Murder (or not) at the Library of Congress?; Washington Post, 10/31/16

David Post, Washington Post; Murder (or not) at the Library of Congress? :

"In any complex organization, it’s crucial for senior management to be unified in their understanding of the organization’s mission and how that mission can best be accomplished. It seems fairly basic that any new leader is entitled to expect, at a minimum, that all of the members of her management team actually want to be part of the organization — that they see a future for themselves and their staffs in the organization. In the academic world, where I spend most of my time, everyone expects a new university president to make major, senior-level personnel changes when he or she takes the helm. Sometimes those changes come quickly — as when there is a sharp divergence of views on a matter central to the shape and identity of the institution. Sometimes they come more slowly, as time reveals more subtle conflicts or incongruities between a given administrator’s approach to his or her job and the new president’s vision for the future of the institution. Always, however, personnel changes come. They’re a normal and healthy part of institutional evolution, even if they produce some short-term disorientation.

We’ll likely never know the details of Pallante’s departure from her job. I’ll go out on a limb and suggest that the logical explanation is probably the actual one."

Conspiracy Theories Run Amok Over Copyright Office Executive Changes; Techdirt, 11/2/16

Mike Masnick, Techdirt; Conspiracy Theories Run Amok Over Copyright Office Executive Changes:

"...[S]ome folks who support ever more draconian copyright immediately jumped on all sorts of conspiracy theories about how this was really Google somehow firing Pallante, including one site that directly had that as a headline.

To anyone who actually had knowledge of what was going on, this made no sense. Hayden is not connected to Google in any way. This is just out and out tinfoil hat conspiracy theory territory from people who see "Google" behind any policy they dislike. It seemed rather obvious that, like just about any new CEO of an organization, Hayden was clearing out some senior staff for a variety of reasons. And there was a pretty obvious big reason why Hayden would like to reassign Pallante: she has been directly and publicly advocating for Congress to move the Copyright Office outside of the Library of Congress. If you came in to run an organization and one of your direct reports was going over your head to try to transfer an entire division somewhere else, it's likely you'd fire that person too. It's kind of a management 101 thing.

Over the past week, in talking to a few people at the Library of Congress, or close to it, this is the basic story that came out. Hayden didn't feel comfortable with Pallante publicly advocating against the Library of Congress, and used her role as the boss to remove her from that position. Others seem to be discovering the same thing. A report at Publisher's Weekly notes that the conspiracy theories are bunk:"

A Copyright Coup in Washington; Wall Street Journal, 11/2/16

Wall Street Journal; A Copyright Coup in Washington:

"Ms. Hayden is now looking for a copyright office successor, and don’t be surprised if she chooses someone whose experience includes time at Google. This is reason enough for Congress to take a look: If the position is open to political influence, then the register should be politically accountable—and report to elected officials, not the nation’s librarian.

Perhaps these are all coincidences and Ms. Hayden merely botched a personnel dispute. But she now has an opening to install a register friendly to Google, and anyone tempted to write off the Pallante dispute as bureaucratic squabbling should remember: The company’s goal is to defenestrate laws that protect property. The guarantee to own what you create is the reason entrepreneurs take the risks that power the economy—a reason guys like Larry Page and Sergey Brin start Google."

Maria Pallante's Departure From the Copyright Office: What It Means, And Why It Matters; Billboard, 10/25/16

Robert Levine, Billboard; Maria Pallante's Departure From the Copyright Office: What It Means, And Why It Matters:

"Days after U.S. Register of Copyrights Maria Pallante was moved out of her job, music business lawyers and lobbyists are still trying to figure out what happened, as well as what it means for the future. While Pallante had no lawmaking power, she was the country’s top copyright official, and her sudden removal could suggest a more skeptical view of the value of intellectual property in Washington DC.

“People I know who care about copyright are very disturbed,” says Marybeth Peters, Pallante’s predecessor as Register, who held the job from 1994 to 2010. “Nothing like this has ever happened there before.”...

On Friday, October 21, Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden, who took office in mid-September, said that Pallante had been appointed as a senior advisor for digital strategy, and that Karyn Temple Claggett, currently an associate register of copyrights, would become acting register. But Pallante wasn’t told about the appointment before it was announced, according to several sources, and she never accepted it. She was locked out of the Library of Congress computer system, a step that several former Copyright Office staffers say is extremely unusual. (The Library of Congress did not comment and attempts to reach Pallante were unsuccessful.) Pallante submitted her resignation On Monday, October 24."