Was not planning to go to this workshop but decided I did not want to move myself to the main room and then move it back again - so I'll cover this one instead.

3:15 pm - 4:00 pm: Workshop: Walking the Copyright Tightrope
        Moderator: Stuart Meyer, Fenwick & West
        Andrew DeVore, Partner, Manatt Phelps & Phillips
        William Patry, Senior Copyright Counsel, Google
        Gaby Darbyshire, Director, Gawker Media

Andrew DeVore, Partner, Manatt Phelps & Phillips - one of the core issues around Copyright is based around reproduction and now, in the internet world, copies are the backbone of the internet model - and now we're confronted with what you do with this situation:

fair use

DMCA

A lot of our attention is focused on getting right on fair use and DMCA. 

In light of Gamester and Napster decisions, while problematic - is much easier to figure out than Google Print - and what's the purpose of the service and this is all tied into fair use.  It's a much harder in the Google and YouTube to give guidance.

If you went to congress right now and fix the copyright laws you might end up with something worse than we have now.

William Patry, Senior Copyright Counsel, Google - I work for Google but I've had a checkered past - doing a number of legal jobs - and I don't think the Copyright system works well today.

In 1992, I helped authored the law on this - Digital changes everything because you can make perfect Digital copies.  The idea was there's a new idea - Digital, and it's going to replace other forms of media.  We ended up using terminology used at the time and it made it much harder to apply to new technology which is somewhat why we're in the mess today that we are.

I think we've expected quite a lot from fair use and we used to be able to figure out what "fair use" was pre-internet.  Now we have an issue on how we make are laws predictable, so we know what we have permission to do, or not.  Without that ability to figure out the benefits and objectives - the law is not fulfilling it's objective - and we're asking fair use to do things it was not design to do.

Most rights can be contracted away but your right to get back your copyright is not transferable - no matter what you agreed to give away - you can still get the copyright back.

Gaby Darbyshire, Director, Gawker Media - Predictability is a major problem - and our business at Gawker is about commentary on material that already exists and these issues come up and there's no predictability.  It's hard to start businesses on the online world when it's not clear what you can and can't do.

Certainty is crucial.

Moderator: Stuart Meyer, Fenwick & West - when you talk about Copyright law and as technology moves on it becomes difficult to sort out and reconcile as technology changes.  XM Radio dispute - record song on your device by pushing a button - court ruled against it.

If you don't like the laws now - consumers can generate their own kinds of protection like Creative Commons.

All this was really beyond me at this point as I'm not a lawyer - but it was interesting to follow.