Digital Commons Network^™

Copyright For A Social Species, Robert E. Suggs

Faculty Scholarship

Arguments about the proper scope of copyright protection focus on the economic consequences of varying degrees of protection. Most analysts view copyright as an economic phenomenon, and the size and health of our copyright industries measure the success of copyright policies. The constitutional text granting Congress the copyright power and the nature of special interest lobbying naturally create this economic focus; but this is a serious mistake. An exclusively economic focus makes no more sense than measuring the nutritional merits of our food supply from the size and profitability of the fast food industry.

The expressive culture that copyright protects …

The Evolution Of Copyright Law In The Arts, Kevin Liftig

Honors Scholar Theses

As digital storage of intellectual goods such as literature and music has become widespread, the duplication and unlicensed distribution of these goods has become a frequent source of legal contention. When technology for production and replication of intellectual goods advanced, there were disputes concerning the rights to produce and duplicate these works. As new technologies have made copies of intellectual goods more accessible, legal institutions have largely moved to protect the rights of ownership of ideas through copyright laws. This paper will examine key changes in the technology that affect intellectual property, and the responses that legal institutions have made …

Tiered Originality And The Dualism Of Copyright Incentives, Shyamkrishna Balganesh

All Faculty Scholarship

Professor Balganesh responds to Gideon Parchomovsky & Alex Stein, Originality, 95 Va. L. Rev. 1505 (2009), arguing that their proposal can perhaps be accommodated under current copyright doctrine.

Economies Of Desire: Fair Use And Marketplace Assumptions, Rebecca Tushnet

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

At the moment that “incentives” for creation meet “preferences” for the same, the economic account of copyright loses its explanatory power. This piece explores the ways in which the desire to create can be excessive, beyond rationality, and free from the need for economic incentive. Psychological and sociological concepts can do more to explain creative impulses than classical economics. As a result, a copyright law that treats creative activity as a product of economic incentives can miss the mark and harm what it aims to promote. The idea of abundance—even overabundance—in creativity can help define the proper scope of copyright …

A Hole In Need Of Mending: Copyright And The Individual Marking Of Advertisements Published In Collective Works, Randy D. Gordon

Faculty Scholarship

Over 20 years ago, the United States brought its copyright law into sync with international norms through the adoption of the Berne Convention. As a result, copyright notice is no longer a prerequisite to copyright protection. But because Congress implemented the Berne Convention through amendments to the (rather than adoption of a wholly new) Copyright Act, litigants have argued and at least some courts have held that certain works still must be noticed. This Article is concerned to rebut that contention.

One Size Does Not Fit All: A Framework For Tailoring Intellectual Property Rights, Michael W. Carroll

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

The United States and its trading partners have adopted cultural and innovation policies under which the government grants one-size-fits-all patents and copyrights to inventors and authors. On a global basis, the reasons for doing so vary, but in the United States granting intellectual property rights has been justified as the principal means of promoting innovation and cultural progress. Until recently, however, few have questioned the wisdom of using such blunt policy instruments to promote progress in a wide range of industries in which the economics of innovation varies considerably.

Provisionally accepting the assumptions of the traditional economic case for intellectual …

A Tale Of (At Least) Two Authors: Focusing Copyright Law On Process Over Product, Laura A. Heymann

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

In The Matter Of Exemption To Prohibition On Circumvention Of Copyright Protection Systems For Access Control Technologies: Hearing Before The U.S. Copyright Office, Library Of Cong., May 6, 2009 (Statement Of Roger V. Skalbeck, Geo. U. L. Library, On Behalf Of The American Association Of Law Libraries, The Medical Library Association And The Special Libraries Association), Roger Skalbeck

Testimony Before Congress

The American Association of Law Libraries, the Medical Library Association, and the Special Libraries Association submit the following comments on exemptions that should be granted pursuant to 17 U.S.C. § 1201 (a)(1)(C).

Our request for an exemption is specifically aimed at literary and audiovisual works, usually commercially-produced, lawfully-acquired DVDs, when circumvention is used to make compilations of brief portions of the works for educational use by faculty members in a classroom setting.

