Panel Discussion: The Future of Section 108 of the Copyright Act

Panel Discussion: The Future of Section 108  of the Copyright Act

ABOUT THE PROGRAM

The Washington, DC chapter of the Copyright Society of the U.S.A. is proud to announce a panel discussion on the future of section 108 of the Copyright Act.  Section 108 establishes exceptions for libraries and archives so that they can fulfill their missions of research, preservation, and access to creative works, but it has not been comprehensively updated since its enactment in 1976.  In 2017 the U.S. Copyright Office issued a “Section 108 Discussion Document,” in which it proposed new statutory language for section 108 so that its exceptions can usefully address digital media and technologies.  This panel discussion will address several topics raised in the Discussion Document, including off-site access to preservation copies, the fair use savings clause, and criteria for eligibility.  Panelists have all been involved for years in section 108 reform discussions, and represent librarians, publishers, archives, and academia.  Chris Weston, Counsel for Policy and International Affairs at the U.S. Copyright Office, and primary author of the Discussion Document, will moderate. 

MODERATOR

Chris Weston is counsel in the Office of Policy and International Affairs of the U.S. Copyright Office.  Chris has many years of domestic copyright law and policy experience, including authoring the Office’s 2017 Discussion Document on the section 108 exceptions for libraries and archives, and co-authoring Office studies on pre-1972 sound recordings and orphan works and mass digitization.  He has also worked extensively on joint Copyright Office-Library of Congress projects.  His international portfolio includes South America and the European Union.  Chris joined the Copyright Office in 2008, after working at the Library of Congress, primarily with the Section 108 Study Group.  He graduated cum laude from the Georgetown University Law Center in 2001, and has a B.A. from Wesleyan University.  Prior to his legal career he spent six years in the music industry.

SPEAKERS 

Jonathan Band helps shape the laws governing intellectual property and the Internet through a combination of legislative and appellate advocacy.  He has represented clients with respect to the drafting of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), and other federal and state statutes relating to intellectual property and the Internet.  He complements this legislative advocacy by filing amicus briefs in significant cases related to these provisions.

Mr. Band has also represented clients in connection to the Marrakesh Treat, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, the Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement, the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, the North America Free Trade Agreement and other international agreements.Mr. Band’s deep substantive knowledge of the application of intellectual property law to information technology permits him to counsel clients on complex copyright issues. Mr. Band is an adjunct professor at the Georgetown University Law Center, and has written extensively on intellectual property and the Internet, including the books Interfaces on Trial, Interfaces on Trial 2.0, Interfaces on Trial 3.0, and over 100 articles. In 2017, Mr. Band received the American Library Association’s L. Ray Patterson Copyright Award, which recognizes an individual who has supported the Constitutional purpose of the copyright law, fair use, and the public domain.

Mr. Band received a B.A., magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa, in 1982 from Harvard College, and a J.D. from Yale Law School in 1985. From 1985 to 2005, Mr. Band worked at the Washington, D.C., office of Morrison & Foerster LLP, including thirteen years as a partner.  Mr. Band established his own law firm in May 2005. 

June M. Besek is the Executive Director of the Kernochan Center for Law, Media and the Arts and a Lecturer at Columbia Law School in New York, where her research and teaching focus on copyright and related rights.  Ms. Besek is the author of many articles and studies on copyright law issues. She currently serves on Council and on the Copyright Reform Task Force for the ABA’s Intellectual Property Law Section, and is a former chair of the Section’s Copyright Division. She serves on the board of Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts, New York, the Columbia Journal of Law & the Arts and Journal of the Copyright Society of the U.S.A. She earned her law degree from New York University School of Law and her undergraduate degree, in economics, from Yale University. 

Since 2015, Sofia Castillo has been Staff Attorney at the Association of American Publishers where she helps shape the publishing industry’s legislative and litigation strategies on matters of copyright and freedom of expression. Before that, Sofia was a Legal Fellow at the Copyright Alliance and a Law Clerk at the U.S. Copyright Office. Sofia completed her B.A. in Anthropology and International Development at Trent University in Canada, her M.A. in Latin American Studies at Stanford University, and her J.D. at American University, Washington College of Law.

Greg Cram is the Associate Director of Copyright and Information Policy at The New York Public Library. Greg endeavors to make the Library’s collections broadly available to researchers and the public. He is responsible for developing and implementing policies and practices around the use of the Library’s collections, both online and in the Library’s physical spaces. Greg has helped steer projects through a maze of complex intellectual property issues, including the release of more than 230,000 high-resolution images of public domain collection items. Greg has represented the Library in advocating for better copyright policy and has testified before Congress and the United States Copyright Office.

Before joining the Library in 2011, Greg served as the copyright clearance consultant to Leadership Team Development, a business support company that organizes thousands of meetings, seminars and conferences. He also worked as a licensing associate at Sanctuary Records, a large independent record label. He is a graduate of Boston University and The Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law. He is a licensed attorney in New York and Massachusetts.

Troy Dow is Vice President and Counsel, Government Relations and IP Legal Policy and Strategy at The Walt Disney Company.  He advises the company on intellectual property and technology policy and represents the company on such matters before the U.S. Congress, the Executive Branch and related agencies. In addition to work in the legislative and regulatory areas, Mr. Dow works to ensure an effective and consistent legal policy and strategy in the area of intellectual property, including in commercial transactions and in major copyright litigation matters that involve Disney or its trade associations. Mr. Dow served as Vice President and Counsel for Technology and New Media at the Motion Picture Association of America, and as Counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee.  He teaches copyright at Duke University Law School and holds degrees from Brigham Young University and the Georgetown University Law Center.

Laura N. Gasaway (Lolly) is the Paul B. Eaton Distinguished Professor of Law Emerita at the University of North Carolina School of Law.  She served as Director of the Law Library and Professor of Law from 1985 until 2006, Associate Dean for Academic Affairs from 2006-10 and taught law full time until July 2013.  She taught courses in Advanced Copyright Law, Art Law and Cyberspace Law. She obtained her B.A. and M.L.S. degrees from Texas Woman’s University in 1967 and 1968 respectively.   Her J.D. degree is from the University of Houston in 1973.  Prior to coming to Chapel Hill, she held the same position at the University of Oklahoma from 1975-84 and at the University of Houston from 1973-75; from 1968-1973 she held various positions in the law library at the University of Houston.  She taught copyright law, art law and cyberspace law.

Lolly is a past president of the American Association of Law Libraries and is a Fellow of the Special Libraries Association and has served on and chaired various committees of both associations, including their Copyright Committees.  She served on the American Bar Association’s Accreditation Committee and on the Council of the Section on Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar.  Lolly represented the AAU at the Fair Use Conferences (for the National Information Infrastructure).   Lolly was the first virtual scholar in residence at the Center for Intellectual Property, University of Maryland, University College, 2002-03.   She was co-chair of the Section 108 Study Group for the National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program and the Copyright Office.  She has been a member of the Copyright Clearance Board of Directors since 2009.

Peter Hirtle is an Alumni Fellow of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University.  Until his retirement from Cornell University in 2015, he served as Senior Policy Advisor to the Cornell University Library with a special mandate to address intellectual property issues.  Previously at Cornell, Hirtle served as Director of the Cornell Institute for Digital Collections and as the Associate Editor of D-Lib Magazine.  He is an archivist by training with an MA in History from Johns Hopkins and an MLS with a concentration in archival science from the University of Maryland.  Hirtle is a Fellow and Past President of the Society of American Archivists and is a member of its Working Group on Intellectual Property. 

PRICE

Members: $5
Non-members: $10

Students: Free|  Must present valid student ID at the door