Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Computer Law Commons™

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Selected Works

Copyright Law

Articles 1 - 10 of 10

Full-Text Articles in Computer Law

Copyright Law: Essential Cases And Materials, Alfred Yen, Joseph Liu Feb 2016

Copyright Law: Essential Cases And Materials, Alfred Yen, Joseph Liu

Joseph P. Liu

This casebook emphasizes the essential cases and materials at the heart of copyright law. The result is a streamlined and well-organized casebook of manageable length that keeps the central themes of copyright front and center. It also provides access to a companion Web site containing an extensive library of additional modules, topics, edited cases, notes, problems, and audio-visual materials. Together these materials, along with a companion teacher's manual, allow teachers to easily customize the copyright law course to suit their specific goals. The authors have written extensively about copyright, the arts, and the impact of new technology.

Go to article

Owning Digital Copies: Copyright Law And The Incidents Of Copy Ownership, Joseph P. Liu Oct 2011

Owning Digital Copies: Copyright Law And The Incidents Of Copy Ownership, Joseph P. Liu

Joseph P. Liu

As copyrighted works are increasingly distributed in digital form over the Internet, our conventional print-based understandings of the rights associated with copy ownership are coming into increasing conflict with the copyright owner's right to restrict copying. Specifically, certain common activities, such as reading and transferring physical copies of copyrighted works (such as books), are increasingly being viewed as potential acts of copyright infringement when applied to digital copies. This Article explores this conflict by taking a close look at the concept of copy ownership. It argues that conventional notions of physical property ownership play an important, unrecognized role in copyright …

Go to article

Copyright Law's Theory Of The Consumer, Joseph P. Liu Oct 2011

Copyright Law's Theory Of The Consumer, Joseph P. Liu

Joseph P. Liu

Copyright law has a rather well-developed theory of the author, but it has no similarly well-developed conception of the consumer. This exploratory Article is an attempt to begin piecing together a coherent image of the copyright consumer. The author argues that copyright law currently conceives of consumers in one of two ways, either as passive consumers of copyrighted works or as active authors in their own right. This binary conception of the consumer, however, is incomplete, as it neglects important and complex consumer interests in autonomy, communication, and creative self-expression. By examining these additional interests, it is possible to begin …

Go to article

Two-Factor Fair Use?, Joseph P. Liu Dec 2007

Two-Factor Fair Use?, Joseph P. Liu

Joseph P. Liu

This Article engages in a thought experiment. It asks whether fair use would be improved if courts gave exclusive consideration to only two of the four statutory factors: (1) the purpose and character of the use; and (2) the impact of the use on the market.6 In other words, fair use under this proposal would be converted from a contextual multi-factor test into a two-factor balancing test in which courts would expressly and directly weigh one consideration against another. The remaining two factors, i.e., the nature of the work and the amount used, would be eliminated from consideration or, alternatively, …

Go to article

Copyright And Breathing Space, Joseph Liu Dec 2006

Copyright And Breathing Space, Joseph Liu

Joseph P. Liu

According to the U.S. Supreme Court, copyright law's fair use and idea/expression doctrines are "built-in free speech safeguards" that establish a "definitional balance" between copyright and the First Amendment. Yet these "built-in free speech safeguards" are among the most uncertain and ill-defined doctrines in all of copyright law. If we accept the Supreme Court's statement that these doctrines play a critical role as First Amendment safety valves, it follows that the chilling effect of uncertainty in these doctrines has a constitutional dimension. Current copyright law doctrine, however, fails to take into account the potential chilling effect of copyright liability. This …

Go to article

Enabling Copyright Consumers, Joseph P. Liu Dec 2006

Enabling Copyright Consumers, Joseph P. Liu

Joseph P. Liu

When is it acceptable for a company to help consumers engage in fair use of copyrighted works? One might think that the answer would be: “always.” After all, a fair use is a privileged use, which copyright grants to consumers of copyrighted works. Shouldn’t a company be entitled to help consumers do this in the most efficient way possible? Shouldn’t such a company, in fact, be lauded for making this process more efficient?
In fact, courts quite frequently hold companies liable for helping consumers engage in activities that would be fair or non-infringing uses if undertaken by consumers themselves. In …

Go to article

Third Party Copyright After Grokster, Alfred C. Yen Dec 2005

Third Party Copyright After Grokster, Alfred C. Yen

Alfred C. Yen

This Article studies the construction of third party copyright liability after the recent Supreme Court case Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. v. Grokster, Ltd. This inquiry is important because third party copyright liability has become a controversial area of law that affects the viability of entire industries. Unfortunately, the law governing third party copyright liability is unclear. Grokster involved a claim of third party liability against defendants whose technology supported the sharing of music over the Internet, and it represents the Supreme Court’s attempt to bring coherence to the relevant law.

Grokster is a difficult case to understand. It added a new …

Go to article

Copyright Law And Subject Matter Specificity: The Case Of Computer Software, Joseph P. Liu, Stacey L. Dogan Dec 2004

Copyright Law And Subject Matter Specificity: The Case Of Computer Software, Joseph P. Liu, Stacey L. Dogan

Joseph P. Liu

Drawing on recent work by Dan Burk and Mark Lemley in the patent context, this paper explores the extent to which courts have adapted pre-existing copyright doctrines to the special case of computer software. We argue that a number of courts have, as has been widely recognized, significantly adapted copyright doctrines to deal
with special features of the computer software market. We further argue that these adaptations have, by and large, positively sought to strike a balance between the copyright act's dual goals of incentive and access. Despite this general trend toward adaptation, however, we point to a handful of …

Go to article

The Dmca And The Regulation Of Scientific Research, Joseph Liu Dec 2002

The Dmca And The Regulation Of Scientific Research, Joseph Liu

Joseph P. Liu

This Article analyzes the impact of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) on academic encryption research. In this Article, I argue that for both legal and practical reasons academic encryption researchers should be able to conduct and publish certain types of research without significant fear of liability under the DMCA. However, the DMCA will have a non-trivial impact on the conditions under which such research takes place, and this impact can be expected to have several undesirable effects. More broadly, this impact highlights the problematic way in which the DMCA regulates scientific research in furtherance of intellectual property rights. The …

Go to article

Copyright And Time: A Proposal, Joseph Liu Oct 2002

Copyright And Time: A Proposal, Joseph Liu

Joseph P. Liu

This Article argues that courts should adjust the scope of copyright protection by considering time as a factor in fair use analysis. More specifically, the longer it has been since a copyrighted work was published, the greater the scope of fair use should be. Up to now, most of the debate over the role of time in copyright law has focused on the controversial issue of copyright duration and term extension. By focusing so narrowly on the end of the copyright term, however, this debate has neglected the more significant issue of how time should affect the scope of copyright …

Go to article