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Selected Works

Joseph P. Liu

Articles 1 - 19 of 19

Full-Text Articles in Law

Copyright Law: Essential Cases And Materials, Alfred Yen, Joseph Liu Feb 2016

Copyright Law: Essential Cases And Materials, Alfred Yen, Joseph Liu

Joseph P. Liu

This casebook emphasizes the essential cases and materials at the heart of copyright law. The result is a streamlined and well-organized casebook of manageable length that keeps the central themes of copyright front and center. It also provides access to a companion Web site containing an extensive library of additional modules, topics, edited cases, notes, problems, and audio-visual materials. Together these materials, along with a companion teacher's manual, allow teachers to easily customize the copyright law course to suit their specific goals. The authors have written extensively about copyright, the arts, and the impact of new technology.

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Owning Digital Copies: Copyright Law And The Incidents Of Copy Ownership, Joseph P. Liu Oct 2011

Owning Digital Copies: Copyright Law And The Incidents Of Copy Ownership, Joseph P. Liu

Joseph P. Liu

As copyrighted works are increasingly distributed in digital form over the Internet, our conventional print-based understandings of the rights associated with copy ownership are coming into increasing conflict with the copyright owner's right to restrict copying. Specifically, certain common activities, such as reading and transferring physical copies of copyrighted works (such as books), are increasingly being viewed as potential acts of copyright infringement when applied to digital copies. This Article explores this conflict by taking a close look at the concept of copy ownership. It argues that conventional notions of physical property ownership play an important, unrecognized role in copyright …

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Sports Merchandizing, Publicity Rights, And The Missing Role Of The Sports Fan, Joseph P. Liu Oct 2011

Sports Merchandizing, Publicity Rights, And The Missing Role Of The Sports Fan, Joseph P. Liu

Joseph P. Liu

Sports fans play a tremendously important role in the success and popularity of sports teams and the enterprise of sports in general. It is somewhat curious, then, that fan interests are almost entirely missing from discussions about certain important legal issues that have a direct impact on them. Specifically, fan interests play a surprisingly limited role in discussions about sports team merchandising and player rights of publicity. This Article argues that modern sports licensing practices are coming into increasing conflict with the interests of sports fans, and that the law should take greater account of such interests. This Article starts …

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Copyright Law's Theory Of The Consumer, Joseph P. Liu Oct 2011

Copyright Law's Theory Of The Consumer, Joseph P. Liu

Joseph P. Liu

Copyright law has a rather well-developed theory of the author, but it has no similarly well-developed conception of the consumer. This exploratory Article is an attempt to begin piecing together a coherent image of the copyright consumer. The author argues that copyright law currently conceives of consumers in one of two ways, either as passive consumers of copyrighted works or as active authors in their own right. This binary conception of the consumer, however, is incomplete, as it neglects important and complex consumer interests in autonomy, communication, and creative self-expression. By examining these additional interests, it is possible to begin …

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Editor-In-Chief Of The Journal Of The Copyright Society Of The U.S.A. For 2011-15, Joseph Liu Dec 2010

Editor-In-Chief Of The Journal Of The Copyright Society Of The U.S.A. For 2011-15, Joseph Liu

Joseph P. Liu

Appointed Editor-in-Chief of peer-reviewed academic journal focusing on copyright law.

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Saving Journalism From Itself? Hot News, Copyright Fair Use And News Aggregation, Joseph Liu Apr 2010

Saving Journalism From Itself? Hot News, Copyright Fair Use And News Aggregation, Joseph Liu

Joseph P. Liu

Served as a panelist at a conference at Harvard Law School on "Journalism's Digital Transition: Unique Legal Challenges and Opportunities," sponsored by the Berkman Center for Internet and Society.

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The Mechanical License And The Origins Of Regulatory Copyright, Joseph Liu Apr 2009

The Mechanical License And The Origins Of Regulatory Copyright, Joseph Liu

Joseph P. Liu

Analyzing the first compulsory license in U.S. copyright law, and arguing that it served as a template for a more "regulatory" approach to copyright law.

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Two-Factor Fair Use?, Joseph Liu Feb 2008

Two-Factor Fair Use?, Joseph Liu

Joseph P. Liu

This Article engages in a thought experiment. It asks whether fair use would be improved if courts gave exclusive consideration to only two of the four statutory factors: (1) the purpose and character of the use; and (2) the impact of the use on the market.6 In other words, fair use under this proposal would be converted from a contextual multi-factor test into a two-factor balancing test in which courts would expressly and directly weigh one consideration against another. The remaining two factors, i.e., the nature of the work and the amount used, would be eliminated from consideration or, alternatively, …

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Two-Factor Fair Use?, Joseph P. Liu Dec 2007

Two-Factor Fair Use?, Joseph P. Liu

Joseph P. Liu

This Article engages in a thought experiment. It asks whether fair use would be improved if courts gave exclusive consideration to only two of the four statutory factors: (1) the purpose and character of the use; and (2) the impact of the use on the market.6 In other words, fair use under this proposal would be converted from a contextual multi-factor test into a two-factor balancing test in which courts would expressly and directly weigh one consideration against another. The remaining two factors, i.e., the nature of the work and the amount used, would be eliminated from consideration or, alternatively, …

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Consumer Protection: Inside Copyright Law Or Outside?, Joseph Liu Mar 2007

Consumer Protection: Inside Copyright Law Or Outside?, Joseph Liu

Joseph P. Liu

Invited to participate on a panel discussing the impact of consumer protection on copyright law.

