Law Commons^™

Law Reviews And Technology: Copyright Law From Noah Webster To Tasini And The Importance Of Written Contracts, Lynn Mclain

All Faculty Scholarship

This handout from a 2001 presentation for the National Conference of Law Reviews outlines the intersection between copyright and contract law, particularly as it pertains to authors assigning the copyright of law review articles to the journal publishing the article.

Introduction: From Sheet Music To Mp3 Files—A Brief Perspective On Napster, Harold R. Weinberg

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

The Napster case is the current cause celebre of the digital age. The story has color. It involves music-sharing technology invented by an eighteen-year-old college dropout whose high school classmates nicknamed him "The Napster" on account of his perpetually kinky hair. The story has drama. Depending on your perspective, it pits rapacious big music companies against poor and hardworking students who just want to enjoy some tunes; or it pits creative and industrious music companies seeking a fair return on their invested effort, time, and money against greedy and irreverent music thieves. And the case has importance. Music maybe intellectual …

Fair Use And The Digital Distribution Of Music - Recording Industry Association Of America V. Napster, Inc. (A Comparative Analysis Of A Restraint On Copyright In The United States Of America And Trinidad And Tobago), Michelle Lisa Alexander

LLM Theses and Essays

The purpose of this thesis is to undertake a critical analysis of the Napster judgment and its treatment of the doctrine of fair use, to determine whether the doctrine can retain its integrity in the internet age. It is proposed that as technology advances, U.S. policymakers are moving away from the constitutional objectives of U.S. copyright law and are equating copyright interests with property rights, to the detriment of noncommercial users of copyrighted works. Further, it is suggested that the decision in the Napster litigation is important for the evolving landscape of U.S. copyright law, as it signals the difficulty …

Protecting The Performers: Setting A New Standard For Character Copyrightability, Mark Bartholomew

Journal Articles

Copyright law protects expressions of ideas, but not the idea itself. Legal disputes over characters arise in the continuum between an idea for a character that has not been expressed at all, and an idea that has been given complete form and shape. The inconsistent common law tests developed to assess character copyrightability demonstrate the difficulty in pinpointing where the dividing line between an undeveloped idea and a sufficiently expressed character should be set. This Article offers a new paradigm for determining character copyrightability, particularly in the case of characters shaped through live performance, that tracks the Hegelian concept of …

On-Line Tutorial Project: Intellectual Property In E-Commerce, William J. Murphy

Law Faculty Scholarship

Copyrights, Trademarks and Patents make up most of the area of law known as Intellectual Property. Intellectual Property's importance in Electronic Commerce is difficult to overstate. The Internet has been defined as a global network of networks through which computers communicate by sending information in packets, and each network consists of computers connected by cables or wireless links. It is the Intellectual Property laws of Copyright, Trademark and Patents that are attempting to harmonize the effects that E-Commerce and the Internet have had on the individual's ability to access and use this information. It should be remembered that most countries …

Not So Different: Tangible, Intangible, Digital, And Analog Works And Their Comparison For Copyright Purposes, I. Trotter Hardy

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Authorship, Dominance, And The Captive Collaborator: Preserving The Rights Of Joint Authors, Mary Lafrance

Scholarly Works

For copyright purposes, determining whether a work has a single author or joint authors is important for a variety of reasons. Perhaps the most significant legal consequence of joint authorship is joint ownership, under which the authors enjoy equal and undivided ownership of the copyright, allowing each to exploit the work freely, subject to a duty to account to the others for a ratable share of the exploitation profits. Absent an agreement to the contrary, each author of a joint work has an equal claim to those profits and an equal right to exploit the work, even if the authors' …

Copyright Law And Price Discrimination, Michael J. Meurer

Faculty Scholarship

I show that copyright law is intimately connected to price discrimination. First, price discrimination is common in markets for copyrighted works. Second, many features of copyright law affect resale or personal arbitrage and so influence the profitability of price discrimination. For example, the first sale doctrine and the fair use doctrine often facilitate arbitrage and discourage discrimination, while the derivative and public performance rights impede arbitrage and promote discrimination. Third, optimal copyright policy requires attention to the social costs and benefits from price discrimination.

I use models of price discrimination to unify the analysis of a wide range of copyright …

What's My Copy Right?, Michael J. Madison

Articles

This piece consists of an early 21st century whimsy, a dialogue that borrows and blends history and humor to illustrate some puzzles of copyright law in the context of digital technology (with references to Folsom v. Marsh and Abbott & Costello).

Transmissions Of Music On The Internet: An Analysis Of The Copyright Laws Of Canada, France, Germany, Japan, The United Kingdom, And The United States, Daniel J. Gervais

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

This Article examines the status of copyright laws in several countries as they pertain to transmissions of music on the Internet. Because the exact legal ramifications of music transmissions over the Internet are currently unclear, the Author compares copyright laws of six major markets and examines the potential application of the copyright laws and other rights that may apply. The Article also discusses rules concerning which transborder transmissions are likely to be covered by a country's national laws, as well as specific rules applying to the liability of intermediaries. Next, the Article summarizes the comparative findings and discusses the relevant …

The Uncertain Future Of Fair Use In A Global Information Marketplace, Marshall Leaffer

Articles by Maurer Faculty

The author of this article forecasts an increasingly troubled future, if not the demise of the doctrine of fair use in copyright law. Legal developments, both at home and abroad, driven by technological change, and the push toward the international harmonization of legal norms, threaten the very survival of fair use. Given these realities the doctrine will, of necessity, be reconceptualized Although fair use values will always be inscribed in copyright law, these values will have their practical manifestation in decentralized form, and effectuated, in large part, through industry agreement. They will exist in conjunction with certain bright line exceptions …