Digital Commons Network^™

Up To Code: Lessons Learned In Evaluating And Improving Legacy Irs, Frances Chang Andreu

Articles

Not all repositories are created under ideal circumstances, and inheriting an institutional repository can present challenges distinct from building one from scratch. Changes in institutional vision, policies, and priorities can lead to inconsistent content and limited metadata. Lack of documentation and loss of institutional memory can result in uncertainty about previous decisions. This case study examines the process of auditing a legacy institutional repository in order to ensure the content best reflects the institution’s current goals and policies.

Harmonizing Music Theory And Music Law, Peter Nicolas

Articles

Those litigating and adjudicating music copyright disputes find themselves at the intersection of two complex fields: U.S. copyright law and music theory. While the attorneys and judges typically have at least some experience with the former, neither they nor the jurors typically have formal training in or experience with the latter. As a result, legal opinions purporting to incorporate musical concepts sometimes fail to do so accurately, resulting in decisions that are inconsistent with copyright law and policy.

This Article seeks to harmonize U.S. copyright law with relevant principles of music theory. It begins with an accessible primer on basic …

Fables Of Scarcity In Ip, Zahr K. Said

Articles

In this chapter, I use methods drawn from literary analysis to bear on artificial scarcity and explore how literary and legal storytelling engages in scarcity mongering. I find three particular narrative strategies calculated to compel a conclusion in favor of propertization: the spectacle of need, the diversionary tactic, and the rallying cry. First, I unpack the spectacle of need and its diversionary aspects through several literary accounts of scarcity and starvation. I juxtapose Franz Kafka's “A Hunger Artist,” a story explicitly centered on a wasting body, with J.M. Coetzee's The Life and Times of Michael K. Second, to explore how …

The Coming Copyright Judge Crisis, Saurabh Vishnubhakat, Dave Fagundes

Articles

Commentary about the Supreme Court's 2021 decision in United States v. Arthrex, Inc. has focused on the nexus between patent and administrative law. But this overlooks the decision's seismic and as-yet unappreciated implication for copyright law: Arthrex renders the Copyright Royalty Board ("CRB") unconstitutional. The CRB has suffered constitutional challenge since its 2004 inception, but these were seemingly resolved in 2011 when the D.C. Circuit held that the CRB's composition did not offend the Appointments Clause as long as Copyright Royalty Judges ("CRJs") were removable atwill. But when the Court invalidated the selection process for administrative patent judges on a …