Specifically, we request that the exemption granted to faculty in media and film studies programs after the 2006 rulemaking proceeding be broadened to faculty of law and the …

Toward A Public Trust Doctrine In Copyright Law, Haochen Sun

Cornell Law School Inter-University Graduate Student Conference Papers

As a full-fledged legal tool in property and environmental law, the public trust doctrine has played an important role in deterring inappropriate exploitation of natural resources and improving protection of the environment. In this article, I explore the possibility of introducing the public trust doctrine into copyright law and explain why we need to expand the use of the public trust doctrine from natural resources to knowledge and information as informational resources. By and large, I demonstrate that compared with the Copyright Clause and the First Amendment, the public trust doctrine, if introduced into copyright law, can create more effective …

Debunking Blackstonian Copyright, Shyamkrishna Balganesh

All Faculty Scholarship

This is a review of Neil Weinstock Netanel’s Copyright’s Paradox (2008).

Harmless Use: Gleaning From Fields Of Copyrighted Works, Wendy J. Gordon

Faculty Scholarship

I will first provide a brief comment about what I think brings us all together. Second, I will talk about a particular project - something that has preoccupied me ever since I entered the field - namely, the distinction between what I will call, for sake of abbreviation, harmful use and harmless use.

Foreseeability And Copyright Incentives, Shyamkrishna Balganesh

All Faculty Scholarship

Copyright law’s principal justification today is the economic theory of creator incentives. Central to this theory is the recognition that while copyright’s exclusive rights framework provides creators with an economic incentive to create, it also entails large social costs, and that creators therefore need to be given just enough incentive to create in order to balance the system’s benefits against its costs. Yet, none of copyright’s current doctrines enable courts to circumscribe a creator’s entitlement by reference to limitations inherent in the very idea of incentives. While the common law too relies on providing actors with incentives to behave in …

Originality, Gideon Parchomovsky, Alex Stein

All Faculty Scholarship

In this Essay we introduce a model of copyright law that calibrates authors’ rights and liabilities to the level of originality in their works. We advocate this model as a substitute for the extant regime that unjustly and inefficiently grants equal protection to all works satisfying the “modicum of creativity” standard. Under our model, highly original works will receive enhanced protection and their authors will also be sheltered from suits by owners of preexisting works. Conversely, authors of less original works will receive diminished protection and incur greater exposure to copyright liability. We operationalize this proposal by designing separate rules …

Two Copyright Lessons From A Pop Music Controversy, James Gibson

Law Faculty Publications

People who study copyright law for a living must frequently endure the disappointment of seeing an interesting case settle out of court. For example, lurking behind the current Google Books controversy is a fascinating fair use argument – but if the proposed settlement manages to survive antitrust and other challenges, no court will ever have a chance to rule on the fair use issue. And scholars like me will be left wondering what might have been (and whether the settlement actually prejudices future fair use arguments).

Sometimes, however, even a settlement teaches us something about the law. The recent lawsuit …

Copyright As Censorship - Part I, James Gibson

Law Faculty Publications

2010 marks the 300th anniversary of the Statute of Anne, the English legislation that ushered in the modern era of copyright law. The Statute of Anne is celebrated for a number of reasons, and perhaps foremost among them is its rejection of copyright as an instrument of censorship.

Before Parliament enacted the Statute, the distribution of books was controlled by the government through royal charters, which granted monopolies over printing and empowered the chartered firms to seize unauthorized books and bring their publishers before the courts. The Statute of Anne put an end to this practice and replaced it with …

Notes On Art And The Intrinsic Worth Of A Human Life - 2009, Wendy J. Gordon

Scholarship Chronologically

Recall Tina Turner's famous song, where the singer pounds the audience repeatedly with the insistent apparent question: "what's love got to do with it!?" We know she's not really asking, "What's love got to do with it"; she's making a statement. What she wants to do is deny love's force, and free herself from its disappointment. The singer's seeming repudiation of love is an attempted eradication of something that is definitely still part of her.

Is There Such A Thing As Postmodern Copyright?, Peter Jaszi

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

Back in 1992, artist/entrepreneur Jeff Koons suffered a humiliating setback when the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit repudiated the suggestion that his reuse of objects from public culture might constitute a "fair use" defense to a copyright infringement claim. Fourteen years later, in a case that again involved a photographer's claim of copyright infringement, Koons triumphed in the same judicial forum. What had changed? This Article explores, in particular, one among a variety of alternative explanations: Koons may have caught the very leading edge of a profound wave of change in the social and cultural conceptualization …

Handwritten Notes On Art And The Intrinsic Worth Of A Human Life - 2009, Wendy J. Gordon

Scholarship Chronologically

At fifteen I found myself looking at a tree against the sky and being filled up with something bigger than I could contain. It was a sensation that demanded to be poured into something. The best label I could find for the emotion was "gratitude": Gratitude for the world I had not made, but had been given.

