Digital Commons Network^™

The Anti-Bootlegging Provisions: Congressional Power And Constitutional Limitations, Craig W. Dallon

Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law

Courts and scholars have considered the constitutional validity of 17 U.S.C. § 1101 (civil), and 18 U.S.C. § 2319A (criminal), known together as "the anti-bootlegging provisions." These provisions prohibit unauthorized recording, copying, and distribution of live musical performances. The provisions have been challenged in three cases, resulting in five published opinions. Two district court opinions held the provisions unconstitutional, but subsequent opinions vacated those decisions. Notwithstanding a sharp division among copyright scholars, the courts have upheld these provisions. The discussion surrounding them is part of a continuing struggle to ascertain limits on congressional power to regulate copying and distribution of …

The Kindle Controversy: An Economic Analysis Of How The Amazon Kindle's Text-To-Speech Feature Violates Copyright Law, Jeremy B. Francis

Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law

In 2009, Amazon released the Kindle 2 with a text-to-speech feature. This feature allows users of the Kindle 2 to download software to the device that will read e-books aloud. Authors and publishers of e-books immediately objected to the feature, arguing that it essentially created an unauthorized audiobook. Amazon maintained the legality of the text-to-speech feature, arguing that it does not copy, perform, or create a derivative work. Amazon decided to avoid a legal battle by allowing rightsholders to decide whether to enable the text-to-speech feature for each individual title. The copyright community, however, responded swiftly and nearly unanimously, siding …

Copyright In Memoriam, Julie C. Young

Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law

Can a government infringe upon a work dedicated to the memory of its people? The February 2010 Federal Circuit decision "Gaylord v. United States" addresses that question, but any satisfaction from the decision presupposes that the government should be held liable for such an infringement. Consistent with the 1976 Copyright Act, the Gaylord decision preserves the author's rights, paying no regard to the identity of the audience or the infringer. From a policy perspective, however, the result is dubious. Arguably, if a work is a public memorial, and paid for with public funds, it should immediately enter the public domain. …

Hacking Into Federal Court: Employee "Authorization" Under The Computer Fraud And Abuse Act, Thomas E. Booms

Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law

Few would disagree that computers play an important role in modern United States society. However, many would be surprised to discover the modest amount of legislation governing computer use. Congress began addressing computer crime in 1984 by enacting the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA). The CFAA represented the first piece of federal legislation governing computer crimes and has undergone eight amendments to date, making it one of the most expansive criminal laws in the United States. In 1994, Congress added a civil provision opening the door for application of the statute in novel situations. Initially enacted to target crimes …

Cloudy Privacy Protections: Why The Stored Communications Act Fails To Protect The Privacy Of Communications Stored In The Cloud, Ilana R. Kattan

Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law

The advent of new communications technologies has generated debate over the applicability of the Fourth Amendment's warrant requirement to communications sent through, and stored in, technologies not anticipated by the Framers. In 1986, Congress responded to perceived gaps in the protections of the warrant requirement as applied to newer technologies, such as email, by passing the Stored Communications Act (SCA). As originally enacted, the SCA attempted to balance the interests of law enforcement against individual privacy rights by dictating the mechanisms by which the government could compel a particular service provider to disclose communications stored on behalf of its customers. …

Rebuilding The Prevent Defense: Why Unethical Agents Continue To Score And What Can Be Done To Change The Game, R. Alexander Payne

Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law

Despite decades of regulation, college athletics continues to face problems stemming from agents' unethical and illegal tactics in recruiting student-athletes. The NCAA, Congress, state legislatures, and professional players unions have all sought to regulate the interaction between athletes and agents in various ways, often leading to conflicts and gaps within existing laws, which some agents readily exploit. Agents frequently slip through the law's porous prevent defense while the brunt of enforcement and public opprobrium falls on unsophisticated student-athletes and their schools--who are frequently outsiders to the saga. This Note explores the causes resulting in an atmosphere of noncompliance, including the …

Cyberspace, Exceptionalism, And Innocent Copyright Infringement, Jacqueline D. Lipton

Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law

Direct copyright infringement attracts strict liability. However, as a theoretical matter, it is not necessarily clear why. Legislatures and courts have typically imposed strict liability where: (a) a defendant has notice of a plaintiff's rights, particularly where those rights involve a property interest; (b) a mens rea requirement on the part of the defendant would create an untenable burden on the plaintiff; (c) it is easier for the defendant to avoid harming the plaintiff than it is for the plaintiff to avoid the harm; or, (d) it is more administratively or economically efficient for the defendant to bear the risk …

What's Wrong With U.S.?: Why The United States Should Have A Public Performance Right For Sound Recordings, William Henslee

Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law

This Article discusses the need for the United States to implement a public performance royalty for sound recordings. Under the current system, song writers are compensated for the use of their musical works, but performers on sound recordings do not receive any compensation. Radio and television stations currently pay the performing rights societies a royalty for playing the sound recordings, but they do not pay a performance royalty to the artists who perform the music and record companies that promote and release the sound recordings. Proposed legislation will add a performance royalty for artists and record companies to the current …

Information Wars And The Challenges Of Content Protection In Digital Contexts, Raymond T. Nimmer

Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law

We are in the midst of a fundamental conflict in law and policy between those who favor maintaining and expanding copyright and related rights in the digital context ("rights enhancers"), and those who favor letting rights atrophy ("rights restrictors'). This Article argues that strong intellectual property rights are essential. At minimum, they are important to support creativity in contexts where the creation, collection, or distribution of the content requires substantial investment of time and resources. The case for allowing creators' rights to weaken is both untested and structurally suspect. Copyright law must construct a balance that fully supports creative activity …

Digital Copyright And Confuzzling Rhetoric, Peter K. Yu

Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law

For more than a decade, policymakers, industry representatives, consumer advocates, civil libertarians, academic commentators, and user communities have advanced a wide array of arguments for or against online file sharing and restrictive copyright standards. This Article begins by introducing two short stories to illustrate the rhetorical and analytical challenges in the digital copyright debate. It then examines eight unpersuasive arguments advanced by both sides of the debate--four from the industry and four from its opponents. The Article concludes by outlining six different strategies to help the industry develop more convincing proposals for digital copyright reform.

Cut In Tiny Pieces: Ensuring That Fragmented Ownership Does Not Chill Creativity, Henry H. Perritt Jr.

Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law

The market for video entertainment is growing and becoming more diverse as technology reduces barriers to entry for small, independent moviemakers and distributors and increases consumers' ability to access the media of their choice. The growing complexity of the market, however, increases transaction costs for new entrants who must obtain licenses to copyrighted music, characters, storylines, or scenes that they incorporate into their movies. The entertainment bonanza offered by new technologies may not be realized in practice because of market failure. The purposes of the Copyright and Patents Clause are frustrated because creators of new works wishing to use new …

Edible Plagiarism: Reconsidering Recipe Copyright In The Digital Age, Meredith G. Lawrence

Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law

Sharing recipes through food blogs is an increasingly popular activity. Bloggers publish their own recipes, claiming copyright protection, but they also publish others' recipes. Food publishers who distribute recipes online may be harmed when bloggers include the entire text of the food publisher's recipe on a blog without the publisher's knowledge or permission. The blogger's inclusion of an entire recipe often reduces site traffic to the food publisher's website, thereby damaging advertising revenues. Copyright law, as courts interpret it today, does not provide these publishers with recourse against bloggers who publish their recipes without permission.

This Note analyzes the various …

Patents As Escalators, Amelia S. Rinehart

Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law

High technology companies commit time, effort, and resources to innovation. Over the course of a research and development project, an innovative company may face several sequential decisions regarding whether to continue to invest in the project and whether to commercialize the discoveries that have been made. Companies often seek patents early in the research and development process to receive the right to exclude others from practicing the invention. Given a current trend toward earlier and earlier patent filing, several scholars suggest that this strategy could leave many inventions underdeveloped; companies may treat patents like real options, deciding later where to …

