Digital Commons Network^™

Fair Use Failing The First Amendment? How The Parody And Satire Dichotomy May Be Stunting Political Discourse, Megan L. Wheeler

IP Theory

The First Amendment, in certain circumstances, is used as a defense to “protect[] satire and parody as a form of free speech and expression.”2 When it comes to jokes, “[q]uestions . . . have arisen in case law [pertaining to satire typically] concerning libel, emotional distress and copyright infringement.”3 Further, in a right of publicity claim, “[t]he First Amendment clearly protects all but the most intrusive coverage of news, or details of a person’s private life, such as are reported in the tabloid press or talk shows.”4 This demonstrates that humor and satire have a close relationship with the First …

Fairness, Copyright, And Video Games: Hate The Game, Not The Player, Shani Shisha

Fordham Intellectual Property, Media and Entertainment Law Journal

Creative communities often rely on social norms to regulate the production of creative content. Yet while an emerging body of literature has focused on isolated accounts of social norms operating in discrete, small-scale creative industries, no research to date has explored the social norms that pervade the world’s largest content microcosm—the sprawling video game community.

Now a veritable global phenomenon, the video game industry has recently grown to eclipse the music and motion picture industries. But despite its meteoric rise, the video game industry has provoked little attention from copyright scholars. This Article is the first to explore the shifting …

Restoring The Balance Of Copyright: Antitrust, Misuse, And Other Possible Paths To Challenge Inequitable Licensing Practices, Michelle M. Wu

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Libraries’ purposes of ensuring access to and preservation of information have been compromised as licensing increasingly replaces ownership. This article outlines various novel legal strategies that libraries could use to restore copyright’s intended balance, including antitrust, preemption, misuse, and unconscionability.

Looking Backward, Moving Forward: What Must Be Remembered When Resolving The Right To Be Forgotten, Katherine Stewart

Brooklyn Journal of International Law

In May 2014, the European Court of Justice decided Google Spain v. AEPD and González and granted citizens the right to be forgotten, rather, the right to request any search engine offering services to European consumers to remove certain results displayed after a search of a citizen’s name. This decision has also resulted in an ongoing battle between Google and the Commission Nationale de l’Infomatique et des Libertés (CNIL), France’s data protection authority. The CNIL believes that Google must apply the right to be forgotten to all domains worldwide, including Google.com. Google, however, has been reluctant to do so, given …

Inefficiently Automated Law Enforcement, Woodrow Hartzog, Gregory Conti, John Nelson, Lisa A. Shay

Faculty Scholarship

For some crimes the entire law enforcement process can now be automated. No humans are needed to detect the crime, identify the perpetrator, or impose punishment. While automated systems are cheap and efficient, governments and citizens must look beyond these obvious savings as manual labor is replaced by robots and computers. Inefficiency and indeterminacy have significant value in automated law enforcement systems and should be preserved. Humans are inefficient, yet more capable of ethical and contextualized decision-making than automated systems. Inefficiency is also an effective safeguard against perfectly enforcing laws that were created with implicit assumptions of leniency and discretion. …

The Right To Be Forgotten: Forced Amnesia In A Technological Age, 31 J. Marshall J. Info. Tech. & Privacy L. 133 (2014), Robert Bolton

UIC John Marshall Journal of Information Technology & Privacy Law

In the modern era, the connection between technology and one’s personal life has increased the number of moments recorded for posterity. While in many circumstances this is an ideal opportunity for fond recollection, it has the downside of displaying for others our less flattering moments. Because the Internet has such a wide scope, once something has entered its domain, it is virtually impossible to permanently remove. With a public increasingly perceiving this winnowing of privacy as a negative tendency, legislators both at home and abroad have made proposals that attempt to place restrictions on what content social media is allowed …

Patent Cases And Public Controversies, Amelia Smith Rinehart

Notre Dame Law Review

The Article proceeds as follows. Part I summarizes the evolution of the current standard for justiciability in declaratory patent cases, including the Supreme Court’s MedImmune opinion and its progeny in the Federal Circuit and the lower courts. Part II discusses the growing trend of public interest patent litigation and the hurdles declaratory plaintiffs face on justiciability grounds despite courts’ approval of patent challenges generally on policy grounds. Finally, Part III introduces a legislative reform that promises to afford justiciability for some members of the public without compromising Article III’s emphasis on private adjudication.

A Model Copyright Exemption To Serve The Visually Impaired, Patrick Hely

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

Copyright law presents visually impaired persons with serious barriers to access of the written word. A recent international effort seeks to remove these barriers to access, in limited instances, by allowing the creation of accessible formats of copyrighted works. While bodies like the World Blind Union--through several South American states--have presented draft treaties to the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), to date the interested parties have not found a mutually agreeable solution. This Note surveys international intellectual property law as it relates to the problem, draws a comparison to the humanitarian concerns entangled with international patent law, and tracks the …

Your Image Is My Image: When Advertising Dedicates Trademarks To The Public Domain - With An Example From The Trademark Counterfeiting Act Of 1984, Malla Pollack

Cardozo Law Review

No abstract provided.