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Outgrowing Copyright: The Effect Of Market Size On Copyright Policy, Tom W. Bell
Outgrowing Copyright: The Effect Of Market Size On Copyright Policy, Tom W. Bell
Tom W. Bell
Does copyright protection offer the best means of stimulating the production of expressive works? Perhaps, at the moment, it does. If so, however, copyright protection will probably become inefficiently over-protective as the market for expressive works grows. With such growth, copyright holders will find it increasingly remunerative to focus on customers willing to pay a premium for particular expressive works. In a larger, more finely segmented market, copyright holders will find that their statutory rights generate larger monopoly rents. Yet copyright holders will suffer no corresponding increase in production or distribution costs; thanks to technological advances, we can expect those …
Treason, Technology, And Freedom Of Expression, Tom W. Bell
Treason, Technology, And Freedom Of Expression, Tom W. Bell
Tom W. Bell
The power to punish treason against the U.S. conflicts with the First Amendment freedoms of speech and of the press. Far from a question of mere theory, that conflict threatens to chill public dissent to the War on Terrorism. The government has already demonstrated its willingness to punish treasonous expression. After World War II, the United States won several prosecutions against citizens who had engaged in propaganda on behalf of the Axis powers. Today, critics of the War on Terrorism likewise face accusations of treason. Under the law of treasonous expression developed following World War II, those accusations could credibly …
Internet Privacy And Self-Regulation: Lessons From The Porn Wars, Tom Bell
Internet Privacy And Self-Regulation: Lessons From The Porn Wars, Tom Bell
Tom W. Bell
The availability and adequacy of technical remedies ought to play a crucial role in evaluating the propriety of state action with regard to both the inhibition of Internet pornography and the promotion of Internet privacy. Legislation that would have restricted Internet speech considered indecent or harmful to minors has already faced and failed that test. Several prominent organizations dedicated to preserving civiI Iiberties argued successfully that self -help technologies offered less-restrictive means of achieving the purported ends of such legislation, rendering it unconstitutional. Surprisingly, those same organizations have of late joined the call for subjecting another kind of speech—speech by …
Fair Use Vs. Fared Use: The Impact Of Automated Rights Management On Copyright's Fair Use Doctrine, Tom W. Bell
Fair Use Vs. Fared Use: The Impact Of Automated Rights Management On Copyright's Fair Use Doctrine, Tom W. Bell
Tom W. Bell
A combination of powerful new technologies and existing legal doctrines threatens to reduce the scope of copyright's fair use defense in digital intermedia. In place of fair use, these influences will give rise to a system of fared use. Fared use seems certain to improve the efficiency of copyright law. It raises questions of equity, however, by offering copyright owners increased compensation without guaranteeing the public increased access to copyrighted works. This paper addresses those concerns. Fared use would make copyrighted materials in digital intermedia available to the public under a reciprocal quasi-compulsory license. Somewhat paradoxically, this license offers consumers …
Virtual Trade Dress: A Very Real Problem, Tom Bell
Virtual Trade Dress: A Very Real Problem, Tom Bell
Tom W. Bell
A tragedy looms for trade dress. Encouraged by bad case law and tempted by new technologies, trade dress threatens to assume a role properly reserved for other forms of intellectual property. Trade dress should aim primarily at protecting the public from confusing the features that identify goods and services. Current trends, however, risk expanding trade dress until it constitutes the very commodities that it once merely identified. Superficially genuine but fundamentally artificial, this is virtual trade dress.