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Comparative and Foreign Law

Columbia Law School

Copyright law

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Embedding Content Or Interring Copyright: Does The Internet Need The "Server Rule"?, Jane C. Ginsburg, Luke Ali Budiardjo Jan 2019

Embedding Content Or Interring Copyright: Does The Internet Need The "Server Rule"?, Jane C. Ginsburg, Luke Ali Budiardjo

Faculty Scholarship

The “server rule” holds that online displays or performances of copyrighted content accomplished through “in-line” or “framing” hyperlinks do not trigger the exclusive rights of public display or performance unless the linker also possesses a copy of the underlying work. As a result, the rule shields a vast array of online activities from claims of direct copyright infringement, effectively exempting those activities from the reach of the Copyright Act. While the server rule has enjoyed relatively consistent adherence since its adoption in 2007, some courts have recently suggested a departure from that precedent, noting the doctrinal and statutory inconsistencies underlying …


Separating The Sony Sheep From The Grokster Goats: Reckoning The Future Business Plans Of Copyright-Dependent Technology Entrepeneurs, Jane C. Ginsburg Jan 2008

Separating The Sony Sheep From The Grokster Goats: Reckoning The Future Business Plans Of Copyright-Dependent Technology Entrepeneurs, Jane C. Ginsburg

Faculty Scholarship

In MGM v. Grokster, the U.S. Supreme Court established that businesses built from the start on inducing copyright infringement will be held liable, as judges will frown on drawing one's start-up capital from other people's copyrights. The Court's elucidation of the elements of inducement suggests that even businesses not initially built on infringement, but in which infringement comes to play an increasingly profitable part, may find themselves liable unless they take good faith measures to forestall infringements. This Article addresses the evolution of the U.S. judge-made rules of secondary liability for copyright infringement, and the possible emergence of an obligation …


The Concept Of Authorship In Comparative Copyright Law, Jane C. Ginsburg Jan 2003

The Concept Of Authorship In Comparative Copyright Law, Jane C. Ginsburg

Faculty Scholarship

In contemporary debates over copyright, the figure of the author is too-often absent. As a result, these discussions tend to lose sight of copyright's role in fostering creativity. I believe that refocussing discussion on authors – the constitutional subjects of copyright – should restore a proper perspective on copyright law, as a system designed to advance the public goal of expanding knowledge, by means of stimulating the efforts and imaginations of private creative actors. Copyright cannot be understood merely as a grudgingly tolerated way station on the road to the public domain. Nor does a view of copyright as a …


Conflicts Of Copyright Ownership Between Authors And Owners Of Original Artworks: An Essay In Comparative And International Private Law, Jane C. Ginsburg Jan 1993

Conflicts Of Copyright Ownership Between Authors And Owners Of Original Artworks: An Essay In Comparative And International Private Law, Jane C. Ginsburg

Faculty Scholarship

Most, if not all, copyright laws distinguish between ownership of the incorporeal copyright, and ownership of chattels. A generally-accepted corollary holds that alienation of the chattel that constitutes the material form of a copyrighted work does not carry the copyright with it. Applying this principle to works of the visual arts, it should be clear that sale of a painting, even if it is the only "copy" of a work, is not a transfer of the exclusive rights under copyright to reproduce the work or to create derivative works based on the painting. Similarly, ownership of the copyright confers no …


A Tale Of Two Copyrights: Literary Property In Revolutionary France And America, Jane C. Ginsburg Jan 1990

A Tale Of Two Copyrights: Literary Property In Revolutionary France And America, Jane C. Ginsburg

Faculty Scholarship

The French and U.S. copyright systems are well known as opposites. The product of the French Revolution, French copyright law is said to enshrine the author: exclusive rights flow from one's (preferred) status as a creator. For example, a leading French copyright scholar states that one of the "fundamental ideas" of the revolutionary copyright laws is the principle that "an exclusive right is conferred on authors because their property is the most justified since it flows from their intellectual creation." By contrast, the U.S. Constitution's copyright clause, echoing the English Statute of Anne, makes the public's interest equal, if not …