CCIA applauds the recent agreement we have helped broker between leading content creators, RIAA and MPAA and leading companies in the Internet, technology, and communications sectors in an effort to rewrite copyright law so as to avoid the type of future confrontations we all experienced in the recent battles over PIPA & SOPA.
We especially applaud Content’s willingness to negotiate within a framework agreement which includes the following elements:
- recognizes the importance of getting the underlying law right before expanding sanctions and enforcement;
- agreement to greatly shorten arbitrary terms for copyright protection, in exchange for new ways to calculate new terms sufficient to reward and encourage continued creative efforts, adjusted to reflect the economic realities of different sectors of industry;
- guarantees that no less that 50% of copyright royalties will go to the actual original artists and creators of a work and not to intermediaries such as brokers, studios, agents, who should, however, be well compensated by fixed or contingent fee arrangements only;
- agreement to immediately suspend use of inflated unscientific calculations of economic and job numbers related to infringement issues;
- support for an independent economic research commission to study the actual financial, and innovation, costs and benefits of various key aspects of the current copyright system, including different types of infringement, fair use, and other types of limitations and exceptions;
- elimination of liability for secondary and non-intentional infringers in return for more stringent sanctions on willful and intentional violations;
- replacement of statutory damages with an objectively developed economic formula to measure actual damage, including perhaps treble damages;
- acceptance of the obligations that go with property ownership, including willingness for their copyrights to be fairly taxed as property assets, whether by local, state, or federal tax regimes, in the same way as real property or hard goods’ are taxed, including depreciation rules that recognize that copyrights retain their full functional value till the end of their term.
HAPPY APRIL FOOL’S DAY FROM CCIA!