Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Law Commons

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Articles 1 - 21 of 21

Full-Text Articles in Law

Tollbooths And Newsstands On The Information Superhighway, Brad A. Greenberg Dec 2013

Tollbooths And Newsstands On The Information Superhighway, Brad A. Greenberg

Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review

Countering the perception that speech limitations affecting distribution necessarily reduce access to information, this Essay proffers that copyright expansions actually can increase access and thereby serve important copyright and First Amendment values. In doing so, this discussion contributes to the growing literature and two recent Supreme Court opinions discussing whether copyright law and First Amendment interests can coexist.


Propuestas Para Ampliar El Acceso A Los Bienes Públicos En Argentina Estableciendo El Necesario Balance Entre Derechos De Propiedad Intelectual Y Dominio Público, Maximiliano Marzetti Nov 2013

Propuestas Para Ampliar El Acceso A Los Bienes Públicos En Argentina Estableciendo El Necesario Balance Entre Derechos De Propiedad Intelectual Y Dominio Público, Maximiliano Marzetti

Maximiliano Marzetti

Aplicamos un sistema de propiedad intelectual nacido en los albores de la revolución industrial a una sociedad del conocimiento global. Un régimen de escasez artificial choca contra la abundancia digital. Es hora de reequilibrar el balance perdido entre medios y fines, a la altura de los tiempos digitales que corren.


Breaking The Vicious Circularity: Sony's Contribution To The Fair Use Doctrine, Frank Pasquale Aug 2013

Breaking The Vicious Circularity: Sony's Contribution To The Fair Use Doctrine, Frank Pasquale

Frank A. Pasquale

The fair use doctrine permits certain uses of copyrighted material that are unauthorized by the copyright holder. In 1984, the Supreme Court decided in Sony v. Universal Studios (Sony) that unauthorized home taping of television programs was a fair use of such programs. Decried by the dissent and frequently contested in ensuing cases, that decision sealed the majority's case that the videotape recorder was capable of substantial non-infringing uses and therefore legal. In the twenty years since Sony, the dissent's skepticism about the fairness of time-shifting has gotten about as warm a reception in appellate courts as the majority's position. …


(Visual) Art And Copyright : Copyright In Nonprint Media, Laura Quilter Jun 2013

(Visual) Art And Copyright : Copyright In Nonprint Media, Laura Quilter

Laura Quilter

No abstract provided.


Global Warming Trend? The Creeping Indulgence Of Fair Use In International Copyright Law, Richard Peltz-Steele Jun 2013

Global Warming Trend? The Creeping Indulgence Of Fair Use In International Copyright Law, Richard Peltz-Steele

Richard J. Peltz-Steele

In her article Toward an International Fair Use Doctrine in 2000, Professor Ruth Okediji hypothesized that the internationalization of copyright law would threaten the freedom of expression if some doctrine akin to U.S. “fair use” were not established as an international legal norm. Acknowledging the central concern of the Okediji article, this paper analyzes research and legal developments since that article to determine how the present state of the “fair use” concept in international copyright law differs from its state in 2000. The paper concludes that in the last eight years, though there has been no formal adoption of an …


Reclaiming Copyright From The Outside In: What The Downfall Hitler Meme Means For Transformative Works, Fair Use, And Parody, Aaron Schwabach May 2013

Reclaiming Copyright From The Outside In: What The Downfall Hitler Meme Means For Transformative Works, Fair Use, And Parody, Aaron Schwabach

Faculty Scholarship

¶Continuing advances in consumer information technology have made video editing, once difficult, into a relatively simple matter. The average consumer can easily create and edit videos, and post them online. Inevitably many of these posted videos incorporate existing copyrighted content, raising questions of infringement, derivative versus transformative use, fair use, and parody.¶ ¶This article looks at several such works, with its main focus on one category of examples: the Downfall Hitler meme. Downfall Hitler videos take as their starting point a particular sequence - Hitler's breakdown rant - from the 2004 German film Der Untergang [Downfall in the US]. The …


Brief Of Amicus Curiae Academic Authors And Legal Scholars In Support Of Defendants Appellees And Affirmance, Nos. 12-14676-Ff, 12-15147-Ff (April 25, 2013), David R. Hansen, Peter A. Jazsi, Pamela Samuelson, Jason Schultz, Rebecca Tushnet Apr 2013

Brief Of Amicus Curiae Academic Authors And Legal Scholars In Support Of Defendants Appellees And Affirmance, Nos. 12-14676-Ff, 12-15147-Ff (April 25, 2013), David R. Hansen, Peter A. Jazsi, Pamela Samuelson, Jason Schultz, Rebecca Tushnet

U.S. Supreme Court Briefs

No abstract provided.


