Discussion of FCC, copyright, advertising and other legal issues of importance to radio and television broadcasters and other media companies
Here are some of the regulatory developments of significance to broadcasters from the last week, with links to where you can go to find more information as to how these actions may affect your operations.
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With FCC Acting Chair Jessica Rosenworcel now appointed permanent chair of the FCC, and with a fifth FCC Commissioner now having been nominated (Gigi Sohn), the FCC may soon be back to normal strength. Even before that though, the FCC and other government agencies remain busy, with many important regulatory dates and deadlines in the coming weeks. We have highlighted some of those dates below. Pay close attention to these dates, especially the December 1 deadline to file biennial ownership reports that is applicable to all broadcasters.
Reply comments on the FCC proposal to bring back FCC Form 395-B are due by November 1 (comments were due by September 30 and can be read here). Following the FCC’s review of comments and reply comments on the issue, enhanced equal employment opportunity data collection could again be a reality for broadcasters more than 20 years after the FCC suspended the form’s use. Form 395-B was an annual report intended to gather information about the race and gender of broadcast employees, thrown out by the courts over fears of the unconstitutional use of the data to force broadcasters to make hiring decisions based on these factors. We wrote more about the possible resurrection of Form 395-B, here.…
Continue Reading November Regulatory Dates for Broadcasters: Reply Comments on EEO Reporting and KidVid Accessibility; New Noncommercial FM Filing Window; Biennial Ownership Reports; License Renewals; and More
Here are some of the regulatory developments of significance to broadcasters from the last week, with links to where you can go to find more information as to how these actions may affect your operations.
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The Copyright Office, at the request of Congress, has initiated a study to examine the rights and protections of news publishers under copyright and related laws. The Office issued a Notice of Inquiry seeking public comment on a variety of issues that could extend new protections to “press publishers” and perhaps other content creators that go beyond those accorded by traditional principles of copyright law. The Office terms these protections “ancillary copyright protections.” The Notice of Inquiry tees up several specific proposals for consideration, asks many specific questions, and solicits additional ideas that should be considered to protect publishers. Comments are due November 26, 2021. The Copyright Office will also hold a virtual public roundtable on December 9 to consider these issues. This study could have an impact both on traditional media outlets who produce content, and on digital media that shares those comments.
The impact of digital media on traditional publishers of content – especially news content – was the trigger for this review. The Notice begins with a recitation of the financial impact that the growth of the internet has had on newspapers and other publishers (“publication” under the Copyright Act is the distribution of a copy or recording of a work to the public by sale, rental, lease, or lending. While a pure public performance does not constitute publication, digital subscription services and similar on-demand uses of content would likely fit within this definition). In its opening paragraphs, the Notice focuses on digital “news aggregators” and their impact on publishers. The Notice takes a broad view of the term aggregator – talking not just of headline clipping sites devoted to specific topics, but also to broader digital media sites like Facebook and Google that feature content from a variety of other sources. While recognizing that aggregators can drive traffic to publisher’s digital content, the Copyright Office seeks comment on whether these aggregators also harm publishers by sending traffic only to specific articles and not to an index or home page for a publisher where a viewer might be inclined to view more content (and perhaps more of the publisher’s own ads). From that opening discussion of news aggregators, the Notice looks at possible “ancillary” rights that may assist publishers in overcoming any negative impact of aggregators. These are discussed below.…
Continue Reading Copyright Office Initiates Study of “Ancillary Copyright Protections” Accorded to Publishers – Reviewing News Aggregation and Digital Media’s Use of News Content from Traditional Sources
Here are some of the regulatory developments of significance to broadcasters from the last week, with links to where you can go to find more information as to how these actions may affect your operations.
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Here are some of the regulatory developments of significance to broadcasters from the last week, with links to where you can go to find more information as to how these actions may affect your operations.
…
Here are some of the regulatory developments of significance to broadcasters from the last week, with links to where you can go to find more information as to how these actions may affect your operations.
…
Here are some of the regulatory developments of significance to broadcasters from the last week, with links to where you can go to find more information as to how these actions may affect your operations.
…
We’ve written before over the controversy as to whether embedding pictures or video served by a social media site on your website negates the need to get explicit permission from the copyright owner for that use. For years, many had relied on old court decisions that employed a “server test” – a site was only liable for the use of copyrighted material if that material resided on the same server as the rest of the website content being made available by the site’s owner. But that test seems to be falling by the wayside based on a number of recent cases (see our articles here and here). Another decision was released the week before last by a US District Court Judge that seems to further advance that trend.
In a case brought against Sinclair Broadcast Group, video of a starving polar bear was posted by Sinclair on websites that it controlled without permission of the individual who recorded it. The video was posted as part of an article on the popularity of the video. The videographer sued – and Sinclair responded that it could not have copyright liability as it did not host the video, but instead merely embedded a link to Instagram where the videographer had posted the video. In his decision denying a motion to dismiss, the Judge determined that intentionally embedding the code that brought up that video whenever a website visitor visited a Sinclair site was a “display” of the video by Sinclair and the functional equivalent of hosting the video on Sinclair’s own servers, so the infringement claim could not be dismissed. The Judge did, however, allow Sinclair to continue to argue that, in the context the video was displayed, the use may have been a “fair use.”…
Continue Reading Embedding Social Media Videos on Your Website? – Court Case Says Get Permission from Copyright Owner First
We’ve written many times about the perils of posting a photo on your website without getting permission from the photo’s owner (see, for instance, our articles here and here). Copyright protects photos, even when they are shared on the Internet. Just by posting a photo to some website does not mean that the owner has given up its copyright protections – and just because you can easily right-click on the image and paste it on your website doesn’t mean it is legal to do so. If you copy a photo for use on your site without permission, you should not be surprised to see a copyright infringement claim seeking damages – potentially big damages. To avoid issues, many website owners look for ways to get permission to use photos, signing up for subscriptions from stock photo services or, often when trying to save money, relying on photos made available through some “creative commons” license. However, relying on the creative commons license can be perilous. One example is a recent US District Court ruling on a motion for summary judgment of a copyright lawsuit brought by a photographer when his photos of Willie Nelson and Carlos Santana appeared on a news website to illustrate articles on the musicians. Anyone with a website should read this decision, as it addresses in detail not only the issues with these creative commons licenses, but also many of the other legal issues that arise in lawsuits about the unauthorized use of photos.
In this case, a local news website had used photos that were freely available on a creative commons site and were widely circulated on other sites. But when they were posted to the defendant’s site, there was allegedly no attribution of the photos to the photographer and no link to the photographer’s own site, which were preconditions to the creative commons license. Because the defendant did not follow the terms of license, the court found that the license was not effective. The fact that these photos were otherwise widely available on the Internet similarly provided no defense to the infringement claim. Relying on a creative commons license without scrupulous attention to any license requirements can lead to legal actions like the one brought here. In fact, the decision suggested that this was not the first lawsuit brought by this photographer, and as we’ve seen in past cases, there is no shortage of other photographers ready to make claims against those who use their work without an effective license. …
Continue Reading Using Photos on Your Website – Court Decision Highlights Problems with a Creative Commons License and Other Copyright Issues
