attempt to locate the authors of orphaned works and pay them royalties. But as Ms. Chu points out, the parties that sued Google – and would therefore benefit from Google’s infringement – have themselves traded away other people’s rights in the bargain:
“No one elected these ‘class representatives’ to represent America's tens of thousands of authors and publishers to convey their digital rights to Google. Nor are the interests of this so-called class identical.”The US Department of Justice apparently agrees. Last Friday, it filed an objection to the settlement and advised the court to reject the settlement as written. On page 9 of their brief, the DOJ attorneys write:
“The structure of the Proposed Settlement itself, therefore, pits the interests of one part of the class (known rightsholders) against the interests of another part of the class (orphan works rightsholders). Google’s commercial use of orphan works will generate revenues, which will be deposited with the Registry. Any unclaimed revenues, however, will inure to the benefit of the Registry and its registered rightsholders. Thus, the Registry and its registered rightsholders will benefit at the expense of every rightsholder who fails to come forward to claim profits from Google’s commercial use of his or her work...
“The greater the economic exploitation of the works of unknown rightsholders by Google and the Registry, the stronger the incentive for known rightsholders to retain the unclaimed revenues for themselves.” [Emphasis added]The Department of Justice also warns that the settlement fails to comply with copyright, antitrust laws and the rules of class action litigation. http://www.usdoj.gov/opa/pr/2009/September/09-opa-1001.html
The US federal court was scheduled to hold a fairness hearing October 7. But over 400 objections from around the world have been filed by rightsholders, competitors to Google and (in addition to the US government) the governments of France and Germany. Yesterday we received news that the fairness hearing has been delayed.
The Google settlement has also been condemned by Marybeth Peters, Register of the US Copyright Office. Testifying before the House Judiciary Committee last Wednesday, Ms. Peters stated that it would allow Google to “operate under reverse principles of copyright law,” adding “it could affect the exclusive rights of millions of copyright owners, in the United States and abroad, with respect to their abilities to control new products and new markets, for years and years to come.” http://www.copyright.gov/docs/regstat091009.html
We haven’t had much to say about this agreement because, with the notable exception of childrens’ book illustrations (which for purposes of the settlement are considered part of the text) the agreement doesn’t include visual art. Yet like the Orphan Works bill itself, the Google Book Settlement would be a radical change to copyright law.
Tomorrow we’ll examine some of the ways in which this settlement parallels the Orphan Works bill.
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Orphan Works: Back Again
In Orphan Works Land, no news has been good news, but that's about to change:
http://www.ip-watch.org/weblog/2009/06/11/copyright-holders-acknowledge-losing-battle-for-public-consciousness-at-world-copyright-summit/
US Copyright Register Marybeth Peters told Intellectual Property Watch that orphan works legislation is expected to be introduced within the next 10 days. It is her understanding there may still be some issues in the House version to be resolved, and there are some stakeholders - such as illustrators and other artists - "who are probably going to lobby pretty hard against it."
Peters said this issue is important to her, and the fact it came so close to passing last year is almost bittersweet. "What I hope it isn't ... is it's one magic moment you get" to finally get it passed, then it doesn't happen, she said.
We don't mean to disparage the Register's comments. She's had a long and distinguished career at the Copyright Office. But her statement deserves a reality check. Illustrators are not opposed to an orphan works bill. We're opposed to this bill.
We're opposed because its scope far exceeds the needs of responsible orphan works legislation.
Moreover, illustrators and artists are not the only stakeholders who oppose it. At last count, more than 83 creators organizations are on record against it, representing artists, photographers, writers, songwriters, musicians and countless small businesses.