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Copyright And Breathing Space, Joseph Liu Dec 2006

Copyright And Breathing Space, Joseph Liu

Joseph P. Liu

According to the U.S. Supreme Court, copyright law's fair use and idea/expression doctrines are "built-in free speech safeguards" that establish a "definitional balance" between copyright and the First Amendment. Yet these "built-in free speech safeguards" are among the most uncertain and ill-defined doctrines in all of copyright law. If we accept the Supreme Court's statement that these doctrines play a critical role as First Amendment safety valves, it follows that the chilling effect of uncertainty in these doctrines has a constitutional dimension. Current copyright law doctrine, however, fails to take into account the potential chilling effect of copyright liability. This …

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Enabling Copyright Consumers, Joseph P. Liu Dec 2006

Enabling Copyright Consumers, Joseph P. Liu

Joseph P. Liu

When is it acceptable for a company to help consumers engage in fair use of copyrighted works? One might think that the answer would be: “always.” After all, a fair use is a privileged use, which copyright grants to consumers of copyrighted works. Shouldn’t a company be entitled to help consumers do this in the most efficient way possible? Shouldn’t such a company, in fact, be lauded for making this process more efficient?
In fact, courts quite frequently hold companies liable for helping consumers engage in activities that would be fair or non-infringing uses if undertaken by consumers themselves. In …

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Copyright And Breathing Space, Joseph Liu Oct 2006

Copyright And Breathing Space, Joseph Liu

Joseph P. Liu

According to the U.S. Supreme Court, copyright law’s fair use and idea/expression doctrines are “built-in free speech safeguards” that establish a “definitional balance” between copyright and the First Amendment. Yet these “built-in free speech safeguards” are among the most uncertain and ill-defined doctrines in all of copyright law. If we accept the Supreme Court’s statement that these doctrines play a critical role as First Amendment safety valves, it follows that the chilling effect of uncertainty in these doctrines has a constitutional dimension. Current copyright law doctrine, however, fails to take into account the potential chilling effect of copyright liability. This …

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The Legal Framework Surrounding Digital Rights Management Technologies, Joseph Liu Oct 2006

The Legal Framework Surrounding Digital Rights Management Technologies, Joseph Liu

Joseph P. Liu

Providing legal framework for digital rights management.

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Copyright Law And Subject Matter Specificity: The Case Of Computer Software, Joseph P. Liu, Stacey L. Dogan Dec 2004

Copyright Law And Subject Matter Specificity: The Case Of Computer Software, Joseph P. Liu, Stacey L. Dogan

Joseph P. Liu

Drawing on recent work by Dan Burk and Mark Lemley in the patent context, this paper explores the extent to which courts have adapted pre-existing copyright doctrines to the special case of computer software. We argue that a number of courts have, as has been widely recognized, significantly adapted copyright doctrines to deal
with special features of the computer software market. We further argue that these adaptations have, by and large, positively sought to strike a balance between the copyright act's dual goals of incentive and access. Despite this general trend toward adaptation, however, we point to a handful of …

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The Dmca And The Regulation Of Scientific Research, Joseph Liu Dec 2002

The Dmca And The Regulation Of Scientific Research, Joseph Liu

Joseph P. Liu

This Article analyzes the impact of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) on academic encryption research. In this Article, I argue that for both legal and practical reasons academic encryption researchers should be able to conduct and publish certain types of research without significant fear of liability under the DMCA. However, the DMCA will have a non-trivial impact on the conditions under which such research takes place, and this impact can be expected to have several undesirable effects. More broadly, this impact highlights the problematic way in which the DMCA regulates scientific research in furtherance of intellectual property rights. The …

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Copyright And Time: A Proposal, Joseph Liu Oct 2002

Copyright And Time: A Proposal, Joseph Liu

Joseph P. Liu

This Article argues that courts should adjust the scope of copyright protection by considering time as a factor in fair use analysis. More specifically, the longer it has been since a copyrighted work was published, the greater the scope of fair use should be. Up to now, most of the debate over the role of time in copyright law has focused on the controversial issue of copyright duration and term extension. By focusing so narrowly on the end of the copyright term, however, this debate has neglected the more significant issue of how time should affect the scope of copyright …

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Legitimacy And Authority In Internet Coordination: A Domain Name Case Study, Joseph P. Liu Dec 1998

Legitimacy And Authority In Internet Coordination: A Domain Name Case Study, Joseph P. Liu

Joseph P. Liu

The process of crafting and promulgating technical standards for the internet is often hailed as a prime example of how coordinated activity can take place on a distributed network with little central authority or formal “law.”  Often overlooked, however, is the fact that the internet’s technical standard-setting process rests on a number of highly contingent assumptions, assumptions that do not apply in other areas of internet governance.  This paper explores the limits of this dominant standard-setting approach to internet coordination, using the current controversy over internet domain names as a case study.  Such a case study reveals that existing attempts …

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Federal Jury Instructions And The Consequences Of A Successful Insanity Defense, Joseph P. Liu May 1993

Federal Jury Instructions And The Consequences Of A Successful Insanity Defense, Joseph P. Liu

Joseph P. Liu

This Note argues that trial judges should instruct jurors about the consequences of an insanity verdict, but that judges must strive to minimize the potentially prejudicial impact of such an instruction by explicitly instructing the jury not to consider this information in arriving at a verdict.

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