US consults on content protection technology
December 23, 2021
By Colin Mann
The US Copyright Office is holding a series of consultations on technical measures to identify or protect copyrighted works online.
The Office’s 2020 Report, Section 512 of Title 17, acknowledged the important role that technologies and technical measures can play in addressing Internet piracy. While the infringement of copyrighted material online has evolved alongside technological developments, stakeholders have engaged in a range of voluntary collaborations and developed a number of technical measures that supplement the legislative notice-and takedown framework.
In a letter dated June 24th, 2021, Senators Patrick Leahy and Thom Tillis requested that the Copyright Office ‘‘convene a representative working group of relevant stakeholders to achieve the identification and implementation of technical measures’’. The Senators emphasised that they continue to believe, as the Senate Judiciary Committee noted more than twenty years ago with the passage of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, ‘‘that voluntary technology is likely to be the solution to many of the issues facing copyright owners and service providers’’.
The consultations will address current and forthcoming technologies for identifying or protecting works online, including the technologies’ availability, their use-cases, and their limitations.