Last year, we proposed amendments to the Orphan Works that would have made it a true orphan works bill. The amendments were drafted by the the attorney who was chief legal counsel to the House Judiciary Committee in drafting the 1976 Copyright Act. The amendments were co-sponsored by the Artists Rights Society and the Advertising Photographers of America. They can be found here: http://ipaorphanworks.blogspot.com/2008/07/hr-5889-amendments.html
On July 11, 2008, we submitted those amendments to both the House and Senate Judiciary Committees. In our preamble we wrote this:
Last year more than 180,000 letters were sent to lawmakers from our CapWiz site. These letters did not come from obstructionists. They came from citizens whose property is at stake. They may lack the resources of big Internet companies and the access of high powered lobbyists, but last year they spoke. They asked only one thing: that Congress respect their personal property rights and amend this bill to make it nothing more than what its sponsors say they want it to be – a bill that would affect only true orphaned work.
We urge this Congress to listen.
http://www.ip-watch.org/weblog/2009/06/11/copyright-holders-acknowledge-losing-battle-for-public-consciousness-at-world-copyright-summit/
US Copyright Register Marybeth Peters told Intellectual Property Watch that orphan works legislation is expected to be introduced within the next 10 days. It is her understanding there may still be some issues in the House version to be resolved, and there are some stakeholders - such as illustrators and other artists - "who are probably going to lobby pretty hard against it."
Peters said this issue is important to her, and the fact it came so close to passing last year is almost bittersweet. "What I hope it isn't ... is it's one magic moment you get" to finally get it passed, then it doesn't happen, she said.
We don't mean to disparage the Register's comments. She's had a long and distinguished career at the Copyright Office. But her statement deserves a reality check. Illustrators are not opposed to an orphan works bill. We're opposed to this bill.
We're opposed because its scope far exceeds the needs of responsible orphan works legislation.
Moreover, illustrators and artists are not the only stakeholders who oppose it. At last count, more than 83 creators organizations are on record against it, representing artists, photographers, writers, songwriters, musicians and countless small businesses.
Last year, we proposed amendments to the Orphan Works that would have made it a true orphan works bill. The amendments were drafted by the the attorney who was chief legal counsel to the House Judiciary Committee in drafting the 1976 Copyright Act. The amendments were co-sponsored by the Artists Rights Society and the Advertising Photographers of America. They can be found here: http://ipaorphanworks.blogspot.com/2008/07/hr-5889-amendments.html
On July 11, 2008, we submitted those amendments to both the House and Senate Judiciary Committees. In our preamble we wrote this:
As rights holders, we can summarize our hopes for the Orphan Works Act simply: to see that it becomes a true orphan works bill, with no unnecessary spillover effect to damage the everyday commercial activities of working artists. We'd be happy to work with Congress to accomplish this. No legislation regarding the use of private property should be considered without the active participation of those whose property is at stake.
We urge this Congress to listen.
Wednesday, December 24, 2008
Appeal to House Judiciary
December 8, 2008
The Honorable John Conyers, Jr.
Chairman Committee on the Judiciary
U.S. House of Representatives
2426 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20515
Dear Chairman Conyers:
On behalf of more than 81 professional organizations – and more than half a million small business owners, we are writing to express our grave concern about the controversial Orphan Works Act of 2008 (HR 5889). We’ve been advised that the Judiciary Committee may try to place it on the Suspensions Calendar and pass it by unanimous consent. Please don’t allow this to happen. This is no way to pass a controversial bill opposed by your constituents. It would strip them of their intellectual property rights without due process.
None of the organizations or businesses listed in the attached sheet – and the number is growing as more people learn about it – had a voice in drafting this bill, yet all citizens stand to be harmed by it. We believe that an orphan works bill can be perfected, but we do not believe there is time to perfect it in a lame duck session. We are therefore urging that this bill be held over until the next Congress, when we would pledge the positive input of the creative community to see that a true orphan works bill is passed.
When Chairman Berman held the single open hearing on this bill March 13th before the Subcommittee on the Courts, the Internet and Intellectual Property, he acknowledged that it was not a true orphan works bill. Let us quote him exactly:
“[W]e should correct a misnomer,” [he said]. “The works we’re talking about are not orphans...The more accurate description... is probably an unlocatable copyright owner...But for the sake of ease we’ll keep talking about them as if they’re orphans.”With all due respect to the Congressman, if this bill is not about orphaned work, we do not think it should be passed as if it were one. Conversely, if its goal is to make the work of ordinary citizens available as commercial content to large internet databases, such a transfer of rights should be openly and transparently debated on its own merits.
