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The Leading Edge, V. 1, Issue 1, Fall 2009
The Leading Edge, V. 1, Issue 1, Fall 2009
The Leading Edge: the Newsletter of the University of Maryland School of Law's Leadership, Ethics and Democracy Initiative
No abstract provided.
The Ethical Visions Of Copyright Law, James Grimmelmann
The Ethical Visions Of Copyright Law, James Grimmelmann
Faculty Scholarship
This symposium essay explores the imagined ethics of copyright: the ethical stories that people tell to justify, make sense of, and challenge copyright law. Such ethical visions are everywhere in intellectual property discourse, and legal scholarship ought to pay more attention to them. The essay focuses on a deontic vision of reciprocity in the author-audience relationship, a set of linked claims that authors and audiences ought to respect each other and express this respect through voluntary transactions.
Versions of this default ethical vision animate groups as seemingly antagonistic as the music industry, file sharers, free software advocates, and Creative Commons. …