US Copyright Office's Proposal On Orphan Works Wouldn't Be Allowed If TPP Is Ratified

from the such-a-mess dept

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community. Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis. While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team

We've been pointing out for ages that, contrary to what some claim, one of the biggest problems with including things like copyright and patents in international trade agreements like the TPP and TTIP is that it effectively binds Congress' hands, by blocking them from fixing problems associated with those laws. We've highlighted in the past, for example, how the currently leaked draft of the TPP's intellectual property section would require copyright terms to be at least life plus 70 years, which goes directly against what even the Copyright Office's boss, Maria Pallante, has been arguing for, in terms of (finally) reducing copyright terms for the first time, ever.Here's yet another example. We already wrote about the Copyright Office's (somewhat problematic) proposal on "orphan works" (a problem that is actually caused by moving away from a "formalities" system that requires registration). However, as Jamie Love at KEI points out, the Copyright Office's own proposed legislation, would flat out contradict the language currently found in the leaked TPP intellectual property chapter Specifically, the so-called "orphan works" legislation being pushed by the Copyright Office would limit remedies, including possible compensation or injunctive relief, in certain specific instances for those who make use of "orphaned" works. Yet, the TPPthat signatories offer monetary damages and injunctive relief to anyone whose work is infringed.Thus, the Copyright Office'swouldn't be allowed if the US signs the TPP or would lead to the risk that the US would face challenges either under the WTO or a corporate sovereignty (ISDS) tribunal for failing to adhere to the rules that it agreed to in that trade agreement.Defenders of the TPP and TTIP insist that neither will change US copyright law as it stands today, but we keep finding examples of where it would bar changes that even the Copyright Office is advocating for. The Copyright Office isto be working closely with the USTR on these agreements, but this raises some serious questions about whether the left hand has any idea what the right hand is doing.

Filed Under: copyright, orphan works, tpp