Law Commons^™

The Dangers Of The Digital Millennium Copyright Act: Much Ado About Nothing?, Steve P. Calandrillo, Ewa A. Davison

Articles

In 1998, Congress passed the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), a landmark piece of legislation aimed at protecting copyright holders from those who might manufacture or traffic technology capable of allowing users to evade piracy protections on the underlying work. At its core, the DMCA flatly prohibits the circumvention of “technological protection measures” in order to gain access to copyrighted works, but provides no safety valve for any traditionally protected uses.

While hailed as a victory by the software and entertainment industries, the academic and scientific communities ties have been far less enthusiastic. The DMCA’s goal of combating piracy is …

Intellectual Property And Americana, Or Why Ip Gets The Blues, Michael J. Madison

Articles

This essay, prepared as part of a Symposium on intellectual property law and business models, suggests the re-examination of the role of intellectual property law in the persistence of cultural forms of all sorts, including (but not limited to) business models. Some argue that the absence of intellectual property law inhibits the emergence of durable or persistent cultural forms; copyright and patent regimes are justified precisely because they supply foundations for durability. The essay tests that proposition via brief reviews of three persistent but very different cultural models, each of which represents a distinct form of American culture: The Rocky …