Can a 5-year-old grasp the importance of copyright? For some, hope springs eternal. Apparently stirred by fears that we’re raising a new generation of would-be infringers, the Entertainment Software Association has launched an anti-piracy curriculum for kids in grades K-5.

This isn’t the first time groups representing rightsholders have tried to promote copyright awareness to children. Last year Access Copyright briefly reached out to Canadian school kids with a “Captain Copyright” campaign. Recently the National Center for State Courts introduced a “graphic novel” highlighting the dangers of illegal music downloads. Even the U.S. Copyright Office has introduced an online cartoon series.

But these programs have little proven value and are fraught with risks. Explaining copyright to kids who can’t even spell it is tough; many adults don’t even understand the ins and outs of the law. Worse, these programs too often take a hard line on an issue that is filled with nuance, and in doing so undermine the point their creators are trying to make.

The ESA effort already has come under attack from parents and bloggers who accuse the organization of pushing its agenda on young children. Similar complaints caused Access Copyright to shelve Captain Copyright shortly after his debut.

At CCC, we’re all for educating people about their rights and responsibilities when it comes to copyright. We consider it part of our mission to create materials and run programs for corporations and academic institutions. But the question of how young is too young for kids to consume these ideas is a question industry organizations need to ask.

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Market research firm Knowledge Networks Inc. has agreed to pay $300,000 to settle claims that it regularly distributed published articles to employees without permission from the copyright holders. The settlement was brokered by the Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA) as part of its new Corporate Content Anti-Piracy Program.

SIIA announced that it acted on behalf of a number of its members, including but not limited to The Associated Press, United Press International and Reed Elsevier. In addition to the cash settlement, Knowledge Networks agreed to implement a copyright education program for its employees.

The case provides a rare glimpse into what is usually a closed-door process for infringement settlements. The last widely publicized case of this kind was in 2005, when brokerage firm Legg Mason settled a copyright infringement suit brought by newsletter publisher Lowry’s Reports. That settlement came after Legg Mason dropped its appeal of a $19.7 million jury verdict against the firm.

Although reports of infringement settlements are few and far between, looks can be deceiving. The winning attorney in the Lowry’s case, Tom Kirby, has noted that out-of-court settlements occur frequently, but are often kept confidential.

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Fashion designs may soon be protected by copyright law. That is, if Congress approves the Design Piracy Prohibition Act, a new bill in the Senate that would extend copyright law to protect registered designs of dresses and other garments. A similar bill was introduced in the House last spring.

The proposed legislation was created to give fashion designers a way to fight back against those who profit from producing knockoffs of the designers’ original creations. If passed, the bill would extend three years of protection to fashion designs under the Copyright Act and would allow rightsholders to sue for up to $250,000 in damages.

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The U.S. Copyright Office is about to launch a new and improved system that will make it easier for people to search copyright records online. The system includes more than 20 million digital copyright registration and pre-registration records from 1978 to the present.

Once the new feature is launched in mid-August, users will be able to search one integrated database for records on multiple types of copyrighted works, such as text, audio and video. Between this new service and Stanford University’s new Copyright Renewal Database, which covers books between 1923 and 1963, users now have more copyright registration information at their fingertips than ever before.

The Copyright Office’s integrated search feature is the latest in a number of improvements it has in the works to bring its systems into the digital age. In June, the Office announced testing of a new copyright registration system that will allow users to register copyrights online.

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Days before the July 21 publication of “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows,” the final installment in J.K. Rowling’s blockbuster series, page images from the book began appearing on a number of websites, including BitTorrent, Photobucket, Gaia Online, Flickr and MediaFire. It’s not clear how the page images made their way to the sites, but piracy has been an issue for Rowling and her publishers for years. The emergence of so many new file-sharing sites may have amplified the problem this time around by creating a new means of distribution.

That said, the Harry Potter phenomenon isn’t a typical publishing event, and it’s unlikely that books anytime soon will face the degree of pressure from peer-to-peer and user-posted content sites that causes such concern in the music and film industries.

