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Entertainment, Arts, and Sports Law Commons

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Copyright infringement

Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review

Articles 1 - 4 of 4

Full-Text Articles in Entertainment, Arts, and Sports Law

Why The Copyright Act Expressly Preempts State-Level Public Performance Rights In Pre-1972 Recordings, James Fahringer May 2018

Why The Copyright Act Expressly Preempts State-Level Public Performance Rights In Pre-1972 Recordings, James Fahringer

Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review

Over the past several years, two former bandmates in the 1960s rock group, The Turtles, have initiated several lawsuits against the popular music streaming services, Pandora and Sirius XM, arguing that the band owns common law copyrights in the sound recordings of its songs, and that these state-level copyrights grant the band an exclusive public performance right in its sound recordings. If accepted, this argument has the potential to significantly distort federal copyright policy because states would not be constrained by any of the balancing features of the Copyright Act, including Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) safe harbors for Internet …


Sherlock Holmes And The Case Of The Lucrative Fandom: Recognizing The Economic Power Of Fanworks And Reimagining Fair Use In Copyright, Stacey M. Lantagne Jun 2015

Sherlock Holmes And The Case Of The Lucrative Fandom: Recognizing The Economic Power Of Fanworks And Reimagining Fair Use In Copyright, Stacey M. Lantagne

Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review

Fan culture, in the form of fan-created works like fanfiction, fanart, and fanvids, is often associated with the Internet. However, fandom has existed for as long as stories have been told. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories inspired a passionate fandom long before the age of the Internet. Despite their persistence, fanworks have long existed in a gray area of copyright law. Determining if any given fanwork is infringing requires a fair use analysis. Although these analyses pay lip service to a requirement of aesthetic neutrality, they tend to become bogged down by unarticulated artistic judgments that hinge on …


Three Reactions To Mgm V. Grokster, Pamela Samuelson Oct 2006

Three Reactions To Mgm V. Grokster, Pamela Samuelson

Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review

It was prescient of the Michigan Telecommunications and Technology Law Review to have organized a conference to discuss the Supreme Court's decision in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Inc. v. Grokster, Inc. As the articles in this issue reveal, commentators have had somewhat mixed reactions to the Grokster decision. Perhaps I am the most mixed (or mixed up) about Grokster among its commentators, for I have had not just one but three reactions to the Grokster decision. My first reaction was to question whether MGM and its co-plaintiffs really won the Grokster case, or at least won it in the way they had hoped. …


Musical Musings: The Case For Rethinking Music Copyright Protection, J. Michael Keyes Apr 2004

Musical Musings: The Case For Rethinking Music Copyright Protection, J. Michael Keyes

Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review

This Article focuses on the topic of music copyright, but addresses this legal issue from a different vantage point than that of the industry insiders, insightful scholars, and policy makers that have weighed in on the debate. Instead of focusing on the issues regarding wholesale digital reproduction and dissemination of music protected by copyright, this Article focuses on music copyright infringement when the claim is that a given piece of music is "substantially similar" to another piece of music protected by copyright. Part I of this Article touches on the history of the music industry and copyright in this country, …