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Decentralizing Culture: The Effect Of Digital Networks On Copyright And Music Distribution, Benjamin Gibert
Decentralizing Culture: The Effect Of Digital Networks On Copyright And Music Distribution, Benjamin Gibert
Benjamin Gibert
The advance of technology profoundly impacts how people interact with culture as the proliferation of digital networks transforms the effects of copyright in modern societies. This paper argues that the oligopolistic conditions of content markets and the legal discourse of intellectual property law have historically enabled copyright holders to promote a limited conception of art and obscure the complexities of copyright theory. While conceptual ambiguity is inevitable in the construction of aesthetic legal categories, current practices impose too many restrictions. The practical choices made concerning copyright in cyberspace will determine the evolution of culture in increasingly networked societies. The music …
Barricading The Digital Frontier: Copyright, Technology And The War On Music Piracy, Benjamin Gibert
Barricading The Digital Frontier: Copyright, Technology And The War On Music Piracy, Benjamin Gibert
Benjamin Gibert
The Internet is changing the way vast numbers of people experience culture today. Providing tools to interact with, manipulate and freely redistribute content, technology is dissolving conventional divisions between creators and consumers of cultural artefacts. As new technological and legislative mechanisms are deployed to stop digital piracy, there is a need to reflect on the meaning of copyright, piracy and culture in the context of digital technologies. This paper discusses the relationship between copyright and cultural participation. It refers to the music industry in order to depict the changing patterns of consumption behavior precipitated by the rise of digital networks …
Valuing Intellectual Property: An Experiment, Christopher Buccafusco, Christopher Sprigman
Valuing Intellectual Property: An Experiment, Christopher Buccafusco, Christopher Sprigman
Faculty Scholarship
In this article we report on the results of an experiment we performed to determine whether transactions in intellectual property (IP) are subject to the valuation anomalies commonly referred to as “endowment effects”. Traditional conceptions of the value of IP rely on assumptions about human rationality derived from classical economics. The law assumes that when people make decisions about buying, selling, and licensing IP they do so with fixed, context-independent preferences. Over the past several decades, this rational actor model of classical economics has come under attack by behavioral data showing that people do not always make strictly rational decisions. …
Beyond Creativity: Copyright As Knowledge Law, Michael J. Madison
Beyond Creativity: Copyright As Knowledge Law, Michael J. Madison
Articles
The Supreme Court’s copyright jurisprudence of the last 100 years has embraced the creativity trope. Spurred in part by themes associated with the story of “romantic authorship” in the 19th and 20th centuries, copyright critiques likewise ask, “Who is creative?” “How should creativity be protected (or not) and encouraged (or not)?” and “ Why protect creativity?” Policy debates and scholarship in recent years have focused on the concept of creativity in framing copyright disputes, transactions, and institutions, reinforcing the notion that these are the central copyright questions. I suggest that this focus on the creativity trope is unhelpful. I argue …
Creativity And Craft, Michael J. Madison
Creativity And Craft, Michael J. Madison
Book Chapters
I revisit the distinction between intangible works of authorship and tangible objects, which is a fundamental proposition of modern copyright law. I suggest that reconsidering that distinction, at least in part, may expand the range of possibilities for aligning modern copyright as an economic construct with the historical roots of copyright and with ethical claims about authorial expression. Revisiting that distinction also may provide contemporary lawyers and policymakers with a much-needed tool for managing challenges posed by digital technology.