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The Copyright Office yesterday issued a “Final Reminder” to Internet Services that want to be able to assert that they are insulated from Copyright liability for content posted on their sites by third-parties.  Services need to be sure that they have used the Copyright Office’s new online system to the register the names…

While the end of the year is just about upon us, that does not mean that broadcasters can ignore the regulatory world and celebrate the holidays all through December. In fact, this will be a busy regulatory month, as witnessed by the list of issues that we wrote about yesterday to be considered at the FCC meeting on December 14. But, in addition to those issues, there are plenty of other deadlines to keep any broadcaster busy.

December 1 is the due date for all sorts of EEO obligations. By that date, Commercial and Noncommercial Full-Power and Class A Television Stations and AM and FM Radio Stations in Alabama, Colorado, Connecticut, Georgia, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Montana, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Rhode Island, South Dakota, and Vermont that are part of an Employment Unit with 5 or more full-time employees need to place their Annual EEO Public File Reports into the public file (their online public file for TV stations and large-market radio and for those other radio stations that have already converted to the online public file). In addition, EEO Mid-Term Reports on FCC Form 397 are due to be filed at the FCC on December 1 by Radio Station Employment Units with 11 or more full-time employees in Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont; and Television Employment Units with five or more full-time employees in Colorado, Minnesota, Montana, North Dakota, and South Dakota.  We wrote more about the Mid-Term EEO Report here.
Continue Reading December Regulatory Dates for Broadcasters – EEO, TV and Translator Filing Windows, Ancillary Revenue Reports, Main Studio Rule Effective Date, Copyright Office Take-Down Notice Registration and More

Last week, just before Thanksgiving, the FCC released the tentative agenda for its December meeting. From that agenda, it appears that the meeting will be an important one for broadcasters and other media companies. Already, the press has spent incredible amounts of time focusing on one item, referred to as “Restoring Internet Freedom” by the FCC, and “net neutrality” by many other observers. The FCC’s draft of the Order that they will be considering at their December meeting is available here.

The one pure broadcast item on the agenda is the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, looking to determine if the FCC should amend the cap limiting one TV station owner to stations reaching no more than 39% of the national audience. The FCC asks a series of questions in its draft notice of proposed rulemaking, available here, including whether it has the power to change the cap, or if the power is exclusively that of Congress. The FCC promised to initiate this proceeding when it reinstated the UHF discount (see our articles here and here). In that proceeding, the FCC determined that the UHF discount should not have been abolished without a thorough examination of the national ownership cap – an examination that will be undertaken in this new proceeding if the NPRM is adopted at the December meeting.
Continue Reading December FCC Meeting to be an Important One for Broadcasters and Other Media Companies

The Copyright Office yesterday issued a reminder, here, that their electronic system for “designated agents” of Internet service providers – those who are to receive notice of any claimed infringing content posted on a service provider’s site – is active and all services must register in that system by December 31 for…

I was recently interviewed by Steve Goldstein of Amplifi Media, a firm that consults for podcast companies, on the difficulties with the use of music in podcasts. That interview has been turned into an article on Steve’s blog, here, discussing these legal issues. That article discusses the same issues that we’ve written about…

The Copyright Office last year announced changes to its system for registering designated agents for receiving take-down notices that are sent by copyright owners when they believe that user-generated content posted on a website is infringing on the copyright owner’s content (see our article here). The new system makes these registrations electronic, and requires all services seeking protection under Section 512 of the Copyright Act (the “safe harbor” for user-generated content) to register in the new system by December 31, 2017. Last week, the Copyright Office announced certain minor changes to the information required of the companies registering their designated agents in this new system (see Federal Register notice here).

The new changes make it easier for smaller companies to register in the new system. Initially, the system had required a user to establish an account with the Copyright Office before registering the designated agent. That account registration, while not public, did require the submission of information including the physical address of a contact person, and a secondary contact person for the company. Recognizing that many small website owners who might register for the sale harbor (e.g. a blogger running his or her own blog) might not have a secondary contact person for their website operations, the Copyright Office made the secondary contact optional. The office also eliminated the need to register a title for the contact person and the physical address for that person. Presumably, that address is no longer necessary as most contacts would be done through email or by phone – data fields that are still required. Why register in this system?
Continue Reading Copyright Office Makes Changes to Registration of Designated Agents for Take-Down Notices for User Generated Content – Reminder of December 1 Deadline to Register in New Electronic System

Broadcasters and advertisers should take note of the more than 90 warning letters that the FTC sent out this week as a reminder of the need to disclose material sponsorship connections in social media promotions and endorsements.  The FTC has since 2009 announced a policy that any online content for which anything of value has been received must disclose that consideration – even social media posts (see our article here about that policy).  This is in the nature of the FCC’s sponsorship identification rules for broadcast content.   That same policy statement addressed the need for those making personal endorsements to make these sponsorship disclosures.  The recent warning letters are notable not only for their sheer number, but also because the warning letters were addressed to marketers and social media “influencers” – the individuals whose social media followings make their endorsements valuable.  To date, the FTC has only named marketers (Warner Brothers Home Entertainment and Lord & Taylor) in its social media endorsement cases.  Although the FTC did not say who received warning letters, its press release noted that the letters were “informed by petitions filed by Public Citizen and affiliated organizations” in September 2016.

By directing warning letters to marketers and influencers, the FTC is sending a firm reminder that both sides of a sponsorship arrangement need to disclose their connection, “unless the connection is already clear from the context of the communication containing the endorsement.”  Specifically, the FTC advises influencers that they must “clearly and conspicuously” disclose any material connection with a marketer; and marketers, in turn, should ensure that the influencers they sponsor disclose their material connections.
Continue Reading FTC Puts “Influencers” on Notice:  Disclose Marketing Relationships in Social Media Posts

The Copyright Office is scheduled to publish in the Federal Register tomorrow an extension of time for parties who wish to comment on the Request for Additional Comments in its study of Section 512 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the “safe harbor” for those Internet Service Providers who host websites or run networks on…

Here we are at the start of a new year, and right away we have numerous regulatory deadlines for broadcasters. By the 10th of the month, all broadcast stations need to have placed in their public inspection files (online for TV and for those radio stations that have already converted to the online public file, and paper for the remaining radio stations), their Quarterly Issues Programs lists, documenting the issues of importance to their communities and the programs broadcast in the last quarter addressing those issues. TV stations have quarterly Children’s Television Reports due to be filed at the FCC by the 10th, addressing the programming that they broadcast to meet the educational and informational needs of children. Commercial TV stations should also add to their public file documentation to demonstrate their compliance with the commercial limits in programming addressed to children.

For TV stations, on the 1st of the year, new obligations became effective for online captioning. “Montages” of clips from TV programs, where all of those clips were captioned when broadcast, also need to be captioned when made available online. By July 1, clips of live and near-live programming must be captioned; however, they may be posted online initially without captions as long as captions are added to clips of live programming within 12 hours and to clips of near-live programming within eight hours after the conclusion of the TV showing of the full-length programming. For more on this requirement, see our article here.
Continue Reading January Regulatory Dates for Broadcasters – Quarterly Issues Programs Lists and Children’s Television Reports, Ownership and EEO Comments, Copyright Issues and More

There is now a vacancy in the top position at the Copyright Office, the Register of Copyrights, and the Librarian of Congress, who appoints the Register, has asked for comments on the role and qualifications for the new Register. These comments are due by January 31, 2017. While setting copyright law has…