Law Commons^™

Copyright Law And Photocopying Practice In Nigeria, Glory Onoyeyan

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal)

The protection of copyright is an obligation of nations in order to promote and encourage innovation and creativity The copyright law gives the owner of copyrighted work the exclusive right to control the reproduction of copyrighted works. This right, however, does not bestow on the copyright owner an absolute monopoly to control access to copyrighted information. The paper highlighted that illegal photocopying practice of copyrighted work is damaging to the rights of owners of copyrighted materials as it stifles creativity, innovation and development, and the introduction of the doctrine of ‘fair use’ is aimed at balancing the exclusive rights of …

Foreign Authors' Enforcement Of U.S. Reversion Rights, Jane C. Ginsburg

Faculty Scholarship

Thank you to all of the participants, and especially the first two panelists, for setting one part of the scene. I am going to talk about the United States’ termination right and some Berne and private international law consequences or implications of the termination right.

First, however, I’d like to advert to the two goals Rebecca Giblin referenced in her talk. One is remuneration, the other is dissemination. Author-protective laws in other countries also address dissemination. As Séverine Dusollier mentioned, a number of national laws include an obligation to exploit the work: if the publisher does not exploit the work, …

Paypal Is New Money: Extending Secondary Copyright Liability Safe Harbors To Online Payment Processors, Erika Douglas

Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) has shaped the Internet as we know it. This legislation shields online service providers from secondary copyright infringement liability in exchange for takedown of infringing content of their users. Yet online payment processors, the backbone of $300 billion in U.S. e-commerce, are completely outside of the DMCA’s protection. This Article uses PayPal, the most popular online payment company in the U.S., to illustrate the growing risk of secondary liability for payment processors. First it looks at jurisprudence that expands secondary copyright liability online, and explains how it might be applied to PayPal. Then it …

Three Strikes For Copyright, Jessica Silbey

Faculty Scholarship

How should copyright law change to take account of the internet? Should copyright expand to plug the internet’s leakiness and protect content that the internet would otherwise make more freely available? Or, should copyright relax its strict liability regime given diverse and productive reuses in the internet age and the benefits networked diffusion provides users and second-generation creators? Answering these questions depends on what we think copyright is for and how it is used and confronted by creators and audiences. In a new article studying these questions in the very focused setting of Wikipedia articles about baseball and baseball players …

Section 108 Of Title 17: A Discussion Document Of The Register Of Copyrights, Chris Weston, Aurelia J. Schultz, Emily M. Lanza, Michelle Choe, Karyn Temple Claggett

Copyright, Fair Use, Scholarly Communication, etc.

The objective of the discussion document is: to review the issues raised over the past decade of revision work; to outline the Office’s current views and proposals on the various revision issues; and to present and explain model statutory language for a new section 108. Although the model statutory language should not be seen as the Office’s final view on section 108, the Office believes that it is important to provide a more concrete framework for further discussion. Additionally, the Discussion Document includes copious illustrative examples of how the Office envisions the proposals might work in practice.

CONCLUSION

Libraries, archives, …

Art Crimes?: Theoretical Perspectives On Copyright Protection For Illegally-Created Graffiti Art, Jamison Davies

Maine Law Review

This paper begins by examining whether illegally-created graffiti art is entitled to copyright protection under the current copyright law. Analogies are made to other forms of unwanted expression, fraud and obscenity, and their historical and current copyright status. The remainder of the paper uses graffiti art as a lens through which to examine various theoretical explanations of copyright, both as descriptive theories of production and as normative theories of protection.

Cheddar, Not Swiss: A Director’S Interest In Copyright, Amanda Schwartz

Seton Hall Circuit Review

No abstract provided.

Internet Tv: (Hopefully) Coming To A Computer Screen Near You, Nicholas Pellegrino

Seton Hall Circuit Review

No abstract provided.

