Digital Commons Network^™

Copyright Reform: Imagining More Balanced Copyright Laws, Michelle M. Wu

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Earlier chapters of this book provide a history of copyright and libraries in the United States, a review of outdated language in the existing copyright code, and a discussion of actions by both copyright owners and the public to rebalance copyright outside of legislation. This chapter simply imagines what copyright could be if we disregard the known political and legal obstacles. It starts with no constraints, which one might argue is both impractical and foolish. Why spend time discussing what could be when treaties, self-interest, and powerful industry lobbies stand in the way?

The answer is simply that environments can …

The Romantic Author And The Romance Writer: Resisting Gendered Concepts Of Creativity, Rebecca Tushnet

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Dominant narratives of creativity regularly expect female-associated forms of creativity to be provisioned naturally without need for the economic incentives provided by exclusive rights, just like housework and childcare. Even as the concept of Romantic authorship has come under sustained analytic assault, its challengers often look elsewhere–to the kinds of creativity in which men are more likely to participate–to find models of situated, always-influenced authorship. In this chapter, I examine one variant of the problem, in which certain arguments about copyright discount the value of forms that are predominantly produced and enjoyed by women. But creative works in these oft-denigrated …

A Mask That Eats Into The Face: Images And The Right Of Publicity, Rebecca Tushnet

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In their eagerness to reward celebrities for the power of their “images,” and to prevent other people from exploiting those images, courts have allowed the right of publicity to distort the First Amendment. The power of the visual image has allowed courts to create an inconsistent, overly expansive regime that would be easily understood as constitutionally unacceptable were the same rules applied to written words as to drawings and video games. The intersection of a conceptually unbounded right with a category of objects that courts do not handle well has created deep inconsistencies and biases in the treatment of visual …

“I’M A Lawyer, Not An Ethnographer, Jim”: Textual Poachers And Fair Use, Rebecca Tushnet

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This short article, written for a festschrift for Henry Jenkins, discusses the influence of his work on media fandom in legal scholarship and advocacy around fair use.

The Future Of Copyright, Lawrence B. Solum

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Review of Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity by Lawrence Lessig (2004).

Sometimes technological change is so profound that it rocks the foundations of an entire body of law. Peer-to-peer (P2P) filesharing systems--Napster, Gnutella, KaZaA, Grokster, and Freenet3--are mere symptoms of a set of technological innovations that have set in motion an ongoing process of fundamental changes in the nature of copyright law. The video tape recorder begat the Sony substantial noninfringing use defense. The digital cassette recorder begat the Audio Home Recording Act. The internet begat the Digital …

Even More Parodic Than The Real Thing: Parody Lawsuits Revisited, Bruce P. Keller, Rebecca Tushnet

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

An article focusing on a copyright decision initially may appear out of place in the pages of The Trademark Reporter®. Yet Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc., in which the U.S. Supreme Court held that a parodic, transformative use of a copyrighted work, even if commercial, could qualify as a fair use, is quite significant for trademark lawyers. As a practical matter, parody cases increasingly involve copyright as well as trademark claims, so practitioners often encounter both within the same case. As a doctrinal matter, Campbell also has proved legally significant in trademark cases because the free-speech concerns underlying protection for …

Copyright As A Model For Free Speech Law: What Copyright Has In Common With Anti-Pornography Laws, Campaign Finance Reform, And Telecommunications Regulation, Rebecca Tushnet

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Copyright raises real and troubling free speech issues, and standard responses to those concerns are inadequate. This Article aims to put copyright in the context of other free speech doctrine. Acknowledging the link between copyright and free speech can help determine the proper contours of a copyright regime that both allows and limits property rights in expression, skewing the content of speech toward change.

Legal Fictions: Copyright, Fan Fiction, And A New Common Law, Rebecca Tushnet

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

A girl owns a number of Barbie dolls. She makes outfits for them and constructs elaborate scenarios in which they play starring roles. She enacts her dramas in her front yard, where passers-by can easily see. Does she violate the law? What if the girl writes down her stories starring Barbie? What happens when she lets her friends read them? What if she e-mails those stories to a Barbie mailing list? What if she posts those stories and a picture of Barbie in her new outfit on her Web page?

Copyright law has long been a concern more for corporations …