Changes in Copyright Laws for Artists:
“WASHINGTON— While the Stop Online Piracy Act (also known as SOPA) now pending in Congress has members of the technology and art world up in arms, a more subtle remedy for small copyright claims is also quietly being developed by the United States Copyright Office. At the end of October, Congress asked the office — a subset of the Library of Congress that maintains records of U.S. copyright — to study the problems surrounding small copyright disputes, as well as possible alternatives. The results, which involve the establishment of a small claims court, could have major implications for artists who use appropriated material as well as those whose material is appropriated by others.
Under the Copyright Act of 1976, all copyright infringement claims — whether they concern a blockbuster Hollywood movie or an individual photograph — must be brought to federal court. The exorbitant legal fees associated with this process often dissuade individual copyright holders from filing a lawsuit, and can bankrupt defendants. (In 2011, for instance, the median cost for litigating a copyright-infringement lawsuit with less than $1 million at risk was $350,000, according to the Federal Register.) When the reward is likely to be small, the protracted legal process doesn’t help, either: the median duration of a federal case that went trial in 2009 and 2010 was 23 months.
The copyright office is currently soliciting comments from the public through January 16 to help it write the report, which it will then pass on to the Congressional Subcommittee on the Courts, the Internet, and Intellectual Property. In a preliminary notice on the issue, drawn largely from a 2006 hearing on the same subject, the office set forth several alternatives to the present system that would give artists and other copyright holders the ability to pursue a claim without hiring an attorney. (A relatively similar proposal in England, to establish a copyright small claims track in Patents County Court cases involving £5,000 or less, is pending there.
It’s unclear whether the report will have any tangible effect on law — when a similar matter was discussed in 2006, Congress failed to act.”
(Via Art & Education » News.)