Who Owns Our Ancestors Voices? Tribal Claims To Pre-72 Sound Recordings, Trevor Reed

Kernochan Center for Law, Media, and the Arts

A familiar story is told in Indian Country: a researcher arrives on a Native American reservation and begins recording ceremonial songs and oral histories; years later tribal members find, often to their horror, that these sensitive materials are available for sale, download, or streaming to the public. This scenario aptly describes the life of numerous sound recordings made on federally recognized Indian reservations prior to 1972, whose ownership status remains uninterrogated due to the complex overlap and ambiguities of copyright and federal Indian law. Yet recently, owing to an increased sense of self-determination and autonomy, Native American tribes have begun …

Doyle Homes, Inc. V. Signature Group Of Livingston, Inc., Daniel Ursomanno

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

Clarifying Uncertainty: Why We Need A Small Claims Copyright Court, John Zuercher

Marquette Intellectual Property Law Review

This article is concerned with the question of whether copyright law in the United States is currently equipped to achieve its original goal, set within the U.S. Constitution, to promote innovation and progress. This article suggests that copyright law is not equipped to achieve this goal because a paradox inherent in copyright law is hindering copyright litigation and causing uncertainty. The paradox is found in 17 U.S.C. § 106, which protects transformative works that are derivative, and 17 U.S.C. § 107, which protects transformative works as fair use. Ideally, the federal courts would solve this dilemma by interpreting the appropriate …

Copyright Paternalism, Kevin J. Hickey

Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law

The dominant justification for copyright is based on the notion that authors respond rationally to economic incentives. Despite the dominance of this incentive model, many aspects of existing copyright law are best understood as motivated by paternalism. Termination rights permit authors to rescind their own earlier assignments of copyright. The elimination of formalities protects careless authors from forfeitures of copyright if they fail to register the copyright or place appropriate notice on their works. The law limits how copyrights can be transferred, when rights in emerging media can be assigned, and which works can be designated as "made for hire" …

U.S. State Copyright Laws: Challenge And Potential, Marketa Trimble

Scholarly Works

With copyright law in the United States lying primarily in the realm of federal law, the laws of the U.S. states concerning copyright do not typically attract significant attention from scholars, practitioners, and policy makers. Some recent events have drawn attention to state copyright laws – for example, litigation against a satellite radio provider for infringement of state common-law public performance rights in pre-1972 sound recordings. However, in general, state copyright laws remain largely in the shadow of federal copyright law, and state law is typically not viewed as a particularly useful vehicle for pursuing the policies that copyright law …

Varsity Brands, Inc. V. Star Athletica, Llc, Alexandra Spina

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

Fetishizing Copies, Jessica Litman

Book Chapters

Our copyright laws encourage authors to create new works and communicate them to the public, because we hope that people will read the books, listen to the music, see the art, watch the films, run the software, and build and inhabit the buildings. That is the way that copyright promotes the Progress of Science. Recently, that not-very-controversial principle has collided with copyright owners’ conviction that they should be able to control, or at least collect royalties from, all uses of their works. A particularly ill-considered manifestation of this conviction is what I have decided to call copy-fetish. This is the …

16 Casa Duse, Llc V. Merkin, Abbey Gauger

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

‘Courts Have Twisted Themselves Into Knots’ (And The Twisted Knots Remain To Untangle): Us Copyright Protection For Applied Art After Star Athletica, Jane C. Ginsburg

Faculty Scholarship

Domestic and international law makers have struggled to determine whether, and to what extent, copyright law should cover works that are both artistic and functional. American courts' application of a statutory “separability” standard has become so convoluted that the U.S. Supreme Court has decided an appeal from a case in which the appellate court expressed the lament quoted in the title of this Chapter. The Chapter will review the genesis and application of the statutory standard, especially in the Supreme Court’s decision in Star Athletica v. Varsity Brands (2017), and, having concluded that the Supreme Court has failed to untangle …

The Role Of The Author In Copyright, Jane C. Ginsburg

Faculty Scholarship

Two encroachments, one long-standing, the other a product of the digital era, cramp the author’s place in copyright today. First, most authors lack bargaining power; the real economic actors in the copyright system have long been the publishers and other exploiters to whom authors cede their rights. These actors may advance the figure of the author for the moral luster it lends their appeals to lawmakers, but then may promptly despoil the creators of whatever increased protections they may have garnered. Second, the advent of new technologies of creation and dissemination of works of authorship not only threatens traditional revenue …

Copyright--My Story: A One-Woman Play, Corey Field

Journal of Intellectual Property Law

No abstract provided.

The Promise And Peril Of Collective Listening, Whitney Broussard

Journal of Intellectual Property Law

No abstract provided.

