House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers told a crowd of 300 in Los Angles, California on Friday that passing legislation he introduced earlier this week to end a longstanding royalty exemption granted to AM and FM radio “is going to be a serious struggle” due to opposition from the National Association of Broadcasters. Moving the measure through the House — and the Senate where a companion bill is sponsored by Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy — will require the help of the labor and civil rights movements in addition to music industry interests, he said. Conyers added the problem has “gone unremedied for too damned long.”
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MusicFirst Coalition Executive Director Jennifer Bendall noted that the Commerce Department under former President George W. Bush wrote a letter supporting the legislation last year and “we expect no change” from the Obama administration. [emphasis added]
Michael Geist reports that the “Canadian Labour Congress is set to consider a policy resolution that would dramatically alter its approach on copyright and intellectual property policy.”
Public Knowledge reports on the reception for the introduction of H.R. 801 (“Fair Copyright in Research Works” bill”), which the center describes as an “anti-open access” bill.
The Department of Education is preparing to craft legislation interpreting three antipiracy provisions in the Higher Education Act renewed by Congress last year.
Rebecca Tushnet continues to liveblog the panels at William & Mary’s “The Boundaries of IP” here and here.
Ray Beckerman reports that a “Mitch Bainwol letter to Congressional Committees falsely represented that RIAA ‘discontinued initiating new lawsuits in August.’”
Copyright Blogosphere’s own Ben Sheffner will be on the dais at a Los Angeles County Bar Association event, “Intellectual Property & the Campaign: A View from the Trenches.”
Ben argues the merits of Selectable Output Control.
Mark F. Schultz and Alec Van Gelder have posted an interesting paper at SSRN: “Creative Development: Helping Poor Countries by Building Creative Industries.”
Quinn Emanuel Urquhart Oliver & Hedges LLP has added three partners to its intellectual property practice — two from Latham & Watkins LLP and one from Jenner & Block LLP.
Ray Dowd on his frustrations while trying to obtain public domain documents on Nazi looted art: “My feeling is that any restrictions on scholarly use of public domain materials by an entity that enjoys tax-free status is presumptively a violation of the public trust, and a restriction of the public domain that conflicts with the complete preemption of copyright law.”
Recent scholarship from the 