An orphaned work is a work whose author has died or abandoned his copyrights. This bill would redefine an orphan as “a work by an unlocatable author.” This would radically re-define the ownership of private property. This bill, as written, would permit any person to infringe any work by any author at any time for any reason – no matter how commercial or distasteful – so long as the infringer found the author sufficiently hard to find. Since everybody can be hard for somebody to find, this voids every rights holder’s exclusive right to his or her own intellectual property as required by the U.S. Copyright Act. It creates the public’s right to use private property as a default position, available to anyone whenever any property owner fails to make himself sufficiently available to any would-be user.
The Orphan Works bill is being presented as a minor adjustment to Copyright Law. It is not. This bill – in both houses of Congress – would affect the most personal form of private property that exists – the work that citizens create themselves, the work they use to make a living, the work they use to express their time on Earth. It would affect any form of creative expression – from professional artwork to family photos, home videos, songs and lyrics – and anything that anyone has ever been placed on the Internet. It would affect the work of living authors who are still actively licensing their work.
The stated purpose of the bill is to benefit libraries and museums. But if so, why have the doors been opened wide for commercial infringement?
On the premise that culture will be harmed if authors can’t be found, this bill would “pressure” copyright holders to surrender access to their commercial inventory, metadata and licensing information to privately owned commercial databases. Unregistered work would be vulnerable to potential infringement. Since no rational business owner would voluntarily turn over private business information to outside commercial interests without agreed upon compensation, this is a troubling prospect for millions of creators and small business owners. And since copyright holders would have to digitize their entire inventory at their own expense to comply, this bill would socialize the cost of compliance while privatizing the profits from creative work.
The bill’s drafters have relied on the 2006 Report on Orphan Works, issued by the Copyright Office. But the Copyright Office studied the specific subject of orphaned work. They did not inquire into the workings of commercial markets and there is no evidence in their report that business clients are unable to find the living authors they wish to work with. No evidence whatsoever. This bill has been drafted behind closed doors, without a needs-assessment study, an economic impact analysis, or an evaluation of how the public would be affected by this transfer of private property from individuals to giant commercial databases.
The first – and so far only – effort to assess the economic impact of this legislation on the creative community came on August 8, 2008 when the Office of Advocacy of the Small Business Administration conducted an Orphan Works Roundtable in New York City. Participants represented artists, writers, photographers, songwriters, musicians, performers and many collateral small businesses. Panelists stressed several key points:
• The high cost of compliance would make it impossible for many small business owners
to comply; yet
• Failure to comply could lead to loss of intellectual property.
• The loss of exclusive rights would breach the sanctity of contracts, and
• Devalue the work of rights holders in their derivative markets.
For the 81 groups in the enclosed list, the most troubling part of this has been our near-total exclusion from the legislative process. To counter the protests of copyright holders, special interests have tried to dress up the House bill with complicated provisions, calling them “speed bumps” for infringers. For example, the House bill requires an infringer to perform a “qualifying search” – where a qualifying search is defined as one that is reasonable and diligent but reasonable diligence is left for the courts to define. Who wants to go to court to seek payment after your work has been used? We’re business people. We make our livings through voluntary business transactions, not lawsuits. Any bill that drives business decisions into the courts is bad for business and bad for the courts.
To understand this bill, we have to go to the heart of the matter. By defining millions of works as orphans on the premise that some might be, this bill will allow Internet content providers to profit by harvesting and monetizing the work of ordinary citizens, providing their databases with content they could never afford to create themselves nor license from authors.
