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A Positive Externalities Approach To Copyright Law: Theory And Application, Jeffrey L. Harrison
A Positive Externalities Approach To Copyright Law: Theory And Application, Jeffrey L. Harrison
Jeffrey L Harrison
The basic goal of copyright law is, at a general level, fairly well understood, yet the law itself seems untethered to any consistent analytical approach designed to achieve that goal. This Article has two goals. The first is to explain in some detail what copyright law might look like if it reflected economic reasoning. The second is to put to the test the question of whether copyright law is as far out of sync with economic guidelines as White-Smith Music and Eldred suggest. In order to understand the economic approach and the inconsistency of copyright law, as well as the …
Breaking The Vicious Circularity: Sony's Contribution To The Fair Use Doctrine, Frank Pasquale
Breaking The Vicious Circularity: Sony's Contribution To The Fair Use Doctrine, Frank Pasquale
Frank A. Pasquale
The fair use doctrine permits certain uses of copyrighted material that are unauthorized by the copyright holder. In 1984, the Supreme Court decided in Sony v. Universal Studios (Sony) that unauthorized home taping of television programs was a fair use of such programs. Decried by the dissent and frequently contested in ensuing cases, that decision sealed the majority's case that the videotape recorder was capable of substantial non-infringing uses and therefore legal. In the twenty years since Sony, the dissent's skepticism about the fairness of time-shifting has gotten about as warm a reception in appellate courts as the majority's position. …