Until May this year, Congress had been concentrating on discussions on the US Patent Reform Act (S1145). But in April , talks stalled and the bill's continued progress this session seems doubtful.

According to an ABA release, Congress had postponed addressing proposals for changes to the copyright law in order to tackle patent reform, but is now likely to turn to copyright issues during the remainder of its session. The 110th congressional session ends in January 2009.

"I think [the creation of the task force] is a reflection of the ABA section realizing that we should give equal attention to copyright issues," said June Besek, section council member and executive director of the Kernochan Center for Law, Media and the Arts at Columbia Law School.

Besek said that the top two concerns that the task force will immediately address are orphan works and performance rights in sound recordings.

Orphan works are copyrighted works whose owners are unknown or cannot be located. Often, individuals seeking to use such works refrain from doing so, as they are afraid of being sued for copyright infringement.

"These are works that could be put to good use," said Besek. She added that the proposed legislation on orphan works would implement a system by which users could document their attempts to perform a "good faith diligence search", which would ensure that damages in the event of litigation would be strictly limited or eliminated altogether.

Because it is often difficult to search for copyright owners, depending on the type of work, the US Copyright Office also would develop best practices for searching as part of the legislation.

The next major area of concern for the task force has to do with performance rights in sound recordings, which has been a subject of controversy in the US for many years.

According to the US Copyright Act , while composers of sound recordings broadcast on traditional analogue radio are paid an annual royalty by the radio industry, performance artists and record companies are not.

Organizations such as the AFL-CIO argue that this is unfair and that, especially "as music consumption changes from purchasing CDs to listening to music on free and subscription music services, it becomes critically important to the economic survival of performers that they be compensated for all uses of their music".

In 1994, Congress passed the Digital Performance Right in Sound Recordings Act (DPRA), which granted performance rights in digital recordings broadcast on the internet and satellite subscription radio.

Many copyright owners view this as evidence that performance rights should be granted for sound recordings played on traditional radio as well, and have called for a change in the law.

Representative Howard Berman and Senator Patrick Leahy each introduced bills seeking to amend the Copyright Act to include performance rights for sound recordings on traditional radio ( HR4789 and S2500 ) in December 2007.

Although Besek says that the task force is still developing its recommendations, these two issues will top the agenda for the immediate future.

Asked whether patent reform will rise again next session to dwarf copyright matters, Besek said she is confident that the issue of performance rights at least will remain on the table.

The challenges associated with applying traditional copyright practices to the internet have been hotly debated in the US lately as well. Last week, Viacom was denied access to Google's search code, but YouTube and Google were ordered to hand over millions of videos to Viacom in the widely-watched online copyright battle between the companies.

"The internet puts enormous pressure on copyright," said Besek. "Copyright used to be just for people like publishers, but now individual users are entering the landscape and copyright has come into the national psyche as it hasn't in the past."