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Comment: Copyright's Public-Private Distinction, Julie E. Cohen
Comment: Copyright's Public-Private Distinction, Julie E. Cohen
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
I would like to focus my remarks on the question of user privacy. In her fascinating paper for this Symposium, Professor Litman expresses a guarded optimism that in its forthcoming decision in MGM v. Grokster, I the Court will retain the staple article of commerce doctrine that it first articulated in Sony. She opines, however, that the user privacy strand of the Sony decision is a lost cause. I don't believe that it's possible to retain the staple article of commerce doctrine while abandoning user privacy. At least in the realm of networked digital technologies, the two concepts are inextricably …
The Place Of The User In Copyright Law, Julie E. Cohen
The Place Of The User In Copyright Law, Julie E. Cohen
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
Copyright doctrine . . . is characterized by the absence of the user. As copyright moves into the digital age, this absence has begun to matter profoundly. As I will show, the absence of the user has consequences that reach far beyond debates about the legality of private copying, or about the proper scope of user-oriented exemptions such as the fair use and first sale doctrines. The user's absence produces a domino effect that ripples through the structure of copyright law, shaping both its unquestioned rules and its thorniest dilemmas. The resulting imbalance - empty space where one cornerstone of …
Drm And Privacy, Julie E. Cohen
Drm And Privacy, Julie E. Cohen
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
Interrogating the relationship between copyright enforcement and privacy raises deeper questions about the nature of privacy and what counts, or ought to count, as privacy invasion in the age of networked digital technologies. This Article begins, in Part II, by identifying the privacy interests that individuals enjoy in their intellectual activities and exploring the different ways in which certain implementations of DRM technologies may threaten those interests. Part III considers the appropriate scope of legal protection for privacy in the context of DRM, and argues that both the common law of privacy and an expanded conception of consumer protection law …
Overcoming Property: Does Copyright Trump Privacy?, Julie E. Cohen
Overcoming Property: Does Copyright Trump Privacy?, Julie E. Cohen
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
This essay does not attempt to specify the privacy rights that users might assert against the purveyors of DRM systems. Instead, it undertakes a very preliminary, incomplete exploration of several questions on the "property" side of this debate. What is the relationship between rights in copyrighted works and rights in things or collections of bits embodying works? In particular, as the (popular and legal) understanding of copies of works as residing in "things" becomes largely metaphorical, how should the law construct and enforce boundedness with respect to those copies? Does the calculus of property and contract allow for consideration of …