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Full-Text Articles in Law
Protecting Fair Use With Fogerty: Toward A New Dual Standard, John A. Fonstad
Protecting Fair Use With Fogerty: Toward A New Dual Standard, John A. Fonstad
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
Copyright law exists to promote the progress of art and science. It achieves this by balancing limited grants of rights to authors against public access to works. However, copyright holders have upset this balance and tilted the law in their favor One cause of this phenomenon is that the benefit of public access to works is diffused throughout the entire public while the benefit of rights in works is concentrated in the copyright holder. This problem is especially prevalent in the context of litigation where copyright holders (plaintiffs) often stand to gain more through victory than copyright users (defendants). As …
"By Night She Fought For Fair Use": Restoring The Integrity Of Copyright Law, One Comic-Book Reader At A Time, Jessica Sawyer Wang
"By Night She Fought For Fair Use": Restoring The Integrity Of Copyright Law, One Comic-Book Reader At A Time, Jessica Sawyer Wang
Michigan Law Review
Students of copyright law quickly learn that the subject is counterintuitive. One of the first revelations of this is-somewhat alarmingly-the purpose of copyright itself. Contrary to popular belief, copyright is not just about protecting an artist's creation, but sharing it. Simultaneously protecting a work and sharing it helps to fulfill the Constitution's mandate that Congress "promote the Progress of Science ... by securing for limited Times to Authors ... the exclusive Right to their ... Writings." In other words, Congress is to promote learning and the advancement of our culture. The symbiosis of protecting and sharing is effected through the …
Copyright And Youtube: Pirate's Playground Or Fair Use Forum?, Kurt Hunt
Copyright And Youtube: Pirate's Playground Or Fair Use Forum?, Kurt Hunt
Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review
The entertainment industry has a history of framing new technology as piracy that threatens its very existence, regardless of the potential benefits of the technology or the legal limits of copyright rights. In the case of YouTube, copyright owners' attempts to retain content control negatively impact the public's ability to discuss culture in an online world. This implicates the basic policy behind fair use: to prevent copyright law from "stifl[ing] the very creativity which that law is designed to foster." The internet has become a powerful medium for expression. It is a vital tool in today's world for sharing original …
Fair Use And The Digital Millennium Copyright Act, Thomas J. Loos
Fair Use And The Digital Millennium Copyright Act, Thomas J. Loos
Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review
In the last decade of the 20th Century, more than 200 years after the first Copyright Act of 1790, the rights of copyright owners have increased relative to those of the public. The Visual Artists Rights Act of 1990 provided a limited right to visual artists to control their work; even after sold, limiting first use rights. The first copyright act had a 28 year term; in 1998, the term of copyright was increased to the life of the author plus 70 years. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) of 1998 dramatically shrank the fair use rights provided under 17 …
Creative Reading, Jessica D. Litman
Creative Reading, Jessica D. Litman
Articles
Let me begin with something that Jamie Boyle wrote ten years ago in Intellectual Property Policy Online: A Young Person's Guide:' Copyright marks the attempt to achieve for texts and other works a balance in which the assumption of the system is that widespread use is possible without copying. The relative bundles of rights of the user and the owner achieve their balance based on a set of economic and technical assumptions about the meaning of normal use. For our purposes, I would like to generalize this as something that Boyle might have written if he had not in that …
Lawful Personal Use, Jessica D. Litman
Lawful Personal Use, Jessica D. Litman
Articles
Despite having sued more than 20,000 of its customers,2 the recording industry wants the world to know that it has no complaint with personal use. Copyright lawyers of all stripes agree that copyright includes a free zone in which individuals may make personal use of copyrighted works without legal liability.3 Unlike other nations, though, the United States hasn't drawn the borders of its lawful personal use zone by statute.4 Determining the circumstances under which personal use of copyrighted works will be deemed lawful is essentially a matter of inference and analogy, and differently striped copyright lawyers will differ vehemently on …