Recently, the Senate heard testimony on the question “Is the DMCA’s Notice-and-Takedown System Working in the 21st Century?” For all types of intellectual property holders—including publishers and authors—DMCA notices are a part of life, the primary tool to get pirated material taken down from websites. Those testifying included a range of creators, including Authors Guild President Douglas Preston, Don Henley of The Eagles, and libraries and hosting platforms.
Creators largely believe the system is broken and inefficient, as the burden falls on them to file takedown notices and get material taken down, and that job is never done—there’s always another pirate around the corner. (Preston described it as “getting mugged every single day.”) And, predictably, those from the internet side believe the system is working just fine. In the Authors Guild summary of the hearing, they write, “The general tenor of the hearing was that it is time to rebalance the law, to put the burden of finding and targeting piracy taking place on internet platforms on the owners of those platforms instead of authors and small creative businesses.” Those at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (dependably on the opposing side of any copyright or piracy issue that the Authors Guild cares about) believe the concern is misplaced and that tightening the law is not the answer. They write, “During the hearing, a witness wondered if there was a generation of artists who will be lost because it is just too difficult to police their copyrights online. This ignores the generation of artists who already share their work online and who run into so many problems asserting their fair use rights. We note their absence [from the hearings] as well.”
Jane Friedman has spent her entire career working in the publishing industry, with a focus on business reporting and author education. Established in 2015, her newsletter The Bottom Line provides nuanced market intelligence to thousands of authors and industry professionals; in 2023, she was named Publishing Commentator of the Year by Digital Book World.
Jane’s expertise regularly features in major media outlets such as The New York Times, The Atlantic, NPR, The Today Show, Wired, The Guardian, Fox News, and BBC. Her book, The Business of Being a Writer, Second Edition (The University of Chicago Press), is used as a classroom text by many writing and publishing degree programs. She reaches thousands through speaking engagements and workshops at diverse venues worldwide, including NYU’s Advanced Publishing Institute, Frankfurt Book Fair, and numerous MFA programs.