Unauthorized Televised Debate Footage In Political Campaign Advertising: Fair Use And The Dmca, Susan Park Apr 2013

Unauthorized Televised Debate Footage In Political Campaign Advertising: Fair Use And The Dmca, Susan Park

Management Faculty Publications and Presentations

No abstract provided.


Fair Use And Education: The Way Forward, Peter Jaszi Apr 2013

Fair Use And Education: The Way Forward, Peter Jaszi

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

The ability to make reasonable fair use of copyrighted material is both economically and culturally important to the enterprise of education. No other feature of copyright laws offers educators access of the same potential scope. In asserting fair use, teachers, librarians, and others cannot rely on a claim of "economic exceptionalism, "for which there is no clear basis in U.S. copyright law. Nor can they expect to arrive at satisfactory shared understandings with copyright owners. Instead, they should seek to take advantage of current trends in copyright case law, including the marked trend toward preferring uses that are "transformative," where …


Rohauer Revisited: "Rear Window," Copyright Reversions, Renewals, Terminations, Derivative Works And Fair Use , Richard Colby Jan 2013

Rohauer Revisited: "Rear Window," Copyright Reversions, Renewals, Terminations, Derivative Works And Fair Use , Richard Colby

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.


You Can’T Go Home Again: The Righthaven Cases And Copyright Trolling On The Internet, Ian Polonsky Jan 2013

You Can’T Go Home Again: The Righthaven Cases And Copyright Trolling On The Internet, Ian Polonsky

Kernochan Center for Law, Media, and the Arts

In the Norwegian folktale Three Billy Goats Gruff, three goats seeking to get fat on the greener pastures of a distant hillside were stopped at the foot of a bridge by a “great ugly troll, with eyes as big as saucers, and a nose as long as a poker.” The troll allowed the first two goats to pass when they assured him of a larger goat to come. Unfortunately, the troll bit off more than he could chew: the third goat was larger than the troll and not the least bit intimidated. The goat launched himself at the troll …


Surveying Recent Scholarship On Fair Use: A Conversation, Jessica M. Silbey Jan 2013

Surveying Recent Scholarship On Fair Use: A Conversation, Jessica M. Silbey

Jessica Silbey

A conversation about recent books discussing copyright fair use with Rebecca Tushnet, Peter Decherney and Bill Herman.


Basic Copyright Exceptions For Educators, Bryan M. Carson Jan 2013

Basic Copyright Exceptions For Educators, Bryan M. Carson

Bryan M. Carson

Published by the Faculty Center for Excellence in Teaching at Western Kentucky University, this work provides a basic overview of some of the copyright issues that college faculty regularly encounter. The booklet is written in plain language for a non-legal audience. It covers issues related to fair use, the education and library exceptions to copyright and the T.E.A.C.H. Act. The booklet also explains some of the legal rules for performing and displaying materials, films, and musical works in face-to-face and online classes. The booklet also discusses the relationship between copyright and plagiarism, and suggests ways of teaching students about both …


Fixing Copyright In Three Impossible Steps: Review Of How To Fix Copyright By William Patry, Mark Mckenna Jan 2013

Fixing Copyright In Three Impossible Steps: Review Of How To Fix Copyright By William Patry, Mark Mckenna

Journal Articles

This review of William Patry’s How to Fix Copyright highlights three of Patry's themes. First is Patry’s insistence that copyright policy be based on real-world evidence, a suggestion that should be uncontroversial but instead runs headlong into the near-religious commitments of copyright stakeholders. Second is Patry’s emphasis on the difference between the interests of creators, on the one hand, and owners of copyright interests, on the other. Third, and finally, is Patry’s focus on the copyright system’s strong tendency to entrench business models and resist change, particularly in the face of new technology.


