What Are They Up To?
The new Copyright Alliance is undergoing some scrutiny. With membership seemingly composed of all sides of the copyright issue - also known as all types of stakeholders - it’s hard to get a handle on exactly where the group is planning to go. The Alliance took offense to a story linking it a policy position on radio, both traditional and internet, performance royalty fees, and went to great pains to explain that is no policy position - yet - on that or any other specific issue.
On it’s website it lists seven principals. The one that bears the most watching is this: “To promote the progress of science and creativity, as enumerated in the U.S. Constitution, by upholding and strengthening copyright law and preventing its diminishment”
With a membership as diverse as theirs appears to be, it will be difficult to take positions on some copyright policy issues. But it still seems like the Alliance must be stockpiling all that heavy artillery for something. The most interesting thing to me is the presence of several sports leagues among the membership. The NCAA, NBA, and MLB all hold extremely valuable intellectual property. For most of it, a strong education campaign on the do’s and don’ts of reproducing team logos, etc would probably be of great benefit. But they would derive at least as much, if not greater benefit, from copyright changes related to the filming and publishing of their games. And even so, sports leagues, although they derive much of their revenue from intellectual property, are definitely not traditional author/distributor copyright stakeholders.
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