Law Commons^™

A Matter Of Facts: The Evolution Of Copyright’S Fact-Exclusion And Its Implications For Disinformation And Democracy, Jessica Silbey

Faculty Scholarship

The Article begins with a puzzle: the curious absence of an express fact-exclusion from copyright protection in both the Copyright Act and its legislative history despite it being a well-founded legal principle. It traces arguments in the foundational Supreme Court case (Feist Publications v. Rural Telephone Service) and in the Copyright Act’s legislative history to discern a basis for the fact-exclusion. That research trail produces a legal genealogy of the fact-exclusion based in early copyright common law anchored by canonical cases, Baker v. Selden, Burrow-Giles v. Sarony, and Wheaton v. Peters. Surprisingly, none of them …

Perlindungan Hukum Terhadap Virtual Model (Cad Files) Untuk 3d Printing Ditinjau Dari Perspektif Hak Cipta Dan Tentang Desain Industri, Gusti Karina Saraswati

"Dharmasisya” Jurnal Program Magister Hukum FHUI

The existence of 3D Printing and CAD Files has great potential to conflict with the protection of intellectual property rights, especially copyright and industrial design. It is undeniable that in the future this technology will flourish in Indonesia. 3D Printing can change the market ecosystem where people are not selling products but selling virtual models (CAD Files). This ecosystem will have an impact on designers and companies, so they will try to protect their CAD Files from modification and copying by other parties. The legal problem of this research is to answer the question of the form of protection for …

Pengelolaan Royalti Dari Pencipta Lagu Yang Tidak Terdaftar Di Lembaga Manajemen Kolektif Oleh Lembaga Manajemen Kolektif Nasional, Mohamad Thaufiq Rachman

"Dharmasisya” Jurnal Program Magister Hukum FHUI

Royalty is a reward received by the author or owner of the related right concerning the utilization of their Economic Rights following Article 1 point 21 of Law No. 28, 2014 regarding Copyright ("UUHC 2014"). Royalty could also be interpreted as a form of appreciation for the Author's Works, such as song and/or music. Encouraging the spirit of industry players, including songwriters, is essential for continuous growth. As mentioned in the general explanation section of UUHC 2014, Copyright is the most important basis of the national creative economy. With the fulfillment of the protection and development of this creative economy, …

Perlindungan Hak Cipta Terhadap Penggandaan Permainan Video (Copyright Protection Against Video Game Copying), Ahmad Fajri Wibowo

"Dharmasisya” Jurnal Program Magister Hukum FHUI

Copyright protection provides legal protection to creative industries. One of the creative industries that need to be protected is the video game industry. The development of video games in Indonesia is very fast, therefore legal protection is needed to maintain the development of the video game industry. Basically a video game is an object of creation contained in Law Number 28 of 2014 concerning copyright. In the development of the video game industry, there are problems that occur such as the number of illegal copies of video games. Thus, copyright protection plays a very important role in maintaining the video …

Perlindungan Hukum Atas Ulos Sebagai Ekspresi Budaya Tradisional, Yoshua Ruselvelt P Sidabutar

"Dharmasisya” Jurnal Program Magister Hukum FHUI

Traditional cultural expressions are a way of life for the Indonesian nation that teaches traditions, wisdom, values, communal knowledge packaged and passed on to posterity through tales, legends, arts and ceremonies which gradually form the social norms and way of life of the Indonesian nation. Indonesia is a country that consists of various tribes and cultures so that it has priceless Traditional Cultural Expressions and really needs to be protected. One form of traditional cultural expression in Indonesia is ulos cloth, which is a fabric product that is known internationally. This research uses juridical-normative legal research, where in collecting writing …

Perlindungan Hak Cipta Atas Konten Webinar Serta Akibat Hukum Merekam Dan Menggungah Konten Webinar Tanpa Persetujuan, Nabila Nabila

"Dharmasisya” Jurnal Program Magister Hukum FHUI

The Covid-19 pandemic period has changed the pattern of daily activities from normal to new normal. For example, seminars, which are usually, conducted face-to-face, change to online or what are known as webinars. The legal aspect that is closely related to webinars is the legal aspect of copyright. Organizing online seminars is considered easier because neither the participants nor the speakers need to leave the house to continue carrying out the seminar. Supported by technological developments, this webinar can also be recorded so that participants who are late for the webinar can still know the material presented through the recorded …

Perlindungan Hukum Terhadap Bentuk Fiksasi Dalam Karya Musik Berdasarkan Perkembangan Undang-Undang Hak Cipta, Boy Brian E.S