In light of the meltdown on Wall Street, we do not think it’s wise for Congress to concentrate our nation’s copyright wealth in the hands of a few corporate databases. The contents of these databases would be more valuable than secure banking information. Yet this bill would compel small business owners to subsidize their business models. That means it would be the assets of ordinary citizens at risk in the event of their failure, mismanagement or corruption. The consequences of this step will be far-reaching, long lasting, perhaps irreversible and will strike at the heart of property ownership.
On July 11th, on behalf of all those who wish to see a true orphan works bill, the Illustrators’ Partnership, Artists Rights Society and Advertising Photographers of America submitted Amendments to the Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet and Intellectual Property.* The Amendments have never been considered. A new Congress would have the opportunity to do so. Please do not allow this legislation to pass until it can be subjected to an open, informed and transparent public examination.
Sincerely,
Brad Holland, Illustrators' Partnership
212.226.3675, brad-holland@rcn.com
Cynthia Turner, Illustrators' Partnership
850.231.4112, cynthia@cynthiaturner.com
Dr. Theodore Feder, President, Artists Rights Society
212.420.9160, tfeder@arsny.com
Martin Trailer, President, Advertising Photographers of America
800.272.6264, Martin.Trailer@APAnational.com
*H.R. 5889 Amendments available here:
http://ipaorphanworks.blogspot.com/2008/07/hr-5889-amendments.html
Monday, December 8, 2008
Orphan Works: A Lame Duck Countdown, Part V
Through the Looking Glass
Orphan Works advocates defend their proposals by saying they’re necessary to put users in touch with copyright owners. They say this isn’t happening now because of a market failure in commercial markets.
Speaking at a Congressional Seminar March 31, 2006, Copyright Office attorney Jule Sigall explained why they believed artists needed Congress to “push” them to register their work with privately owned copyright registries (page 23 of the transcript):
For the record, there is no evidence in the Copyright Office report that art directors and commercial clients are having any difficulty finding the contributors they want to work with. No evidence whatsoever! Indeed, even a cursory glance at our field refutes that conclusion:
Consider magazines such as Vanity Fair, the New Yorker, Time or Vogue. All of them and countless others are filled from cover to cover with photographs and art - as are newspapers, trade publications, medical journals, ads, annual reports, posters, brochures, catalogues, postcards greeting cards and more. How can anyone be surrounded by this sea of images and seriously argue that in the visual arts “sector,” “buyers can’t find sellers”?
The Copyright Office “evidence” for their conclusion of market failure amounts to no more than 215 relevant letters submitted to their study on the specific subject of orphaned work. Since they didn’t study the workings of commercial markets, there cannot possibly be any valid grounds for deducing a market failure in those markets. You can’t study apples and draw conclusions about oranges.
Orphan Works “For the Sake of Ease”
However unfounded, this Copyright Office factoid of “market failure” is now an orphan works fact to lawmakers. When Chairman Berman of the House IP Subcommittee held the sole public hearing (I hour 27 minutes) on this bill, March 13, 2008, he acknowledged in his opening statement that it was not a true orphan works bill. Yet he insisted it was necessary to correct a “market failure”:
We may presume that the bill’s backers don’t want to be seen as trying to strip citizens of their intellectual property rights without due process. So instead they now argue that they’re only trying to help artists, who in their fecklessness, oppose the bill because we don’t want to be helped.
The Myth of the Feckless Artist
The best example of this mythologizing can be found in statements coming from Public Knowledge, one of the driving forces behind this legislation. On May 29, 2008, Gigi Sohn, President and Co-Founder of PK, explained to listeners at the Center for Intellectual Property why artists perversely oppose these bills:
Far from complaining that we can’t be found, an entire food chain of collateral markets currently exists to facilitate the process by which image buyers successfully find image sellers: Agents, commercial directories, trade shows, ads in trade publications, direct mail, web sites and email solicitations - all attest to the fact that hundreds of thousands of creators are engaged daily in the robust business of making themselves accessible to potential users.