Digital-Age Claims For Old-World Rights, Joseph M. Beck, Allison M. Scott

Journal of Intellectual Property Law

No abstract provided.

Symposium Introduction, Bertis Downs

Journal of Intellectual Property Law

No abstract provided.

Exclusive Groove: How Modern Substantial Similarity Law Invites Attenuated Infringement Claims At The Expense Of Innovation And Sustainability In The Music Industry, Mark Kuivila

University of Miami Law Review

As of 2015, the American entertainment market was worth about $600 billion, and it is projected to substantially exceed that figure in coming years. The global entertainment industry is worth about $2 trillion, meaning the U.S. is responsible for over a quarter of total global entertainment revenue. These statistics illustrate the staggering impact of the American entertainment industry on the global markets for film, television, and music. The American music industry is particularly dominant in its global market, earning half of world-wide sync revenues and accounting for nearly a third of all global music revenue. Entertainment is clearly the United …

A Comparative Law Perspective On Intermediaries' Direct Liability In Cloud Computing Context -- A Proposal For China, Shi Xu

Maurer Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation is motivated by two questions: How does the emergence of cloud-computing technology impact major countries’ copyright law regarding the issue of intermediaries’ direct liability? What should Chinese legislature body learn from those countries regarding this issue? Answering the first question lays a foundation for answering the second question.

Usually, a cloud-computing intermediary’s specific activity may possess risk of violating a copyright holder’s right of reproduction, right of communication to the public and right of distribution. Comparatively, that intermediary can raise defenses under the exhaustion doctrine and the fair use doctrine. Analysis on these two topics consists of two …

Judging Expertise In Copyright Law, William K. Ford

Journal of Intellectual Property Law

No abstract provided.

A Panoptic Approach To Information Policy: Utilizing A More Balanced Theory Of Property In Order To Ensure The Existence Of A Prodigious Public Domain, Christine D. Galbraith

Journal of Intellectual Property Law

No abstract provided.

Innovation Heuristics: Experiments On Sequential Creativity In Intellectual Property, Stefan Bechtold, Christopher Buccafusco, Christopher Jon Sprigman

Indiana Law Journal

All creativity and innovation build on existing ideas. Authors and inventors copy, adapt, improve, interpret, and refine the ideas that have come before them. The central task of intellectual property (IP) law is regulating this sequential innovation to ensure that initial creators and subsequent creators receive the appropriate sets of incentives. Although many scholars have applied the tools of economic analysis to consider whether IP law is successful in encouraging cumulative innovation, that work has rested on a set of untested assumptions about creators’ behavior. This Article reports four novel creativity experiments that begin to test those assumptions. In particular, …

“Going Viral” By Stealing Content: Can The Law Cure The Problem Of Viral Content Farming?, Sara Gates

Fordham Intellectual Property, Media and Entertainment Law Journal

Part I introduces the concept of viral content farming, examines its origins, points out how it differs from aggregation, and consid-ers the purpose behind the practice. The Part looks at how compa-nies such as Google and Facebook have responded, and examines the overall impact on journalism and the Internet. Part II presents a possible ethical solution within the journalism industry and consid-ers resolutions in the law by describing the “hot news” misappro-priation doctrine and copyright law. Part III scrutinizes three pro-posals and discusses why copyright law is the most appropriate solution to the problem, then analyzes content farming within the …

A Comparison Of Ontario's Accessibility For Ontarians With Disabilities Act And The Canadian Copyright Act: Compliance, Enforcement, Risks, And The Implications For Ontario Community Colleges, Meaghan Shannon

Master of Studies in Law Research Papers Repository

The Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act [AODA] confers rights of accessibility by detailing how individuals and organizations offering goods and services should comply and monitoring compliance through the Accessibility Directorate of Ontario. By contrast, the federal Copyright Act confers rights upon authors and other rights owners without detailing how users of works and other materials can achieve compliance with the Act and without establishing an administrative body to monitor compliance. This research, through a case study of a community college, compares and contrasts the implications of the two different legislative styles in terms of the risks borne by affected …

Copyright And Contract Law: Economic Theory Of Copyright Contracts, Richard Watt

Journal of Intellectual Property Law

No abstract provided.