"Dharmasisya” Jurnal Program Magister Hukum FHUI

This journal aims to discuss the protection of copyright law against tapes converted into the form of a sound recording or a tool shaped CD (Compact Disc), in addition it is to discuss how enforcement against violations fixation in a piece of music that is poured into a recording tool so that it can be enjoyed through the CD. This journal will discuss about the forms of piracy which often occur in the field of copyright songs and music. In this journal will be discussed also about violations in the field of copyright songs or music that will be penalized …

Copyright And Disability, Blake E. Reid

Publications

A vast array of copyrighted works—books, video programming, software, podcasts, video games, and more—remain inaccessible to people with disabilities. International efforts to adopt limitations and exceptions to copyright law that permit third parties to create and distribute accessible versions of books for people with print disabilities have drawn some attention to the role that copyright law plays in inhibiting the accessibility of copyrighted works. However, copyright scholars have not meaningfully engaged with the role that copyright law plays in the broader tangle of disability rights.

Poland’S Challenge To Eu Directive 2019/790: Standing Up To The Destruction Of European Freedom Of Expression, Michaela Cloutier

Dickinson Law Review (2017-Present)

In 2019, the European Parliament and Council passed Directive 2019/790. The Directive’s passage marked the end of a fouryear- long legislative attempt to impose more liability for copyright violations on Online Service Providers, an effort which was controversial from the start. Online Service Providers fear that the 2019 Directive, especially its Article 17, will completely change the structure of liability on the Internet, forcing providers to adopt expensive content filtering systems. Free speech advocates fear that ineffective filtering technology will infringe upon Internet users’ rights to express themselves, and legal scholars have pointed out the Directive’s inconsistency with prior European …

Privative Copyright, Shyamkrishna Balganesh

All Faculty Scholarship

“Privative” copyright claims are infringement actions brought by authors for the unauthorized public dissemination of works that are private, unpublished, and revelatory of the author’s personal identity. Driven by considerations of authorial autonomy, dignity, and personality rather than monetary value, these claims are almost as old as Anglo-American copyright law itself. Yet modern thinking has attempted to undermine their place within copyright law and sought to move them into the domain of privacy law. This Article challenges the dominant view and argues that privative copyright claims form a legitimate part of the copyright landscape. It shows how privative copyright claims …

Copyright & Fashion: The Shoe That Does Not Fit, Cassandra Baloga

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

Copyright As Legal Process: The Transformation Of American Copyright Law, Shyamkrishna Balganesh

Faculty Scholarship

American copyright law has undergone an unappreciated conceptual transformation over the course of the last century. Originally conceived of as a form of private law – focusing on horizontal rights, privileges and private liability – copyright law is today understood principally through its public-regarding goals and institutional apparatus, in effect as a form of public law. This transformation is the result of changes in the ideas of law and law-making that occurred in American legal thinking following World War II, manifested in the deeply influential philosophy of the Legal Process School of jurisprudence which shaped the modern American copyright landscape. …

Against Progress: Interventions About Equality In Supreme Court Cases About Copyright Law, Jessica Silbey

Faculty Scholarship

This symposium essay is adapted from my forthcoming book Against Progress: Intellectual Property and Fundamental Values in the Internet Age (Stanford University Press 2021 forthcoming). The book’s primary argument is that, with the rise of digital technology and the ubiquity of the internet, intellectual property law is becoming a mainstream part of law and culture. This mainstreaming of IP has particular effects, one of which is the surfacing of on-going debates about “progress of science and the useful arts,” which is the constitutional purpose of intellectual property rights.

In brief, Against Progress describes how in the 20th century intellectual property …

Copyright As Legal Process: The Transformation Of American Copyright Law, Shyamkrishna Balganesh

All Faculty Scholarship

American copyright law has undergone an unappreciated conceptual transformation over the course of the last century. Originally conceived of as a form of private law—focusing on horizontal rights, privileges and private liability—copyright law is today understood principally through its public-regarding goals and institutional apparatus, in effect as a form of public law. This transformation is the result of changes in the ideas of law and law-making that occurred in American legal thinking following World War II, manifested in the deeply influential philosophy of the Legal Process School of jurisprudence which shaped the modern American copyright landscape. In the Legal Process …

What Are We To Do With Deposit Copies?, Sadie Zurfluh

Marquette Intellectual Property Law Review

One of the problems courts are faced with today is determining what happens with unpublished works registered under the 1909 Act: can only the sheet music filed with the deposit copy come into evidence when comparing two works as substantially similar? In 2015, the district court in Williams v. Gaye addressed the issue; however, the Ninth Circuit declined to decide the issue on appeal.8 Later in 2018, in Skidmore v. Zeppelin (“Skidmore”), the Ninth Circuit concluded that when dealing with unpublished works under the 1909 Act, the deposit copy defines the scope of the copyright. Part I of this comment …

