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Full-Text Articles in Law

Open Secrets, Michael J. Madison Jan 2010

Open Secrets, Michael J. Madison

Book Chapters

The law of trade secrets is often conceptualized in bilateral terms, as creating and enforcing rights between trade secret owners, on the one hand, and misappropriators on the other hand. This paper, a chapter in a forthcoming collection on the law of trade secrets, argues that trade secrets and the law that guards them can serve structural and institutional roles as well. Somewhat surprisingly, given the law’s focus on secrecy, among the institutional products of trade secrets law are commons, or managed openness: environments designed to facilitate the structured sharing of information. The paper illustrates with examples drawn from existing …


Digital Multi-Media And The Limits Of Privacy Law, Jacqueline D. Lipton Jan 2010

Digital Multi-Media And The Limits Of Privacy Law, Jacqueline D. Lipton

Articles

While digital video and multi-media technologies are becoming increasingly prevalent, existing privacy laws tend to focus on text-based personal records. Individuals have little recourse when concerned about infringements of their privacy interests in audio, video, and multi-media files. Often people are simply unaware that video or audio records have been made. Even if they are aware of the existence of the records, they may be unaware of potential legal remedies, or unable to afford legal recourse. This paper concentrates on the ability of individuals to obtain legal redress for unauthorized use of audio, video and multi-media content that infringes their …


Reply: The Complexity Of Commons, Michael J. Madison, Brett M. Frischmann, Katherine J. Strandburg Jan 2010

Reply: The Complexity Of Commons, Michael J. Madison, Brett M. Frischmann, Katherine J. Strandburg

Articles

Constructing Commons in the Cultural Environment, and responses to that article by Professors Thráinn Eggertsson, Wendy Gordon, Gregg Macey, Robert Merges, Elinor Ostrom, and Lawrence Solum. This short Reply comments briefly on each of those responses.


Some Optimism About Fair Use And Copyright Law, Michael J. Madison Jan 2010

Some Optimism About Fair Use And Copyright Law, Michael J. Madison

Articles

This short paper reflects on the emergence of codes of best practices in fair use, highlighting both the relationship between the best practices approach and an institutional perspective on copyright and the relationship between the best practices approach and social processes of innovation and creativity.


Wikipedia And The European Union Database Directive, Jacqueline D. Lipton Jan 2010

Wikipedia And The European Union Database Directive, Jacqueline D. Lipton

Articles

“Web 2.0" and "User Generated Content (UGC)" are the new buzzwords in cyberspace. In recent years, law and policy makers have struggled to keep pace with the needs of digital natives in terms of online content control in the new participatory web culture. Much of the discourse about intellectual property rights in this context revolves around copyright law: for example, who owns copyright in works generated by multiple people, and what happens when these joint authored works borrow from existing copyright works in terms of derivative works rights and the fair use defense. Many works compiled by groups are subject …


Constructing Commons In The Cultural Environment, Michael J. Madison, Brett M. Frischmann, Katherine J. Strandburg Jan 2010

Constructing Commons In The Cultural Environment, Michael J. Madison, Brett M. Frischmann, Katherine J. Strandburg

Articles

This Essay considers the problem of understanding intellectual sharing/pooling arrangements and the construction of cultural commons arrangements. We argue that an adaptation of the approach pioneered by Elinor Ostrom and collaborators to commons arrangements in the natural environment may provide a template for the examination of constructed commons in the cultural environment. The approach promises to lead to a better understanding of how participants in commons and pooling arrangements structure their interactions in relation to the environment(s) within which they are embedded and with which they share interdependent relationships. Such an improved understanding is critical for obtaining a more complete …


Beyond Creativity: Copyright As Knowledge Law, Michael J. Madison Jan 2010

Beyond Creativity: Copyright As Knowledge Law, Michael J. Madison

Articles

The Supreme Court’s copyright jurisprudence of the last 100 years has embraced the creativity trope. Spurred in part by themes associated with the story of “romantic authorship” in the 19th and 20th centuries, copyright critiques likewise ask, “Who is creative?” “How should creativity be protected (or not) and encouraged (or not)?” and “ Why protect creativity?” Policy debates and scholarship in recent years have focused on the concept of creativity in framing copyright disputes, transactions, and institutions, reinforcing the notion that these are the central copyright questions. I suggest that this focus on the creativity trope is unhelpful. I argue …