Law Commons^™

Bloodsucking Copyrights, Ann Bartow

Ann Bartow

Some bloodsuckers live off the life-sustaining fluids of involuntary hosts and leave behind diseases or venom. Fleas, ticks, bedbugs, and mosquitoes are all bloodsuckers that are best avoided. Others, like the leech, suck blood in ways that can be very helpful to a host, promoting blood flow and healing. Vampires are fictional, sentient bloodsuckers that have populated various entertainment genres for centuries. Copyrights, too, can suck blood metaphorically in productive and destructive ways, or simply suck, period, when they senselessly impede free-flowing veins of information. And though they are not (yet) immortal, copyrights last a very long time.

In Copyright’s …

Pornography, Coercion, And Copyright Law 2.0, Ann Bartow

Ann Bartow

The lack of regulation of the production of pornography in the United States leaves pornography performers exposed to substantial risks. Producers of pornography typically respond to attempts to regulate pornography as infringements upon free speech. At the same time, large corporations involved in the production and sale of pornography rely on copyright law's complex regulatory framework to protect their pornographic content from copying and unauthorized distribution. Web 2.0 also facilitates the production and distribution of pornography by individuals. These user-generators produce their own pornography, often looking to monetize their productions themselves via advertising revenues and subscription models. Much like their …

Fair Use And The Fairer Sex: Gender, Feminism, And Copyright Law, Ann Bartow

Ann Bartow

Copyright laws are written and enforced to help certain groups of people assert and retain control over the resources generated by creative productivity. Because those people are predominantly male, the copyright infrastructure plays a role, largely unexamined by legal scholars, in helping to sustain the material and economic inequality between women and men. This essay considers some of the ways in which gender issues and copyright laws intersect, proposes a feminist critique of the copyright legal regime which advocates low levels of copyright protections, and asserts the importance of considering the social and economic disparities between women and men when …

Review Of Some Peer-To-Peer, Democratically And Voluntarily Produced Thoughts About 'The Wealth Of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets And Freedom,' By Yochai Benkler, Ann Bartow

Ann Bartow

In this review essay, Bartow concludes that The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom by Yochai Benkler is a book well worth reading, but that Benkler still has a bit more work to do before his Grand Unifying Theory of Life, The Internet, and Everything is satisfactorily complete. It isn't enough to concede that the Internet won't benefit everyone. He needs to more thoroughly consider the ways in which the lives of poor people actually worsen when previously accessible information, goods and services are rendered less convenient or completely unattainable by their migration online. Additionally, the …

Open Access, Law, Knowledge, Copyrights, Dominance And Subordination, Ann Bartow

Ann Bartow

The concept of open access to legal knowledge is at the surface a very appealing one. A citizenry that is well informed about the law may be more likely to comply with legal dictates and proscriptions, or at a minimum, will be aware of the consequences for not doing so. What is less apparent, however, is whether an open access approach to legal knowledge is realistically attainable without fundamental changes to the copyright laws that would recalibrate the power balance between content owners and citizens desiring access to interpretive legal resources. A truly useful application of open access principles would …

A Feeling Of Unease About Privacy Law, Ann Bartow

Ann Bartow

This essay responds to Daniel Solove's recent article, A Taxonomy of Privacy. I have read many of Daniel Solove's privacy-related writings, and he has made many important scholarly contributions to the field. As with his previous works about privacy and the law, it is an interesting and substantive piece of work. Where it falls short, in my estimation, is in failing to label and categorize the very real harms of privacy invasions in an adequately compelling manner. Most commentators agree that compromising a person's privacy will chill certain behaviors and change others, but a powerful list of the reasons why …

Women In The Web Of Secondary Copyright Liability And Internet Filtering, Ann Bartow

Ann Bartow

This Essay suggests possible explanations for why there is not very much legal scholarship devoted to gender issues on the Internet; and it asserts that there is a powerful need for Internet legal theorists and activists to pay substantially more attention to the gender-based differences in communicative style and substance that have been imported from real space to cyberspace. Information portals, such as libraries and web logs, are "gendered" in ways that may not be facially apparent. Women are creating and experiencing social solidarity online in ways that male scholars and commentators do not seem to either recognize or deem …

Beyond Napster: Debating The Future Of Copyright On The Internet - Panel Three: New Business Models, Regulatory Options And The Future Of Copyright On The Internet, Ann Bartow

Ann Bartow

This article presents a panel discussion concerning the future of copyright on the internet. The panel convened in Washington, D. C. on Thursday, November 16, 2000, and was moderated by Joshua J. Kaufman of Venable, Baetjer, Howard & Civiletti. The panelists included Ann Bartow (University of South Carolina School of Law), Edward J. Black (Computer & Communications Industry Association), Philip S. Corwin (Butera & Andrews), Brian Hecht (enews.com), Keith Kupferschmid (Software Information Industry Association), Bennett Lincoff (Darby & Darby), and David Pakman (myplay.com). The panel discussed the internet business models of the future and how the piracy problems created by …

The Hegemony Of The Copyright Treatise, Ann Bartow

Ann Bartow

This Article asserts that major conceptions about the appropriate structure, texture, and span of copyright protections and privileges have been fashioned by copyright treatises, particularly the various editions of Nimmer on Copyright. Copyright treatises function in concert with the machinations of Congress, the courts, and custom, but their role is not often scrutinized.