All of these businesses will be hurt by a bill that legalizes the infringement of the work they trade in. None will be helped by placing on them the onerous and costly burden of registering and maintaining tens of thousands - or for photographers, hundreds of thousands - of individual copyright registrations, not to mention the impossible burden of trying to monitor infringements of their work, which can occur anytime, anywhere in the world.
The Orphan Works proposals under consideration would not create new ways for buyers to find sellers. It would merely allow opportunists to co-opt the existing markets of creators and of the collateral businesses that serve them.
As artists we already know this. Our chore is to hold this bill over until the next Congress, then work to counter the false logic of market failure created by the unwarranted conclusions of the Copyright Office’s Orphan Works Report.
- Brad Holland and Cynthia Turner for the Board of the Illustrators’ Partnership
*Presented to the Center for Intellectual Property 8th Annual Intellectual Property Symposium, University of Maryland University College May 29, 2008
Tomorrow: A Bill Too Far
The Orphan Works Act of 2008 (H.R. 5889) has not been passed by the House of Representatives, but could be placed on the Suspensions calendar and passed by the lame duck session of Congress scheduled to re-convene this week. The Illustrators’ Partnership is asking lawmakers to hold the bill over to the next session of Congress, when rightsholders can have an opportunity to have their case heard before the full Judiciary Committee.
Orphan Works advocates defend their proposals by saying they’re necessary to put users in touch with copyright owners. They say this isn’t happening now because of a market failure in commercial markets.
Speaking at a Congressional Seminar March 31, 2006, Copyright Office attorney Jule Sigall explained why they believed artists needed Congress to “push” them to register their work with privately owned copyright registries (page 23 of the transcript):
“[A]t this stage, in respect to the legislation...the real question we need to ask and answer is, what kinds of provisions put the right pressure [on photographers and illustrators] to get to that point? Who needs to be pushed there? I mean... I use this line a lot, photographers and illustrators like to say, ‘We haven’t collectivized...’ This is a problem, generally, for their marketplace. It’s hard to have a marketplace where buyers can’t find sellers.” (Emphasis added) http://www.pff.org/events/pastevents/033106orphanworks.aspNothing expresses the looking glass logic of the Orphan Works bill better than this statement by the “principal author” of the Copyright Office report that an amendment legalizing the infringement of millions of commercial copyrights is necessary in order for buyers to find sellers.
For the record, there is no evidence in the Copyright Office report that art directors and commercial clients are having any difficulty finding the contributors they want to work with. No evidence whatsoever! Indeed, even a cursory glance at our field refutes that conclusion:
Consider magazines such as Vanity Fair, the New Yorker, Time or Vogue. All of them and countless others are filled from cover to cover with photographs and art - as are newspapers, trade publications, medical journals, ads, annual reports, posters, brochures, catalogues, postcards greeting cards and more. How can anyone be surrounded by this sea of images and seriously argue that in the visual arts “sector,” “buyers can’t find sellers”?
The Copyright Office “evidence” for their conclusion of market failure amounts to no more than 215 relevant letters submitted to their study on the specific subject of orphaned work. Since they didn’t study the workings of commercial markets, there cannot possibly be any valid grounds for deducing a market failure in those markets. You can’t study apples and draw conclusions about oranges.
Orphan Works “For the Sake of Ease”
However unfounded, this Copyright Office factoid of “market failure” is now an orphan works fact to lawmakers. When Chairman Berman of the House IP Subcommittee held the sole public hearing (I hour 27 minutes) on this bill, March 13, 2008, he acknowledged in his opening statement that it was not a true orphan works bill. Yet he insisted it was necessary to correct a “market failure”:
“[W]e should correct a misnomer. The works we’re talking about are not orphans...The more accurate description of the situation is probably an unlocatable copyright owner...this situation better describes the orphan works construct, which is to correct the market failure when a potential user can’t find the copyright owner. But for the sake of ease we’ll keep talking about them as if they’re orphans.”But to redefine an orphaned work as “a work by an unlocatable author” is to radically re-define the ownership of private property. Since everybody will be hard for somebody to find, this bill would permit any person to infringe any work by any author at any time for any reason - no matter how commercial or distasteful - so long as the infringer found the author sufficiently hard to find. And this would create the public’s right to use private property as a default position, available to anyone whenever the property owner fails to make himself sufficiently available.
