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A Restatement Of Copyright Law As More Independent And Stable Treatise, Ann Bartow
A Restatement Of Copyright Law As More Independent And Stable Treatise, Ann Bartow
Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications
Copyright scholar Ann Bartow proposes a Restatement of her field of expertise, an area dominated by one federal statute, the Copyright Act. One might have thought that the traditional Restatement attention to state rather than federal law and common law rather than statutes would disqualify copyright from restateability. But as other contributions to this Symposium observe, federal statutory law has long lain in the sights of restaters, and as Bartow shows, copyright is plenty “complicated,” disputed, and refashioned in the courts. Moreover, as Bartow argues, the place that Restatement of Copyright could occupy is now held by a for-profit treatise …
Copyright Law And Pornography, Ann Bartow
Copyright Law And Pornography, Ann Bartow
Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications
Sex-for-hire is usually illegal, unless it is being filmed. Debates about pornography tread uneasily into legal terrain that implicates freedom of expression under the First Amendment, the specter of censorship, and genuine concerns about the function and role of pornography in persistent gender inequality. It is less common for conversations about pornography to include a discussion of copyright law. Yet copyright law is a powerful tool that operates to protect the financial interests of pornographers. Owners of copyrighted pornography frequently threaten public exposure of an alleged infringer’s consumption habits in order to force a financial settlement. Thus copyright law operates …
No Bitin’ Allowed: A Hip-Hop Copying Paradigm For All Of Us, Horace E. Anderson Jr.
No Bitin’ Allowed: A Hip-Hop Copying Paradigm For All Of Us, Horace E. Anderson Jr.
Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications
It is long past time to reform the Copyright Act. The law of copyright in the United States is at one of its periodic inflection points. In the past, major technological change and major shifts in the way copyrightable works were used have rightly led to major changes in the law. The invention of the printing press prompted the first codification of copyright. The popularity of the player piano contributed to a reevaluation of how musical works should be protected. The dawn of the computer age led to an explicit expansion of copyrightable subject matter to include computer programs. These …
Sticky Copyrights: Discriminatory Tax Restraints On The Transfer Of Intellectual Property, Bridget J. Crawford
Sticky Copyrights: Discriminatory Tax Restraints On The Transfer Of Intellectual Property, Bridget J. Crawford
Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications
This Article focuses on the federal estate and gift tax treatment of copyright termination rights. The ability of a creative individual to terminate prior copyright transfers serves to protect against economic exploitation. Once a copyright's value has been established in the marketplace, the author (or the author's heirs) enjoys a "second look" at the gift, sale, license or other transfer of a copyright. But copyright termination rights--intended to enhance the economic well-being of authors and artists--undermine estate planning strategies available to owners of other types of property. There is no policy justification for such discrimination, and so this Article proposes …
Handcrafted Collaborative Copyright, Ann Bartow
Handcrafted Collaborative Copyright, Ann Bartow
Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications
Tribute essay to Dean Laura Gasaway's tenacious and fearless information access advocacy.
"Criminal Minded?": Mixtape Djs, The Piracy Paradox, And Lessons For The Recording Industry, Horace E. Anderson
"Criminal Minded?": Mixtape Djs, The Piracy Paradox, And Lessons For The Recording Industry, Horace E. Anderson
Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications
For at least the past three years, leading American fashion designers have lobbied for passage of copyright-like protection for the design aspects of their apparel creations. For at least as long, the recorded music industry has been engaged in an aggressive campaign to enforce its copyrights in recorded music against a number of technology-enabled and/or culturally sympathetic alleged infringers, including "twelve year-olds" and "grandmothers." Although the record labels already have protection under the copyright law while the fashion houses seek it, they have at least one thing in common: some portion of the piracy that they seek to eradicate is …
Copyright Law And Pornography: Reconsidering Incentives To Create And Distribute Pornography, Ann Bartow
Copyright Law And Pornography: Reconsidering Incentives To Create And Distribute Pornography, Ann Bartow
Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications
As it moved into the mainstream in the 1970s and early 1980s, pornography obtained copyright protections through judicial fiat, rather than as a result of legislative action. This essay explains how pornography came to be eligible for copyright protections, discusses the social and legal effects of this change, and raises questions about the propriety of according pornography the full benefits of copyright law without taking into account the harms that pornography production can inflict on subordinated or coerced ―performers.