Because copyright treatises typically do a far better job than Congress or the courts of explicating copyright law in straightforward and accessible language, such treatises can not only communicate the copyright law, but also influence its development and direction. Policy makers no doubt understand that content owners …

Copyrights And Creative Copying, Ann Bartow

Ann Bartow

People invest their time, energy and resources to produce a broad variety of copyrightable works of original authorship for an expansive array of reasons, many of which appear economically irrational. This makes it impossible to offer defensible generalizations about the effect, if any, that copyright laws have upon human creators, their artistic impulses, and the decision making underlying the formation of creative works. Nevertheless, it seems highly probable that authors can be negatively affected by the specter of copyright infringement suits in a manner that burdens and chills the creative process. Exact, whole-text copying can be avoided by authors aspiring …

Likelihood Of Confusion, Ann Bartow

Ann Bartow

The primary objective of this Article is to illustrate the tendency of judges to inappropriately rely on personal intuition and subjective, internalized stereotypes when ruling on trademark disputes. Where jurists perceive consumers as ludicrously easily confused, trademark holders can exploit these views to secure broad trademark "rights," often without offering a shred of evidentiary corroboration concerning such confusion. As a consequence, the proof required to support allegations that a trademark usage creates a likelihood of confusion is potentially lessened in all cases, making trademarks normatively stronger, broader, and ever easier to "protect" for mark holders. Whether consumers realistically benefit from …

Electrifying Copyright Norms And Making Cyberspace More Like A Book, Ann Bartow

Ann Bartow

The first half of this Article charts the evolving but eminently ascertainable social norms of the use of analog copyrighted works by individuals, and characterizes these norms as "what is" in real space and "what ought to be" in cyberspace. The Author argues that while "what is" in the analog world may be imperfect, uncertain and unsatisfactory at times, it represents a discernible practical equilibrium upon which copyright holders' ability to control and extract income from their works is balanced against the rights of fair users. Authors, content distributors and users all make decisions within a familiar longstanding copyright framework, …

Electrifying Copyright Norms And Making Cyberspace More Like A Book, Ann Bartow

Ann Bartow

The first half of this Article charts the evolving but eminently ascertainable social norms of the use of analog copyrighted works by individuals, and characterizes these norms as "what is" in real space and "what ought to be" in cyberspace. The Author argues that while "what is" in the analog world may be imperfect, uncertain and unsatisfactory at times, it represents a discernible practical equilibrium upon which copyright holders' ability to control and extract income from their works is balanced against the rights of fair users. Authors, content distributors and users all make decisions within a familiar longstanding copyright framework, …

Arresting Technology: An Essay, Ann Bartow

Ann Bartow

This Essay considers the current trend of content owners using copyright laws (particularly the doctrine of contributory infringement) to "arrest technology," thereby burdening file sharing technologies with a duty to prevent unauthorized copying of copyrighted works in digital formats. The Author argues that copying is not necessarily theft, and that sharing music files (for example) shouldn't be treated by courts or lawmakers as if it was "the moral equivalent of looting." Instead, copyright owners should take responsibility for developing technological measures to minimize unauthorized copying, so that file trading technologies, themselves often copyrightable innovations, can flourish and copyright law promotes …

Libraries In A Digital And Aggressively Copyrighted World: Retaining Patron Access Through Changing Technologies, Ann Bartow

Ann Bartow

This essay asks the reader to consider the effects that copyright laws and policies, when filtered through the digital prism and bundled with restrictive contract terms, will have on library patrons. It further implores the reader to consider the broad benefits to library patrons of a statutorily guaranteed right to library use of copyrighted materials in any form.

The True Colors Of Trademark Law: Greenlighting A Red Tide Of Anti Competition Blues, Ann Bartow

Ann Bartow

This essay asks the reader to consider the effects that copyright laws and policies, when filtered through the digital prism and bundled with restrictive contract terms, will have on library patrons. It further implores the reader to consider the broad benefits to library patrons of a statutorily guaranteed right to library use of copyrighted materials in any form.

Libraries In A Digital And Aggressively Copyrighted World: Retaining Patron Access Through Changing Technologies, Ann Bartow

Ann Bartow

This essay asks the reader to consider the effects that copyright laws and policies, when filtered through the digital prism and bundled with restrictive contract terms, will have on library patrons. It further implores the reader to consider the broad benefits to library patrons of a statutorily guaranteed right to library use of copyrighted materials in any form.

Educational Fair Use In Copyright: Reclaiming The Right To Photocopy Freely, Ann Bartow

Ann Bartow

Copyright owners who are affirmatively engaged in diminishing the scope of educational fair use are overwhelmingly publishers, rather than authors. These publishers attack educational fair use in several different, somewhat internally inconsistent ways. First, they argue that fair use reduces the profitability of their publications, and thereby reduces monetary incentives to undertake the publication of new works. In this way they characterize educational fair use as a threat to the creation and dissemination of future works of scholarship, rather than an escape valve through which current knowledge embodied in prohibitively expensive books and periodicals can leak to the impoverished. Publishers …

Educational Fair Use In Copyright: Reclaiming The Right To Photocopy Freely, Ann Bartow

Ann Bartow

Copyright owners who are affirmatively engaged in diminishing the scope of educational fair use are overwhelmingly publishers, rather than authors. These publishers attack educational fair use in several different, somewhat internally inconsistent ways. First, they argue that fair use reduces the profitability of their publications, and thereby reduces monetary incentives to undertake the publication of new works. In this way they characterize educational fair use as a threat to the creation and dissemination of future works of scholarship, rather than an escape valve through which current knowledge embodied in prohibitively expensive books and periodicals can leak to the impoverished. Publishers …