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Reform(Aliz)Ing Copyright, Chris Sprigman

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Reform(aliz)ing Copyright looks at the effect of the removal from the U.S. copyright laws of copyright formalities like registration, notice, and renewal. Beginning in 1976, the U.S. moved from a “conditional” copyright system that premised the existence and continuation of copyright on compliance with formalities, to an “unconditional” system, where copyright arises automatically when a work is “fixed”. Richard Epstein has aptly characterized these changes as “copyright law . . . flipping over from a system that protected only rights that were claimed to one that vests all rights, whether claimed or not.” That is a fundamental shift in any …