Confusion Isn't Everything, Mark Mckenna, William Mcgeveran Jan 2013

Confusion Isn't Everything, Mark Mckenna, William Mcgeveran

Journal Articles

The typical shorthand justification for trademark rights centers on avoiding consumer confusion. But in truth, this encapsulation mistakes a method for a purpose: confusion merely serves as an indicator of the underlying problems that trademark law seeks to prevent. Other areas of law accept confusion or mistake of all kinds, intervening only when those errors lead to more serious harms. Likewise, every theory of trademark rights considers confusion troubling solely because it threatens more fundamental values such as fair competition or informative communication. In other words, when it comes to the deep purposes of trademark law, confusion isn’t everything. Yet …


The Concept Of 'Harm' In Copyright, Wendy J. Gordon Jan 2013

The Concept Of 'Harm' In Copyright, Wendy J. Gordon

Faculty Scholarship

This essay examines the tort of copyright infringement. It argues that the ideas of "harm" and "fault" already play a role in the tort’s functioning, and that an ideally reformulated version of the tort should perhaps give a more significant role to “harm.” The essay therefore examines what “harm” can or should mean, reviewing four candidates for cognizable harm in copyright law (rivalry-based losses, foregone fees, loss of exclusivity, and subjective distress) and canvassing three philosophical conceptions of "harm" (counterfactual, historical-worsening, and noncomparative). The essay identifies the appropriateness vel non of employing, in the copyright context, each harm-candidate and each …


Google Books: Game, Set, But Not Match, James Gibson Jan 2013

Google Books: Game, Set, But Not Match, James Gibson

Law Faculty Publications

It’s back: Google Books, our favorite topic in this Intellectual Property Viewpoints series. Google Books is the project through which Google has brought its search capability to the text of more than 20 millions books (with the number still growing). To do so, Google must scan the book and convert the scan to readable text. And there’s the problem: Scanning is copying, and copying raises the question of whether the massive project is a massive violation of the copyrights in all those books. Thus the Authors Guild v. Google class action brought by authors and publishers against Google in a …


Copyright, Custom, And Lessons From The Common Law, Jennifer E. Rothman Jan 2013

Copyright, Custom, And Lessons From The Common Law, Jennifer E. Rothman

All Faculty Scholarship

In this essay prepared for the University of Pennsylvania’s conference on Intellectual Property and the Common Law, I build upon my work on custom and intellectual property. I focus here on one important facet of the subject — how longstanding common law principles should inform our understanding of custom. The common law provides a number of lessons on how to appropriately limit the consideration of custom in intellectual property law and elsewhere. The essay begins by considering the traditional role of custom in the common law. Part II then examines several of the ways that courts have incorporated custom into …


Commentary, Critical Legal Theory In Intellectual Property And Information Law Scholarship, Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal Spring Symposium, Sonia K. Katyal, Peter Goodrich Jan 2013

Commentary, Critical Legal Theory In Intellectual Property And Information Law Scholarship, Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal Spring Symposium, Sonia K. Katyal, Peter Goodrich

Faculty Scholarship

The very definition and scope of CLS (critical legal studies) is itself subject to debate. Some scholars characterize CLS as scholarship that employs a particular methodology—more of a “means” than an “end.” On the other hand, some scholars contend that CLS scholarship demonstrates a collective commitment to a political end goal—an emancipation of sorts —through the identification of, and resistance to, exploitative power structures that are reinforced through law and legal institutions. After a brief golden age, CLS scholarship was infamously marginalized in legal academia and its sub-disciplines. But CLS themes now appear to be making a resurgence—at least in …


Judges As Bad Reviewers: Fair Use And Epistemological Humility, Rebecca Tushnet Jan 2013

Judges As Bad Reviewers: Fair Use And Epistemological Humility, Rebecca Tushnet

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The future of fair use depends on whether judges act like bad reviewers, or whether they behave differently in interpreting challenged works than they do in almost every other aspect of judging. Ordinarily, judges are asked to produce definitive answers about the meanings of texts. But when it comes to literary judgments, the bad reviewer is the one who insists that a work has only one meaning, and announces the bottom line as if it were an absolute. A good reviewer explains the sources of her judgment, making room for other interpretations. This is also what is necessary to a …


Make Me Walk, Make Me Talk, Do Whatever You Please: Barbie And Exceptions, Rebecca Tushnet Jan 2013

Make Me Walk, Make Me Talk, Do Whatever You Please: Barbie And Exceptions, Rebecca Tushnet

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Barbie represents an aspiration to an ideal and also a never-ending mutability. Barbie is the perfect woman, and she is also grotesque, plasticized hyperreality, presenting a femininity exaggerated to the point of caricature. Barbie’s marketplace success, combined with (and likely related to) her overlapping and contradictory meanings, also allow her to embody some key exceptions to copyright and trademark law. Though Mattel’s lawsuits were not responsible for the initial recognition of those exceptions, they illuminate key principles and contrasts in American law. Mattel attempted to use both copyright and trademark to control the meaning of Barbie, reflecting a trend towards …