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Articles 1 - 8 of 8
Full-Text Articles in Law
Copyright’S Deprivations, Anne-Marie Carstens
Copyright’S Deprivations, Anne-Marie Carstens
Washington Law Review
This Article challenges the constitutionality of a copyright infringement remedy provided in federal copyright law: courts can order the destruction or other permanent deprivation of personal property based on its mere capacity to serve as a vehicle for infringement. This deprivation remedy requires no showing of actual nexus to the litigated infringement, no finding of willfulness, and no showing that the property’s infringing uses comprise the significant or predominant uses. These striking deficits stem from a historical fiction that viewed a tool of infringement, such as a printing plate, as the functional equivalent of an infringing copy itself. Today, though, …
Copyrighting Tiktok Dances: Choreography In The Internet Age, Ali Johnson
Copyrighting Tiktok Dances: Choreography In The Internet Age, Ali Johnson
Washington Law Review
TikTok is a video-sharing social media application that launched in 2018 and has grown wildly since its inception. Many users are drawn to the platform by “dance challenges”—short dance routines of varying complexity set to popular songs that are recreated by other users, eventually going “viral” (i.e., recreated on a massive scale by other users) on the app. Going viral can provide young dancers and choreographers an opportunity to break into the highly competitive entertainment industry. However, there is a problem: due to TikTok’s interface and community practices, the original creators of a dance (who, significantly, are often young women …
What Is The Relationship Between Language And Thought?: Linguistic Relativity And Its Implications For Copyright, Christopher S. Yoo
What Is The Relationship Between Language And Thought?: Linguistic Relativity And Its Implications For Copyright, Christopher S. Yoo
All Faculty Scholarship
To date, copyright scholarship has almost completely overlooked the linguistics and cognitive psychology literature exploring the connection between language and thought. An exploration of the two major strains of this literature, known as universal grammar (associated with Noam Chomsky) and linguistic relativity (centered around the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis), offers insights into the copyrightability of constructed languages and of the type of software packages at issue in Google v. Oracle recently decided by the Supreme Court. It turns to modularity theory as the key idea unifying the analysis of both languages and software in ways that suggest that the information filtering associated …
Boss Battle: Twitch Vs Proposed Amendments To The Knowledge Standard Under The Digital Millennium Copyright Act, Zachary Messick
Boss Battle: Twitch Vs Proposed Amendments To The Knowledge Standard Under The Digital Millennium Copyright Act, Zachary Messick
Journal of Intellectual Property Law
Under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), indirect theories of liability such as vicarious liability and contributory infringement have been inconsistently applied, leading the Copyright Office to recommend lowering the knowledge standard and increasing potential liability for Online Service Providers (OSPs). In this note, I will discuss the histories of vicarious liability and contributory infringement, which demonstrate that courts have correctly applied the standards under the DMCA. Further, through a case-study of Twitch, an up-and-coming streaming website, I will discuss how the proposed amendments drive against the policies underlying the indirect theories of liability and would destroy OSPs like Twitch. …
A Tale Of Two Interoperabilities; Or, How Google V. Oracle Could Become Social Media Legislation, Charles Duan
A Tale Of Two Interoperabilities; Or, How Google V. Oracle Could Become Social Media Legislation, Charles Duan
Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals
The Supreme Court'srecent decision in Google LLC v. Oracle America, Inc. has provided the latest word on an issue that many have described as "interoperability," and it comes at a time when lawmakers around the world are debating a policy called "interoperability" with respect to majorInternetplatforms. At first glance, these two similarly named policy conversations copyright protection of software interfaces and interconnection among competing Internet platforms, respectively have little to do with each other. Yet they are vitally intertwined: the activities and issues featured in Google are so closely linked to the questions of digital competition that interoperability reforms directed …
Sounds Of Science: Copyright Infringement In Ai Music Generator Outputs, Eric Sunray
Sounds Of Science: Copyright Infringement In Ai Music Generator Outputs, Eric Sunray
Catholic University Journal of Law and Technology
The music business is no stranger to disruptive technology. The industry’s apparent comeback from the devastating downturn caused by illegal file sharing seems to have arrived just in time for what may be an even more disruptive technological phenomenon: artificial intelligence (“AI”). Much has been said about the implications of AI-generated music, ranging from issues of ownership, to rights of publicity. However, there has been surprisingly little discussion of infringement in the AI systems’ outputs. By examining the functionality of AI music generators through the lens of de minimis use case law, this paper will explain how the outputs of …
Conundra Of The Berne Convention Concept Of The Country Of Origin, Jane C. Ginsburg
Conundra Of The Berne Convention Concept Of The Country Of Origin, Jane C. Ginsburg
Faculty Scholarship
This essay explores one of the most important, but occasionally intractable, issues under the Berne Convention, the concept of Country of Origin. Article 5(4) of that treaty defines a work’s country of origin, but leaves out several situations, leaving those who interpret and apply the treaty without guidance in ascertaining the country of origin. I will call those situations the “Conundra of the country of origin,” and will explore two of them here. First, what is the country of origin of an unpublished work whose authors are nationals of different countries? Second, what is the country of origin of a …
Copyright Fair Use And The Digital Carnivalesque: Towards A New Lexicon Of Transformative Internet Memes, David Tan, Angus J. Wilson
Copyright Fair Use And The Digital Carnivalesque: Towards A New Lexicon Of Transformative Internet Memes, David Tan, Angus J. Wilson
Fordham Intellectual Property, Media and Entertainment Law Journal
The influence of social media in the 21st century has led to new social norms of behavior with individuals presenting themselves to others, whether physically or virtually, on various social media platforms. As a result, these new trends have led recent society to be characterized as a “presentational cultural regime” and a “specular economy.” In a Bakhtinian digital carnivalesque, internet memes present a feast of challenges to exceptions and limitations in copyright law. Memes encompass a wide range of expression about the human experience, while also existing as a playful mode of culturally permissible expression in online social communications rather …