Justifying Copyright In The Age Of Digital Reproduction: The Case Of Photographers, Jessica Silbey

Faculty Scholarship

This Article explores the justification for copyright from two sources: seminal court cases and accounts from photographic authors. It takes as its premise that copyright protection requires justification, not only because creative work is frequently made and disseminated without reliance on copyright, but because, in the age of digital technology, practices of creative production and dissemination have sufficiently changed to question the existing contours of the forty-year-old Copyright Act. Why read the photographers’ stories alongside the court cases? Each present contested views of copyright’s relation to creativity. At times, the photographers’ accounts and the case law strengthen and reinforce each …

Control Over Contemporary Photography: A Tangle Of Copyright, Right Of Publicity, And The First Amendment, Jessica Silbey

Faculty Scholarship

Professional photographers who make photographs of people negotiate a tense relationship between their own creative freedoms and the right of their subjects to control their images. This negotiation formally takes place over the terrain of copyright, right of publicity, and the First Amendment. Informally, photographers describe implied understandings and practice norms guiding their relationship with subjects, infrequently memorialized in short, boilerplate contractual releases. This short essay explores these formal and informal practices described by contemporary professional photographers. Although the evidence for this essay comes from professional photographic practice culled from interviews with contemporary photographers, the analysis of the evidence speaks …

What Notice Did, Jessica Litman

Jessica Litman

In this article, I explore the effect of the copyright notice prerequisite on the law's treatment of copyright ownership. The notice prerequisite, as construed by the courts, encouraged the development of legal doctrines that herded the ownership of copyrights into the hands of publishers and other intermediaries, notwithstanding statutory provisions that seem to have been designed at least in part to enable authors to keep their copyrights. Because copyright law required notice, other doctrinal developments were shaped by and distorted by that requirement. The promiscuous alienability of U.S. copyrights may itself have been an accidental development deriving from courts' constructions …

Two Comparative Perspectives On Copyright's Past And Future In The Digital Age, Timothy K. Armstrong

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

A review of two recent scholarly books on digital copyright law: The Copyright Wars: Three Centuries of Trans-Atlantic Battle by Peter Baldwin (Princeton, 2014), and Copyfight: The Global Politics of Digital Copyright Reform by Blayne Haggart (Univ. of Toronto, 2014). Both books are meticulously researched and carefully written, and each makes an excellent addition to the literature on copyright. Contrasting both titles in this joint review, however, helps to reveal a few respects in which each work is incomplete; indeed, at times each book reads as a critique of the other.

Baldwin's The Copyright Wars argues that modern debates over …

The Effect Of The 1886 Berne Convention On The U.S. Copyright System's Treatment Of Moral Rights And Copyright Term, And Where That Leaves Us Today, Samuel Jacobs

Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review

The 1886 Berne Convention was the most influential copyright related treaty for over a century, and provided important minimum substantive protections for authors. Key provisions included the establishment of the principle of National Treatment, the abolishment of formalities in order to receive copyright protection, a required copyright term of life of the author plus fifty years, and most offensive to the U.S. copyright system, the mandate that signatories provide authors non-economic moral rights. Despite the international importance and widespread acceptance of the Berne Convention, the U.S. did not join the Convention for over one hundred years, making it one of …

Silent Similarity, Jessica Litman

Jessica Litman

From 1909 to 1930, U.S. courts grappled with claims by authors of prose works claiming that works in a new art form -- silent movies -- had infringed their copyrights. These cases laid the groundwork for much of modern copyright law, from their broad expansion of the reproduction right, to their puzzled grappling with the question how to compare works in dissimilar media, to their confusion over what sort of evidence should be relevant to show copyrightability, copying and infringement. Some of those cases – in particular, Nichols v. Universal Pictures – are canonical today. They are not, however, well-understood. …

The Evolution Of The Digital Millennium Copyright Act; Changing Interpretations Of The Dmca And Future Implications For Copyright Holders, Hillary A. Henderson

Hillary A Henderson

Copyright law rewards an artificial monopoly to individual authors for their creations. This reward is based on the belief that, by granting authors the exclusive right to reproduce their works, they receive an incentive and means to create, which in turn advances the welfare of the general public by “promoting the progress of science and useful arts.” Copyright protection subsists . . . in original works of authorship fixed in any tangible medium of expression, now known or later developed, from which they can be perceived, reproduced, or otherwise communicated, either directly or with the aid of a machine or …

