Technologies are transforming our society. The development of technologies goes very speedy, and the pace of the transformation and number of issues it creates are very high. Moreover, the pace of the legal development is much slower than the pace of technology development. In result, cases like Viacom v. YouTube/Google, copyright owners v. social media occur.
New business models, technologies, and social media create mass copyright infringement. Therefore, there is a need to either reduce the level of copyright protection, or increase the control on media, or both of them. We cannot diminish interests of neither copyright holders nor technologies. We need to find the right balance between them.
These are my proposals:
1. A patent owner should police its patent rights (Wanlass v. General Elec. Co. 148 F. 3d. 1334, 1338 (Fed. Cir. 1998). Similarly, a copyright owner, who wants to enjoy its monopoly and revenue, should police its copyright too. Based on this principle, the owner must review its copyrights and realize a notice of infringement.
2. A copyright organization or society will collect these notices, provide legal services, negotiate with infringers, and litigate.
3. A special copyright court, such as the Federal Circuit, will handle the copyright infringement cases only. It could relieve the district courts and be more specialized.
4. Establish mandatory copyright registration in the U.S. Copyright office.
5. Create a consolidate database of all copyrighted works accessible to the public, including ISPs.
6. ISPs will develop new control and filtering software for avoiding infringement as much as possible.
7. Extend boundaries of the Fair Use doctrine.
8. Licensed music, video, and digital services should be cheaper.
9. Promote legal education of society about copyright law.
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