For more information about the Entertainment & Technology Law Conference series, please click here.
YouTube recently announced that it has issued more than $1 billion in advertising payments to record labels and artists for the use of music over the past twelve months. At the same time, however, numerous industry observers continue to question whether YouTube is doing enough to compensate the rightsholders for the use of their content and to protect copyright holders from piracy. Just a few months ago, more than 200 recording artists and key industry figures, including Irving Azoff, Taylor Swift and U2, signed an open letter to Congress to decry the rampant exploitation of their work for profit by entities such as YouTube and to call for a re-examination of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), the 1998 law that governs infringement liability for internet service providers.
This panel will also examine the history of the DMCA, the operation of its safe-harbor, takedown and liability regime and the critiques of its operation from the point of view of content creators, owners, users and internet service providers. In the process, the panel seeks to provide direction on navigating the DMCA’s murky waters, an understanding of various problems with the current law and an overview of the debate surrounding its reform. The panel will be of particular interest to artists and entities whose works are distributed and infringed upon online and will also provide guidance on digital rights management issues and best practices for developers and operators of online entities making use of “user-generated content.”
