An unreformed Copyright Office gets captured by big tech.
Meredith Rose 16, Senior Policy Counsel in copyright and Intellectual Property issues at Public Knowledge, et al., 9/8/2016, “Captured: Systemic Bias at the U.S. Copyright Office,” https://publicknowledge.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/Final_Captured_Systemic_Bias_at_the_US_Copyright_Office.pdf, ajs
Congressman Robert W. Kastenmeier, a member of the House Judiciary Committee who was central to the passage of the 1976 Copyright Act, once explained that “[t]he proponent of change [to copyright law] should present an honest analysis of all the costs and benefits . . . The argument that a particular interest group will make more money and therefore be more creative does not satisfy this threshold standard or the constitutional requirements of the intellectual property clause.”57 Copyright, as designed, is by definition a limited monopoly, with the direct aim of promoting the public good by securing incentives to creation for a limited time. These incentives are not boundless, and those who seek to expand them bear a substantial burden in proving their case.
The Copyright Office, however, does not adhere to this view of copyright law; instead, history has borne out again and again the observation that it “has tended to view copyright owners as its real constituency.”58 It has repeatedly aligned itself with the policy agendas of major industry groups, seeking to expand the reach of copyright in scope, duration, and ease of enforcement. From seeking to curtail the usability of orphan works, to advocating for expansive moral rights for rightsholders, to supporting copyright expansion in the face of contrary statutory mandates, to outright technophobia, the Copyright Office has repeatedly placed the interests of rightsholders above both the public interest.