http://www.copyright.gov/video/testimony-3-13-08.html
We may presume that the bill’s backers don’t want to be seen as trying to strip citizens of their intellectual property rights without due process. So instead they now argue that they’re only trying to help artists, who in their fecklessness, oppose the bill because we don’t want to be helped.
The Myth of the Feckless Artist
The best example of this mythologizing can be found in statements coming from Public Knowledge, one of the driving forces behind this legislation. On May 29, 2008, Gigi Sohn, President and Co-Founder of PK, explained to listeners at the Center for Intellectual Property why artists perversely oppose these bills:
“Now let me tell you what the main opponents of orphan works legislation really don’t like about it...[they] don’t like the fact that good faith users- those who are willing to pay but can’t figure out who to pay - might be able to use their works without permission and without the maximum financial punishment. They want to control every use of their works, and whether or not they receive fair payment is beside the point.” http://www.publicknowledge.org/node/1594 *And on August 21, 2008, her colleague at PK, Alex Curtis, reiterated the theme:
“Visual artists say they have a problem, that no one can find their work, or at least match them as the owner of their work.” http://www.publicknowledge.org/node/1717“Visual artists say they have a problem, that no one can find their work...” Actually we’ve never said any such thing. In fact we’ve explicitly said the opposite. Here’s just one example, from a sample letter we posted on our CapWiz site May 3:
“I am told that the Copyright Office conducted a study of Orphan Works and that these bills are based on that study. I understand that an orphan work is a work whose owner can’t be located. I am alive, working and managing my copyrights. I can be located. My clients locate me all the time. But that does not mean that anyone anywhere can find me. And frankly, why should the failure of any one person to find me be the measure of whether or not I can be found?“I can be located. My clients locate me all the time.” I don’t see how we could say it any more clearly.
“What if 1000 people can find me but one can’t? Why should that one person get a free pass to use my work?” http://capwiz.com/illustratorspartnership/issues/alert/?alertid=11333406
Far from complaining that we can’t be found, an entire food chain of collateral markets currently exists to facilitate the process by which image buyers successfully find image sellers: Agents, commercial directories, trade shows, ads in trade publications, direct mail, web sites and email solicitations - all attest to the fact that hundreds of thousands of creators are engaged daily in the robust business of making themselves accessible to potential users.
All of these businesses will be hurt by a bill that legalizes the infringement of the work they trade in. None will be helped by placing on them the onerous and costly burden of registering and maintaining tens of thousands - or for photographers, hundreds of thousands - of individual copyright registrations, not to mention the impossible burden of trying to monitor infringements of their work, which can occur anytime, anywhere in the world.
The Orphan Works proposals under consideration would not create new ways for buyers to find sellers. It would merely allow opportunists to co-opt the existing markets of creators and of the collateral businesses that serve them.
As artists we already know this. Our chore is to hold this bill over until the next Congress, then work to counter the false logic of market failure created by the unwarranted conclusions of the Copyright Office’s Orphan Works Report.
- Brad Holland and Cynthia Turner for the Board of the Illustrators’ Partnership
*Presented to the Center for Intellectual Property 8th Annual Intellectual Property Symposium, University of Maryland University College May 29, 2008
Tomorrow: A Bill Too Far
The Orphan Works Act of 2008 (H.R. 5889) has not been passed by the House of Representatives, but could be placed on the Suspensions calendar and passed by the lame duck session of Congress scheduled to re-convene this week. The Illustrators’ Partnership is asking lawmakers to hold the bill over to the next session of Congress, when rightsholders can have an opportunity to have their case heard before the full Judiciary Committee.
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