U.S. Copyright Office is Announcing a “Series of Consultations on Technical Measures to Identify or Protect Copyrighted Works Online”

Note: The item below was posted in the Federal Register’s Public Inspection File on Tuesday, December 21, 2021. It is scheduled to be published tomorrow.

From the Federal Register (Public Inspection File):

The U.S. Copyright Office is announcing a series of consultations on technical measures to identify or protect copyrighted works online. The Office plans to hold a plenary session to launch consultations on this issue on February 22, 2022, to be followed by smaller sectoral consultations thereafter. To aid in this effort, the Office also is seeking public input on a number of questions

The U.S. Copyright Office’s 2020 Report, Section 512 of Title 17 (“Section 512 Report”), 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 24, 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 emphasized 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 Office is now announcing that it will convene a series of consultations on technical measures for identifying or protecting copyrighted works online.

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