Law Commons^™

Downstream Copyright Infringers, Yvette Joy Liebesman

All Faculty Scholarship

The advent of on-line music sales has been a boon to the recording industry as well as for musicians and the general public. Previously unknown artists have found new avenues to showcase their work, and consumers have easy access to an enormous variety of musical genres.

Yet an unintended consequence of the ability to sell songs through internet downloads is a novel, and until now, unnoticed way to infringe on copyrights - which, unless remedied, could lead to new classes of defendants never contemplated or desired to be ensnared in the Copyright Act’s protections for artists, musicians and authors. Unlike …

Using An Online Auction To Sell Article 9 Collateral, Michael Korybut

All Faculty Scholarship

This short article discusses selected issues under Article 9 of the Uniform Commercial Code with respect to a secured party using an online auction like eBay to sell repossessed collateral. In particular, the article analyzes certain potential limitations imposed by Article 9's commercial reasonableness standard and its notice of sale requirement.

Article 9'S Incorporation Strategy And Novel, New Markets For Collateral: A Theory Of Non-Adoption, Michael Korybut

All Faculty Scholarship

Online auctions like eBay are heralded widely as efficient, robust markets through which millions of businesses and people have sold billions of dollars of all types of property. Yet U.C.C. Article 9 secured parties apparently are only slowly and anemically adopting eBay or other online auctions to sell repossessed property (collateral) and are sticking instead to conventional, traditional sale methods. The apparent slow and anemic adoption of eBay and other online auctions by Article 9 secured creditors suggests a failure of the commercial reasonableness standard's incorporation strategy of new, efficient markets and its price-maximization goal. The Article proposes a non-adoption …

Securities Fraud In Cyberspace: Reaching The Outer Limits Of The Federal Securities Laws, Constance Z. Wagner

All Faculty Scholarship

This article discusses the increasing use of the Internet for securities transactions, the growth of securitiesfraud perpetrated through that medium and the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) enforcement program initiated to combat it. The author critiques the position taken by the SEC that the existing anti-fraudprovisions of the federal securities laws can be stretched to cover Internet fraud. Using an enforcement action brought by the SEC against an online stock trading guru named Tokyo Joe as an example of the confused jurisprudence that results when pre-cyberspace law is applied to securities fraud in cyberspace, the author proposes a different regulatory …

Online Auctions Of Repossessed Collateral Under Article 9, Michael Korybut

All Faculty Scholarship

Under U.C.C. Article 9, a secured creditor selling repossessed collateral must do so in a commercially reasonable manner. A traditional form of foreclosure sale is an auction conducted by a professional auctioneer. With the rapid growth of online auctions like eBay, secured parties may want to use the new platform to sell their collateral. But conceived in the 1940s, Article 9 was not drafted with the Internet in mind. The secured creditor will face many novel issues, including whether the defining characteristics distinguishing a real-world public sale from a private sale remain coherent and applicable in cyberspace; whether an online …