Digital Commons Network^™

Emerging Technologies And Dwindling Speech, Jorge R. Roig

Jorge R Roig

The Curious Case Of Convenience Casinos: How Internet Sweepstakes Cafes Survive In A Gray Area Between Unlawful Gambling And Legitimate Business Promotions, Steven Silver

Steven Silver

Once relegated to the Nevada desert and New Jersey shore, gambling is now everywhere in the United States. State governments strapped for cash and desperate for increased tax revenues are welcoming gambling with open arms as forty-three states sponsor lotteries and twenty-three states house casinos. Despite this gaming boom, the ease of access to casinos has not deterred entrepreneurs from successfully creating an offshoot industry of “convenience casinos.” Convenience casinos are simply Internet cafes that sell Internet time cards attached with instant-win sweepstakes entries, much like the code underneath a Coke bottle or a McDonald’s Monopoly game piece. Although seemingly …

Cut In Tiny Pieces: Ensuring That Fragmented Ownership Does Not Chill Creativity, Henry H. Perritt Jr.

Henry H. Perritt, Jr.

The market for video entertainment is growing and becoming more diverse as technology reduces barriers to entry for small, independent moviemakers and distributors and increases consumers’ ability to access the media of their choice. The growing complexity of the market, however, increases transaction costs for new entrants who must obtain licenses to copyrighted music, characters, storylines, or scenes that they incorporate into their movies. The entertainment bonanza offered by new technologies may not be realized in practice because of market failure. The purposes of the Copyright and Patents Clause are frustrated because creators of new works wishing to use new …

Property, Persona, And Publicity, Deven R. Desai

Deven R. Desai

This article focuses on a paradox latent within the nature of creative phenomenon: although one can find strong arguments for control over intangible creations during one’s life, these arguments falter if not fail after the creator dies. Two interconnected problems posed by the growth of online creation illustrate the problem. First, unlike analog creations, important digital creations such as emails are mediated and controlled by second parties. Thus although these creations are core intellectual property, they are not treated as such and service providers terminate or deny access to people’s property all the time. In addition, when one dies, some …

Property, Persona, And Publicity, Deven R. Desai

Deven R. Desai

This article focuses on two interconnected problems posed by the growth of online creation. First, unlike analog creations, important digital creations such as emails are mediated and controlled by second parties. Thus although these creations are core intellectual property, they are not treated as such and service providers terminate or deny access to people’s property all the time. In addition, when one dies, some service providers refuse to grant heirs access to this property. The uneven and unclear management of these creations means that historians and society in general will lose access to perhaps the greatest chronicling of human experience …