A final note: the latest tale of the young wizard is now the fastest-selling book in history.

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The ongoing global clamp-down on music piracy took an interesting turn June 29 when UK recording industry investigators and police raided the Scotland office of multinational engineering company, Honeywell. Investigators allege the company’s servers were host to a major file-sharing network.

The raid capped a two-month investigation by British Phonographic Industry (BPI), the UK recording industry association, which was tipped off by a Honeywell employee.

The Honeywell story stands out in stark contrast to usual news reports of P2P file-sharing by individuals using online applications such as BitTorrent and by students on university servers.

BPI says this case should make other companies sit up and take notice. Email and instant messaging are two simple ways that employees can swap music and other copyrighted content via corporate servers.

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Michael Moore’s new movie Sicko experienced somewhat of an early release this week when postings of the film showed up on YouTube. The documentary, which exposes problems with the U.S. healthcare system, doesn’t actually open in theatres until the end of June.

Unauthorized high-quality copies of Sicko also popped up in a number of P2P file sharing sites.

Moore and the film’s distributors, Weinstein Co. and Lionsgate, have come out with different opinions on unauthorized video postings.

Moore says he wants people to see his film on the big screen, but that he’s also fine with people sharing his work as long as they don’t profit from it. His film’s distributors, Weinstein Co. and Lionsgate, have hired investigators to pursue the people who posted Sicko online. They’ve also enlisted the help of anti-piracy specialists to saturate file-sharing networks with content decoys to make it harder for users to find the pirated content.

YouTube removed the infringing Sicko video clips earlier this week.

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Content creators will soon be able to register copyrights online. The U.S. Copyright Office scheduled beta testing of its new web-based system beginning in July.

The new electronic Copyright Office (eCO) application is part of a series of initiatives to speed up registration processing and tracking. Those who participate in the testing phase will be rewarded with a discounted filing rate.

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A federal appeals court ruled that Google can legally show thumbnail-sized versions of copyrighted images in its search results. In a case that may predict the course of the Google Book Search suits by authors and publishers, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals lifted an injunction against Google that stemmed from a copyright infringement suit filed by adult entertainment company Perfect 10.

Perfect 10 originally filed the suit against Google and Amazon.com in U.S. District Court, claiming the two violated its copyright by showing small versions of Perfect 10’s images in search engine results. But the 3-judge court said that Google’s use was transformative and constituted Fair Use.

On a second issue, the court remanded the case to the lower court to evaluate whether Google was a contributory infringer by not doing enough to avoid including links in its search results to sites where infringers had posted full-sized copies of Perfect 10’s images.

An appeal by either party would put the case, and many of Google’s practices, before the Supreme Court even before the Google Book Search suits are heard in lower courts.

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When the Stanford University library recently announced the launch of a new Copyright Renewal Database, at least one prominent publication said it would help solve the thorny orphan works problem. If only it were so simple.

Stanford’s new database indicates whether a book published in the United States between 1923 and 1963 is still protected by copyright in the U.S. Books published between those dates needed to have been registered for copyright and to have had their registrations renewed. If they didn’t, they fell into the public domain. Earlier books are generally in the public domain already, while those published in 1964 and later were granted extended rights by Congress. Stanford’s is the first complete, online database of renewals received by the U.S. Copyright Office between 1950 and 1993. One issue for orphan works is that, for those books whose registration renewals extended their copyright terms, the database doesn’t necessarily identify the current rightsholder, who could be a descendent or a corporate successor to the original rightsholder.

“The database only tells you if the work was renewed,” says Mimi Calteri, executive assistant to Stanford’s head of libraries. “You still have the business of tracking down the copyright holder. It will tell you who renewed the copyright, and that could be a lead, but it doesn’t mean that the person who had the copyright hasn’t transferred it on.”

Calteri said Stanford is considering additional functionality to the database in the future to allow people who have copyright information about a particular book to add that information to the database records.

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