Along For The Ride: Gps And The Fourth Amendment, Stephen A. Josey

Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law

With the advent of new technologies, the line as to where the Fourth Amendment forbids certain police behavior and when it does not has become increasingly blurred. Recently, the issue of whether police may use Global Positioning System (GPS) tracking devices to track individuals for prolonged periods of time without first securing a search warrant has crept its way into the limelight. The various circuits have arrived at different conclusions, and the question has now found its way onto the US Supreme Court's docket. After analyzing and weighing both Supreme Court case law and public policy considerations, this Note concludes …

Preglimony, Shari Motro

Law Faculty Publications

Unmarried lovers who conceive are strangers in the eyes of the law. If the woman terminates the pregnancy, the man owes her nothing. If she takes the pregnancy to term, the man's obligation to support her is limited. The law reflects this lovers-as-strangers presumption by making a man's obligation towards a woman with whom he conceives derivative of his paternity-related obligations; his duty is towards his child, not towards the woman in her own right. Thus, a pregnant woman's lost wages and other personal costs are her private problem, and if there is no child at the end of the …

Borges And Company: The Corporate Body In ‘La Loterı´A En Babilonia’, David Laraway

Faculty Publications

I begin with a cliche´: there are few more striking incongruities in Borges than the gap between his philosophical sophistication and his political naı¨vete´. Like all cliche´s, this one has its grain of truth. If Borges’ treatment of traditional philosophical themes is intellectually provocative and subtle, his treatment of political themes*particularly in the many interviews he granted*is often thumb-in-the-eye-provocative and crude, to say the least. How are we to reconcile the image of the erudite metaphysician with that of the writer who notoriously praised the Latin-American military dictatorships of the 1960s and 1970s? To be sure, philosophical sophistication does not …

A Kantian Argument Against Comparatively Advantageous Genetic Modification, David Jensen

Faculty Publications

The genetic modification of children is becoming a more likely possibility given our rapid progress in medical technologies. I argue, from a broadly Kantian point of view, that at least one kind of such modificationdmodification by a parent for the sake of a child’s comparative advantagedis not rationally justified. To argue this, I first characterize a necessary condition on reasons and rational justification: what is a reason for an agent to do an action in one set of circumstances must be a reason for any in those circumstances to do the action. I then show that comparatively advantageous genetic modification …

Gene Regulation In Biofilms, Priyankar Samanta

Microbiological Sciences

Sessile bacterial communities which form on the solid surface or solid-liquid interface are known as biofilms. Both single species and multispecies biofilms are characterized by an extracellular matrix of polymeric substances which gives them several hundred times more antibiotic resistances than a planktonic bacterial culture. Though bacteria are the most common causative agent of various diseases, because of the high antibiotic resistance, biofilms cause complications of various diseases like cystic fibrosis, prosthetic valve endocarditis, chronic pulmonary diseases, catheter-associated urinary tract infections and several other diseases. From past studies, quorum sensing has been established as a novel target mechanism against biofilms; …

Selected Larger Choral Works Of F. Melius Christiansen (1871-1955), Nicki Lynn Toliver

Music

F. Melius Christiansen (1871-1955) composed four larger choral works between 1917 and 1925. The Reformation Cantata, composed in 1917, commemorates the 400th anniversary of Martin Luther’s Protestant Reformation and the merger of three church synods into the Norwegian Lutheran Church of America. The cantata is scored for baritone, tenor, and soprano soli, chorus, and orchestra. Christiansen’s oratorio, The Prodigal Son, was composed in 1918. The performing forces include SATB soli and SATB chorus with orchestra or keyboard accompaniment. In 1922, Christiansen composed a multi-movement a cappella work for the St. Olaf Choir entitled Psalm 50. The Norwegian-American Centennial Cantata was …

Counterfeit Designers Merchandise's Influence On Consumer's Choice, Jessica Robinson

OTS Master's Level Projects & Papers

The problem of this study was to determine the relationship between Old Dominion University's female students who have purchased counterfeit fashion merchandise and the factors that influenced their decision to purchase or not to purchase counterfeit fashion merchandise.

Apparel And Its Impact On Self-Perception, Autumn Heart

OTS Master's Level Projects & Papers

The problem if the study was to determine if alterations in one's dress has an impact on an individual's self-concept.

