Law Commons^™

Fair Use As A Market Facilitator, Miriam Marcowitz-Bitton, Dan Bombach

Akron Law Review

The Digital Age has enabled individuals worldwide to store, organize, and share everything from cherished memories embodied in photographs and videos to academic writing and correspondence. Yet, archived collections of academic, public, and private libraries are out of reach to many, and many books are now beyond reach because they are no longer in print. The high cost of digitization exacerbates these challenges.

In 2004, Google Inc. responded to these issues by announcing a project to scan and digitize the collections of several leading universities and public libraries (the “Google Books” project). The project offered users the opportunity to search …

Fox V. Dish Network: Sony Betamax And The Ninth Circuit's Failure To Ad-Skip To The Future, Alexander E. Porter

Akron Intellectual Property Journal

Although fair use is a fact-specific doctrine, the court equated the facts of Fox v. Dish Network to Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios, Inc. in order to avoid addressing both issues. This Note argues that if the Ninth Circuit had conducted a more in-depth fair use analysis, it would have found that Sony was less controlling than the court purported it to be, and that the use of Dish’s PTAT does not constitute fair use.

Part II of this Note discusses the doctrine of fair use, its application in Sony, and how the ruling of …

If Hip-Hop Were Classified And The Pentagon Papers Had Been Copyrighted: An Analysis Of Whether The Fair Use Defense In Copyright Law Is Broad Enough To Protect First Amendment Concerns, Sean Buchanan

Akron Intellectual Property Journal

This paper will show that copyright law conflicts with the First Amendment in that the fair use doctrine is insufficient to protect the fundamental rights and interests that underlie the First Amendment's protection of speech. To do this, the paper will examine three primary justifications of the First Amendment: individual liberty, the marketplace of ideas, and political participation. The paper will also analyze multiple situations, in which parties bring copyright suits and the defendants claim fair use, to determine whether the fair use doctrine protects the First Amendment. This paper will show that if one accepts either a marketplace of …

The Effects Of The Fair Use Doctrine On Text-Book Publishing And Copying; Part Ii, Roger Billings

Akron Law Review

Although not expressly authorized by law, it has, through custom, become regarded as a fair use for scholars to make handwritten copies of copyrighted materials needed for research. The basis for allowing hand-copying is that it is such a slow, tedious method of reproduction that scholars usually choose to purchase the complete work rather than to hand-copy excerpts from it. Consequently, hand-copying does not significantly reduce publishers' sales. However, this reasoning obviously cannot be applied to photocopying. As photocopying, a fast and convenient process, becomes cheaper than buying the book, when a professor desires to make a complete volume for …