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Is High-Altitude Mountaineering Russian Roulette?, Edward K. Cheng Mar 2013

Is High-Altitude Mountaineering Russian Roulette?, Edward K. Cheng

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Whether the nature of the risks associated with climbing high-altitude (8000 m) peaks is in some sense “controllable” is a longstanding debate in the mountaineering community. Well-known mountaineers David Roberts and Ed Viesturs explore this issue in their recent memoirs. Roberts views the primary risks as “ objective ” or uncontrollable, whereas Viesturs maintains that experience and attention to safety can make a significant difference. This study sheds light on the Roberts-Viesturs debate using a comprehensive dataset of climbing on Nepalese Himalayan peaks. To test whether the data is consistent with a constant failure rate model (Roberts) or a decreasing …


The Derivative Right, Or Why Copyright Law Protects Foxes Better Than Hedgehogs, Daniel J. Gervais Jan 2013

The Derivative Right, Or Why Copyright Law Protects Foxes Better Than Hedgehogs, Daniel J. Gervais

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

The derivative right is at the very core of copyright theory. What can and cannot be reused to create a new work impacts freedom of expression but also impacts the value of the markets for works and their various “derivatives.” The derivative right includes forms of derivation and adaptation, such as making a movie from a novel or translating a book. It also covers what this Article refers to as penumbral derivatives, which the US Copyright Act captures using the phrase “based upon” with respect to preexisting works. This leads to indeterminacy about the scope of the derivative right, which …


The Tangled Web Of Ugc: Making Copyright Sense Of User-Generated Content, Daniel J. Gervais Jan 2009

The Tangled Web Of Ugc: Making Copyright Sense Of User-Generated Content, Daniel J. Gervais

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Even as a mere conceptual cloud, the term "user-generated content" is useful to discuss the societal shifts in content creation brought about by the participative web and perhaps best epitomized by the remix phenomenon. This Article considers the copyright aspects of UGC. On the one hand, the production of UGC may involve both the right of reproduction and the right of adaptation-the right to prepare derivative works. On the other hand, defenses against claims of infringement of these rights typically rely on (transformative) fair use or the fact that an insubstantial amount (such as a quote) of the preexisting work …