Lecture Draft Of Art And The Intrinsic Worth Of A Human Life - 2009, Wendy J. Gordon

Scholarship Chronologically

I've taken advantage of Tom's invitation to write a paper on religion and copyright that was "informal in format, in keeping with the informal nature of this gathering". What I have had to say on the Jewish law of gleaning is already on record; 1 what you'll read here are more like meditations. Thinking about the connections between art, spirituality and law has touched some very personal issues for me. Further, I know that everything I have to say is partial. I hope what I am about to give you will nevertheless raise some questions of interest.

"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 …

Of Silos And Constellations: Comparing Notions Of Originality In Copyright Law, Daniel J. Gervais, Elizabeth F. Judge

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Originality is a central theme in the efforts to understand human evolution, thinking, innovation, and creativity. Artists strive to be "original," however the term is understood by each of them. It is also one of the major concepts in copyright law. This paper considers the evolution of the notion of originality since 2002 (when one of the coauthors published an article entitled Feist Goes Global: A Comparative Analysis Of The Notion Of Originality In Copyright Law) and continues the analysis, in particular whether the notion of "creative choices," which seems to have substantial normative heft in several jurisdictions, is optimal …

Of Coase And Comics, Or, The Comedy Of Copyright, Michael J. Madison

Articles

This Essay responds to There’s No Free Laugh (Anymore): The Emergence of Intellectual Property Norms and the Transformation of Stand-Up Comedy, by Dotan Oliar and Christopher Sprigman. It argues that case studies of disciplines and domains that may be governed by intellectual property regimes are invaluable tools for comparative analysis of the respective roles of law and other forms of social order. The Essay examines the case of stand-up comedy under a lens that is somewhat broader than the one used by the authors of the original study, one that takes into account not only the social norms of individual …

Trespass-Copyright Parallels And The Harm-Benefit Distinction, Wendy J. Gordon

Faculty Scholarship

Currently, the elements of a plaintiff’s cause of action for copyright largely follow the tort of trespass to land in that volitional entry (for land) or volitional copying (for copyright) gives rise to liability regardless of proof of harm and without any need for the plaintiff to prove the defendant acted unreasonably. Many scholars have criticized copyright law for following the strict liability model of real property trespass, and have suggested alternatives that would more resemble conditional causes of action such as unfair competition, nuisance, or negligence. In Foreseeability and Copyright Incentives, Professor Shyamkrishna Balganesh argues that copyright plaintiffs …

Notes On A Geography Of Knowledge, Michael J. Madison

Articles

Law and knowledge jointly occupy a metaphorical landscape. Understanding that landscape is essential to understanding the full complexity of knowledge law. This Article identifies some landmarks in that landscape, which it identifies as forms of legal practice: several recent cases involving intellectual property licenses, including the recent patent law decision in Quanta v. LG Electronics and the open source licensing decision in Jacobsen v. Katzer. The Article offers a preliminary framework for exploring the territories of knowledge practice in which those legal landmarks appear.

To (C) Or Not To (C)? Copyright And Innovation In The Digital Typeface Industry, Jacqueline D. Lipton

Articles

Intellectual property rights are often justified by utilitarian theory. However, recent scholarship suggests that creativity thrives in some industries in the absence of intellectual property protection. These industries might be called IP's negative spaces. One such industry that has received little scholarly attention is the typeface industry. This industry has recently digitized. Its adoption of digital processes has altered its market structure in ways that necessitate reconsideration of its IP negative status, with particular emphasis on copyright. This article considers the historical denial of copyright protection for typefaces in the United States, and examines arguments both for and against extending …

Subsidizing Creativity Through Network Design: Zero Pricing And Net Neutrality, Robin S. Lee, Tim Wu

Faculty Scholarship

Today, through historical practice, there exists a de facto ban on termination fees – also referred to as a “zero-price” rule (Hemphill, 2008) – which forbids an Internet service provider from charging an additional fee to a content provider who wishes to reach that ISP’s customers. The question is whether this zero-pricing structure should be preserved, or whether carriers should be allowed to charge termination fees and engage in other practices that have the effect of requiring payment to reach users. This paper begins with a defense of the de facto zero-price rule currently in existence. We point out that …