Introduction To Mass Communication, Steelman Library, Robert Scott Dr.

Syllabus Repository

No abstract provided.

No-Tillage Increases Soil Profile Carbon And Nitrogen Under Long-Term Rainfed Cropping Systems, Gary E. Varvel, Wallace Wilhelm

Department of Agronomy and Horticulture: Faculty Publications

Emphasis and interest in carbon (C) and nitrogen (N) storage (sequestration) in soils has greatly increased in the last few years, especially C with its’ potential to help alleviate or offset some of the negative effects of the increase in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Several questions still exist with regard to what management practices optimize C storage in the soil profile. A long-term rainfed study conducted in eastern Nebraska provided the opportunity to determine both the effects of different tillage treatments and cropping systems on soil N and soil organic C (SOC) levels throughout the soil profile. The study …

Old Testament Survey, Steelman Library, Gerry White

Syllabus Repository

No abstract provided.

Gender And Increased Access To Schooling In Cameroon: A Marginal Benefit Incidence Analysis, Tabi Atemnkeng Johannes, Armand Gilbert Noula

Journal of International Women's Studies

Of great importance to policy makers is to know if females and poor households benefit more or less than the males or rich households from an expansion in access to public education. This is marginal benefit incidence of public spending which is rarely determined. In this paper, we determine the extent to which an expansion in public education is effective in reducing gender gaps in enrollments and thus, poverty in Cameroon. Government subsidies directed towards higher education are poorly targeted and the poorest income groups receive less than the richest income groups and indeed favor those who are better off. …

Sexual-Political Colonialism And Failure Of Individuation In Doris Lessing’S The Grass Is Singing, Sima Aghazadeh

Journal of International Women's Studies

This article presents and interprets Doris Lessing’s first novel, The Grass is Singing (1950), as both a personal and psychological portrayal of its female protagonist, Mary Turner, from her childhood to death, and as a political exposure of the futility and fragility of the patriarchal and colonial society. This novel is Mary’s failure of individuation in the confrontation of her psychological and cultural parts, shaped by colonial experience. Lessing, by depicting her protagonist in a particular British colonial setting, artistically reveals that her identity is negotiated and constructed by the social and behavioral expectations, developed through her racial role as …

Creeping Online: Canadian Feminist Scholarly Journals, Katherine Side

Journal of International Women's Studies

World-wide, there are over 4,000 peer-reviewed, scholarly, open access journals (Geist 2009). Theoretically, they are available to all of those with internet access. In Women’s and/ Gender Studies, open access journals publish research findings, discussion and debate and often, creative submissions. In other disciplines, such as the natural sciences, they are also locations to share large data sets and provide access to preliminary research findings. The Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities calls for the extension of accessibility with the explicit intention of knowledge distribution and knowledge sharing (2003). This article explores the status …

Gender Empowerment And Equality In Rural India: Are Women’S Community-Based Enterprises The Way Forward?, Maria Costanza Torri, Andrea Martinez

Journal of International Women's Studies

Despite the renewed commitment of the international community to provide economic opportunities for poor women, most observers suggest that the majority of the past and current experience of community enterprise programmes for women has failed to make any significant impact on women’s incomes and social empowerment. Based on ethnographic research methods, this paper presents a feminist analysis of a singular women’s community enterprise promoted by local NGOs in the state of Tamil Nadu in India, usually known as GMCL (Gram Mooligai Company Limited). GMCL has been promoted by local NGOs in the state of Tamil Nadu and is an example …

Women In Administration In India, Jayasheela George

Journal of International Women's Studies

Administration is the performance of the executive functions of the state and it differs from legislature and judiciary. In the present research study, administration refers to Managerial view of administration and here the study is on women administrators of All India Services - Indian Administrative Service (IAS), Indian Police Service (IPS) and Indian Forest Service (IFS). Though the services were in existence from the Britishers Period, the entry of women into these services was very late and in two of these services, women got in only after few decades of independence. This article is written based on the primary data …

Book Review: In The Public Eye, Susan Iverson

Journal of International Women's Studies

Review of In the Public Eye by Joanne Kilgour Dowdy