Law Commons^™

Crossing The Line?: Copyright For Libraries, Frederick W. Dingledy

Frederick W. Dingledy

No abstract provided.

From Bards To Search Engines: Finding What Readers Want From Ancient Times To The World Wide Web, Stephen Maurer

Stephen M. Maurer

Copyright theorists often ask how incentives can be designed to create better books, movies, and art. But this is not the whole story. As the Roman satirist Martial pointed out two thousand years ago, markets routinely ignore good and even excellent works. The insight reminds us that incentives to find content are just as necessary as incentives to make it. Recent social science research explains why markets fail and how timely interventions can save deserving titles from oblivion. This article reviews society’s long struggle to fix the vagaries of search since the invention of literature. We build on this history …

Copyright: Parliament, The Copyright Board And The Courts..., Margaret Ann Wilkinson

Margaret Ann Wilkinson

No abstract provided.

Reconstructing The Author-Self: Some Feminist Lessons For Copyright Law, Carys J. Craig

Carys Craig

Copyright law currently forces all intellectual production into a doctrinal model shaped by individualistic assumptions about the authorial ideal. To the extent that the truly original author-owner is conceptualized as an individual (and not a function or fiction), he depends upon Enlightenment ideals of individuation, detachment, and unity. A competing view of the author sees her as necessarily engaged in a process of adaptation, translation and recombination. This version of authorship coheres with a view of the individual as socially constituted: her expression is the result of the complex variety of texts and discourses that she encounters (and by which …

The Migration Of The Book Across Territorial Borders: Copyright Implications For Authors In The Digital Economy, Francina Cantatore

Francina Cantatore

Although the USA, Canada, UK, and Australia currently retain territorial copyright laws, with commensurate restrictions on parallel, importation of books, advances in digital technology, and the advent of e-books have caused an involuntary migration of the book across these defined borders. This changing publishing sphere has impacted authors’ copyright protection, with authors struggling to come to grips with breaches of copyright outside the protection of their own borders. Additionally, the extra-territorial publication of books are often in breach of authors’ copyright but difficult to address locally. This article deals with the copyright issues faced by authors once their books enter …

Access And Exclusion Rights In Electronic Media:Complex Rules For A Complex World, Daniel A. Farber

Daniel A Farber

No abstract provided.

Bugs For Sale: Legal And Ethical Proprieties Of The Market In Software Vulnerabilities, Taiwo Oriola

Taiwo Oriola

Software vulnerabilities are inherent errors or mistakes in software programming and designs, and arguably the weakest link in digital information architecture with high propensity for rendering information systems infrastructure susceptible to compromise and hacking. Given the increasing reliance of the global economy on digital platforms with concomitant imperatives for securing sensitive intelligence, business and personal data, the need for continual corrective patch of perennially recurring critical software bugs is at once urgent and sacrosanct. This has precipitated research and a thriving market in software vulnerabilities, an integral element of the burgeoning multi-million dollars information security industry that epitomizes the externalization …

Defining Criminal Liability For Primary Acts Of Copyright Infringement: The Singapore Experience, Cheng Lim Saw, Susanna Leong

Cheng L Saw

No abstract provided.

Towards A Pedagogy Of Fair Use For Multimedia Composition, Renee Hobbs, Katie E. Donnelly

Renee Hobbs

No abstract provided.

Everything Is Connected, Kembrew Mcleod

Kembrew McLeod

The article discusses U.S. copyright law and the copyright clearance system, focusing on the author's documentary film "Copyright Criminals," which aired on Public Broadcasting System (PBS). It explores sampling and collage in audiovisual media, commenting on use of the practice by hip-hop group Public Enemy. Other topics include the Washington, D.C. Center for Social Media, intellectual property, and fair use. The author also examines his book "Freedom of Expression®: Resistance and Repression in the Age of Intellectual Property" and a prank in which he successfully copyrighted the phrase "Freedom of Expression"

Liability For Spatial Data Quality, Harlan Onsrud

Harlan J Onsrud

Liability in data, products, and services related to geographic information systems, spatial data infrastructure, location based services and web mapping services, is complicated by the complexities and uncertainties in liability for information system products and services generally, as well as by legal theory uncertainties surrounding liability for maps. Each application of geospatial technologies to a specific use may require integration of different types of data from multiple sources, assessment of attributes, adherence to accuracy and fitness-for-use requirements, and selection from among different analytical processing methods. All of these actions may be fraught with possible misjudgments and errors. A variety of …

One Size Does Not Fit All: A Framework For Tailoring Intellectual Property Rights, Michael W. Carroll

Michael W. Carroll

The United States and its trading partners have adopted cultural and innovation policies under which the government grants one-size-fits-all patents and copyrights to inventors and authors. On a global basis, the reasons for doing so vary, but in the United States granting intellectual property rights has been justified as the principal means of promoting innovation and cultural progress. Until recently, however, few have questioned the wisdom of using such blunt policy instruments to promote progress in a wide range of industries in which the economics of innovation varies considerably.

Provisionally accepting the assumptions of the traditional economic case for intellectual …

Fixing Fair Use, Michael W. Carroll

Michael W. Carroll

The fair use doctrine in copyright law balances expressive freedoms by permitting one to use another's copyrighted expression under certain circumstances. The doctrine's extreme context-sensitivity renders it of little value to those who require reasonable ex ante certainty about the legality of a proposed use. In this Article, Professor Carroll advances a legislative proposal to create a Fair Use Board in the U.S. Copyright Office that would have power to declare a proposed use of another's copyrighted work to be a fair use. Like a private letter ruling from the IRS or a “no action” letter from the SEC, a …

Response To The Library Of Congress Request For Comment On Specific Issues In Section 108., Denise Troll Covey

Denise Troll Covey

No abstract provided.

Application To Participate In The Library Of Congress Section 108 Roundtable., Denise Troll Covey

Denise Troll Covey

No abstract provided.

The Movement For Open Access Law, Michael W. Carroll

Michael W. Carroll

My claim in this contribution to this important symposium is that the law and legal scholarship should be freely available on the Internet, and copyright law and licensing should facilitate achievement of this goal. This claim reflects the combined aims of those who support the movement for open access law. This nascent movement is a natural extension of the well-developed movement for free access to primary legal materials and the equally well-developed open access movement, which seeks to make all scholarly journal articles freely available on the Internet. Legal scholars have only general familiarity with the first movement and very …

A Primer On U.S. Intellectual Property Rights Applicable To Music Information Retrieval Systems, Michael W. Carroll

Michael W. Carroll

Digital technology has had a significant impact on the ways in which music information can be stored, transmitted, and used. Within the information sciences, music information retrieval has become an increasingly important and complex field. This brief article is addressed primarily to those involved in the design and implementation of systems for storing and retrieving digital files containing musical notation, recorded music, and relevant metadata – hereinafter referred to as a Music Information Retrieval System (“MIRS”). In particular, this group includes information specialists, software engineers, and the attorneys who advise them. Although peer-to-peer computer applications, such as Napster’s MusicShare or …