While streaming services like Amazon Prime, Netflix and Hulu continue to invest billions of dollars in original series, the new survey suggests they should not ignore the vast libraries their services are built upon.
Source: Library Content Drives Streaming Service Subscriptions 10/17/2017
How did Canada become such a battleground, a place where rightsholders and educators have fought so bitterly, and the focus for so many other countries considering the future of copyright? The starting point for most people was The Copyright Modernization Act, a piece of legislation introduced by the Canadian government in 2012.
Source: Copyright: A Worldwide Audience Is Watching – Copyright Clearance Center
The letter was kickstarted by Liberties and EDRi, and been signed by as many parties as Heinz makes varieties. The letter has been posted on the Liberties website and paints a bleak future of digital copyright and the machinations that surround it.
Source: 57 rights groups back anti-Article 13 letter to the European Parliament
Many European Member States (including Germany) were questioning the compatibility of the EU copyright proposal from the EU Commission with the e-Commerce Directive, a legal cornerstone of the European digital sector.
It’s a move that had to come as the amount of content Box is managing has reached a tipping point. Once you get past a certain amount of content, you can’t manually tag it or track it. It requires a level of automation that’s simply impossible for humans to keep up with.
Source: Box Skills applies AI and machine learning to growing multimedia content | TechCrunch
The 2012 Copyright Modernization Act in Canada has been a disaster for Canadian educational publishers. But concern over the law’s effects, observers say, is not limited to Canada.
Source: Frankfurt Book Fair 2017: Concern that Canadian Copyright Disaster Could Spread
Section 108h of the Copyright Act gives libraries the power to scan and serve copies of out-of-print books published between 1923 and 1941; it’s never been used before but now the mighty Internet Archive is giving it a serious workout, adding them to their brilliantly named Sonny Bono Memorial Collection.
In just under an hour, the two leaders touched on not only the power of culture to hold Europe together, but also on some issues within the publishing industry, including copyright and digitization. And both leaders praised the work of translators and urged more works of translation to be made available.
Source: Frankfurt Book Fair 2017: Macron, Merkel Speak of a Europe United by Culture
In May, music company Kobalt announced a $75m Series D funding round, led by media firm Hearst Entertainment. Now that round has increased to $89m. The $14m ‘second installment’ was led by former Google Ventures partner Bill Maris’ new Section 32 fund, with Maris joining Kobalt’s board of directors as part of the funding.
Source: Kobalt Series D funding swells to $89m as Section 32 chips in
The second annual RightsTech Summit drew a full house last month at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York. Highlights included fireside chats with glass artist and Square co-founder Jim McKelvey, and associate register of copyrights at the U.S. Copyright Office Robert Kasunic; lively discussions of how artists working in different media are leveraging technology to finance and distribute their work, and how investors calculate the value of rights and royalty streams; panels on blockchain, metadata, and licensing hubs; and a robust debate over who (or what?) should own the rights to works created by artificial intelligence agents.
It also featured some robust networking and schmoozing. Here’s some of what it looked like:
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