Home » copyright » Systematic bias at the US Copyright Office

Our mission

Free Government Information (FGI) is a place for initiating dialogue and building consensus among the various players (libraries, government agencies, non-profit organizations, researchers, journalists, etc.) who have a stake in the preservation of and perpetual free access to government information. FGI promotes free government information through collaboration, education, advocacy and research.

Systematic bias at the US Copyright Office

Wow, just … wow! Go right now and download (or better yet, store a copy in your local repository like we’re going to do!) Public Knowledge’s new report about the US Copyright Office entitled Captured: Systemic Bias at the US Copyright Office. This is how a completely unaccountable government agency runs roughshod over the public interest and trust.

Public Knowledge‘s new report, Captured: Systemic Bias at the US Copyright Office makes a beautifully argued, perfectly enraging case that the US Copyright Office does not serve the public interest, but rather, hands out regulatory favors to the entertainment industry.

Starting from the undeniable evidence that the easiest way to get a senior job at the Copyright Office is to hold a senior job in a giant entertainment company first (and that holding a senior Copyright Office job qualifies you to walk out of the Copyright Office and into a fat private sector gig as an entertainment exec), the report documents the numerous instances in which the Copyright Office has said and done outrageous things, and grossly misinterpreted the law, leading in many cases to being slapped down by the courts.

This is 100% pure, white-hot smoking gun. What’s more, since the Copyright Office is in charge of much of American internet/technology policy, it’s a national scandal.

via The US Copyright Office is the poster child for regulatory capture / Boing Boing.

CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.


Leave a comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Archives