Lost Classics Of Intellectual Property Law, Michael J. Madison

Articles

Santayana wrote, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” American legal scholarship often suffers from a related sin of omission: failing to acknowledge its intellectual debts. This short piece attempts to cure one possible source of the problem, in one discipline: inadequate information about what’s worth reading among older writing. I list “lost classics” of American scholarship in intellectual property law. These are not truly “lost,” and what counts as “classic” is often in the eye of the beholder (or reader). But these works may usefully be found again, and intellectual property law scholarship would be …

Copyright And The First Amendment: Comrades, Combatants, Or Uneasy Allies?, Joseph P. Bauer

Joseph P. Bauer

The copyright regime and the First Amendment seek to promote the same goals. Both seek the creation and dissemination of more, better, and more diverse literary, pictorial, musical and other works. But, they use significantly different means to achieve those goals. The copyright laws afford to the creator of a work the exclusive right to reproduce, distribute, transform, and perform that work for an extended period of time. The First Amendment, on the other hand, proclaims that Congress "shall make no law...abridging the freedom of speech or of the press," thus at least nominally indicating that limitations on the reproduction …

Rediscovering Cumulative Creativity From The Oral Formulaic Tradition To Digital Remix: Can I Get A Witness?, Giancarlo Francesco Frosio

Giancarlo Francesco Frosio

For most of human history the essential nature of creativity was understood to be cumulative and collective. This notion has been largely forgotten by modern policies regulating creativity and speech. As hard as it may be to believe, the most valuable components of our immortal culture were created under a fully open regime with regard to access to pre-existing expressions and reuse. From the Platonic mimēsis to the Roman imitatio, from Macrobius’ Saturnalia to the imitatio Vergili, from medieval auctoritas and Chaucer the compilator to Anon the singer and social textuality, from Chrétien’s art of rewriting to Shakespeare’s “borrowed feathers,” …

The Prehistory Of Fair Use, Matthew Sag

Faculty Articles

This article proceeds as follows: Part I begins with a brief summary of the fêted case Folsom v. Marsh and its place in the development of American copyright law. Folsom v. Marsh has been criticized for expanding copyright protection beyond acts of mere mechanical reproduction to include an abstract concept of the work’s value. Of course, this critique is premised on the belief that the scope of copyright prior to Folsom v. Marsh’s intervention was so narrow that it tolerated almost all secondary works. Part II exposes the frailty of this premise.

Specifically, Part II explores the foundation for the …

Property In Law: Government Rights In Legal Innovations, Stephen Clowney

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

One of the most enduring themes in American political thought is that competition between states encourages legal innovation. Despite the prominence of this story in the national ideology, there is growing anxiety that state and local governments innovate at a socially suboptimal rate. Academics have recently expressed alarm that the pace of legal experimentation has become "extraordinarily slow," "inefficient," and "less than ideal." Ordinary citizens, too, seem concerned that government has been leeched of imagination and the dynamic spirit of experimentation; both talk radio programs and newspapers remain jammed with complaints about legislative gridlock and do-nothing politicians who cannot, or …

The Invention Of Common Law Play Right, Jessica Litman

Jessica Litman

In this paper, written for Berkeley’s symposium on the 300th birthday of the Statute of Anne, I explore the history of the common law public performance right in dramatic works. Eaton Drone dubbed the dramatic public performance right “playright” in his 1879 treatise, arguing that just as “copyright” conferred a right to make and sell copies, “playright” conferred a right to perform or “play” a script. I examine case law and customary theatrical practice in England, and find no trace of a common law play right before 1833, when Parliament established a statutory public performance right for plays. Similarly, in …

Ip And Antitrust: Reformation And Harm, Christina Bohannan, Herbert J. Hovenkamp

All Faculty Scholarship

Antitrust and intellectual property law both seek to improve economic welfare by facilitating competition and investment in innovation. At various times both antitrust and IP law have wandered off this course and have become more driven by special interests. Today, antitrust and IP are on very different roads to reform. Antitrust reform began in the late 1970s with a series of Supreme Court decisions that linked the plaintiff’s harm and right to obtain a remedy to the competition - furthering goals of antitrust policy. Today, patent law has begun its own reform journey, but it is in a much earlier …

Copyright And The First Amendment: Comrades, Combatants, Or Uneasy Allies?, Joseph P. Bauer

Journal Articles

The copyright regime and the First Amendment seek to promote the same goals. Both seek the creation and dissemination of more, better, and more diverse literary, pictorial, musical and other works. But, they use significantly different means to achieve those goals. The copyright laws afford to the creator of a work the exclusive right to reproduce, distribute, transform, and perform that work for an extended period of time. The First Amendment, on the other hand, proclaims that Congress "shall make no law...abridging the freedom of speech or of the press," thus at least nominally indicating that limitations on the reproduction …