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Intellectual Property Law

Robert E. Suggs

Selected Works

Copyright

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Full-Text Articles in Law

A Functional Approach To Copyright Policy, Robert Suggs Sep 2014

A Functional Approach To Copyright Policy, Robert Suggs

Robert E. Suggs

This essay results from a half-century spent observing the development and stagnation of a once vital music form, jazz. Curiosity spurred its evolution when a successor to John Coltrane failed to emerge within a few years of his early death. Over the ensuing decades, I became concerned that advancing technology and the 1976 Copyright Act had fundamentally undermined our cultural ecology. Unnoticed over the past century, technology has changed our experience of expressive culture, (the stories, images, and melodies that copyright most strongly protects), from live performance in social settings to solitary consumption of recorded media. Neurologically and physiologically this …


A Copyright Law For A Social Species, Robert E. Suggs Mar 2012

A Copyright Law For A Social Species, Robert E. Suggs

Robert E. Suggs

Arguments about the proper scope of copyright protection focus on the economic consequences of varying degrees of protection. Most analysts view copyright as an economic phenomenon, and the size and health of our copyright industries measure the success of copyright policies. The constitutional text granting Congress the copyright power and the nature of special interest lobbying naturally create this economic focus; but this is a serious mistake. An exclusively economic focus makes no more sense than measuring the nutritional merits of our food supply from the size and profitability of the fast food industry. The expressive culture that copyright protects …


Copyright For A Social Species, Robert E. Suggs Dec 2009

Copyright For A Social Species, Robert E. Suggs

Robert E. Suggs

Arguments about the proper scope of copyright protection focus on the economic consequences of varying degrees of protection. Most analysts view copyright as an economic phenomenon, and the size and health of our copyright industries measure the success of copyright policies. The constitutional text granting Congress the copyright power and the nature of special interest lobbying naturally create this economic focus; but this is a serious mistake. An exclusively economic focus makes no more sense than measuring the nutritional merits of our food supply from the size and profitability of the fast food industry. The expressive culture that copyright protects …