Copyright Czar Victoria Espinel unveiled Tuesday the Obama administration's first "Joint Strategic Plan" concerning intellectual property enforcement -- and she gave a big nod to fair use.
The plan was required under the Pro-IP Act of 2008, which created Espinel's post. The act was watered down to eliminate a Justice Department mandate that it assume duties of the movie studios and recording industry and sue copyright scofflaws.
"Strong intellectual property enforcement efforts should be focused on stopping those stealing the work of others, not those who are appropriately building upon it," said the report, referring to fair use.
To be sure, the plan was riddled with the usual bureaucratic language, like improving "coordination" with federal, state and local authorities. And it develops a "coordinated and comprehensive plan" to address foreign-based websites hawking pirated goods. The U.S. government, she wrote, must spend its enforcement dollars "wisely" and "address unlawful activity on the internet, such as illegal downloading and illegal internet pharmacies."
The plan was applauded by both the copy right and the copy left.
Digital rights lobby Public Knowledge said the report shows Espinel "understands the balance in copyright law." The Motion Picture Association of America, the legal and lobbying arm of the Hollywood studios, said the report was "an important step forward in combating intellectual property theft."
One of the first recommendations to the president to bolster intellectual property enforcement was "transparency." Espinel also discussed enforcing "American intellectual property rights in the global economy."
Toward those ends, we need not look beyond the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement.
The proposed international accord fits nicely with the goal of American policy laundering. The United States is pushing a DMCA-style notice-and-takedown process on the two dozen negotiating countries.
Under the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act, internet companies are granted so-called safe-harbor status if they promptly remove allegedly infringing content at the request of the copyright holder.
But what's been missing in the nearly 2-year-old ACTA negotiations is transparency.
The administration at one point said the agreement's working text was a national security secret.
In April, the administration released a limited, working draft of the ever-mutating proposal after European Union officials began demanding transparency. Yet the associated documents that go along with crafting and negotiating an international treaty have been kept secret, despite Freedom of Information Act requests from Knowledge Ecology, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Wired.com.
Photo: Associated Press
See Also:
- Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement: Fact or Fiction?
- ACTA Backs Away From 3 Strikes
- Obama Administration Declares Proposed IP Treaty a Secret
- Special Interests See 'Classified' Copyright Treaty; You Can't
- The Heat Is On for Details of Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement
- Copyright Treaty Is Policy Laundering at Its Finest
