Law Commons^™

Everything Is Connected, Kembrew Mcleod

Kembrew McLeod

The article discusses U.S. copyright law and the copyright clearance system, focusing on the author's documentary film "Copyright Criminals," which aired on Public Broadcasting System (PBS). It explores sampling and collage in audiovisual media, commenting on use of the practice by hip-hop group Public Enemy. Other topics include the Washington, D.C. Center for Social Media, intellectual property, and fair use. The author also examines his book "Freedom of Expression®: Resistance and Repression in the Age of Intellectual Property" and a prank in which he successfully copyrighted the phrase "Freedom of Expression"

Social Semiotics In The Fair Use Analysis, H Brian Holland

H Brian Holland

Social Semiotics in the Fair Use Analysis

34,314 words

3,809 footnotes (Bluebook formatted)

This article presents an alternate theory of fair use, employing social semiotics as a process theory of meaning-making to frame the transformativeness inquiry. It is an argument for an expansion of fair use based not on theories of authorship or rights of autonomy, but rather a theory of the audience linked to social practice. The article asks, in essence, whether audiences determine the meaning, purpose, function, or social benefit of an allegedly infringing work, often regardless of what the work’s creator did or intended. If so, does …

Social Semiotics In The Fair Use Analysis, H Brian Holland

H Brian Holland

Social Semiotics in the Fair Use Analysis

34,314 words (including 380 footnotes)

This article presents an alternate theory of fair use, employing social semiotics as a process theory of meaning-making to frame the transformativeness inquiry. It is an argument for an expansion of fair use based not on theories of authorship or rights of autonomy, but rather a theory of the audience linked to social practice. The article asks, in essence, whether audiences determine the meaning, purpose, function, or social benefit of an allegedly infringing work, often regardless of what the work’s creator did or intended. If so, does this …

Social Semiotics In The Fair Use Analysis, H. Brian Holland

H. Brian Holland

Social Semiotics In The Fair Use Analysis, H. Brian Holland

H. Brian Holland

Transformation In Property And Copyright, Christopher M. Newman

Christopher M Newman

Copyright requires us to distinguish between two different ways of transforming a “work of authorship”: “derivative works” and “transformative fair uses.” The absence of a clear line results in a tendency to assign all value arising proximately from a work to copyright owners. Many people blame this expansionist tendency on a “propertarian” understanding of copyright, and argue that the solution is to abandon any notion of copyright as property. I agree that current copyright doctrine often gives excessively broad scope to the exclusive rights of copyright owners, but argue that this may be a result of copyright not being “propertarian” …

Essence Of Copyright By Raheel R Daureeawo Llm, Raheel R. Daureeawo

Raheel R Daureeawo

Copyright is and has always been about policy. And what I intend to discuss in this paper is a list of topics which have always been center of debate in copyright courts. Although each topic is a book in itself, but my attempt here is to consolidate this list. The goal of the law of copyright has always been to promote scientific, literary and artistic creativity and protect as well as limit these rights in order to prevent monopolies. In order to understand the present and future of copyright it is imperative to know its past. There is a debate …

The Fifth Element: The Unspoken Element In The Fair Use Four-Part Test, B. Douglas Robbins

B. Douglas Robbins

For artists seeking to use copyrighted media in their installations without having to purchase a license, fair use seeks satisfaction of a fluid four-part test. Nowhere in this four-prong test is there any mention of whether the copyrighted material used is unique or a member of a category of work in limited supply. Yet numerous courts have pondered this unspoken “Fifth Element,”—the question of limited availability or uniqueness—when evaluating fair use claims. This paper examines the Fifth Element and the deeper analytical and policy reasons for its emergence, despite any explicit endorsement from Congress.

Calibrating Copyright Statutory Damages To Promote Speech, Alan Garfield

Alan E Garfield

Copyright and the First Amendment exist in tension. The Supreme Court acknowledges this tension but says that copyright law resolves it with two built-in free speech safeguards: (1) by protecting only the expression of ideas and not the ideas themselves (the idea/expression dichotomy); and (2) by allowing the use of expression under certain circumstances (the fair use doctrine). The problem is that these doctrines are notoriously vague, so users often cannot know ex ante whether their uses will be immune from liability. This unpredictably might be tolerable if users could be confident that, if they were subject to liability, any …

Bloodsucking Copyrights, Ann Bartow

Ann Bartow

Some bloodsuckers live off the life-sustaining fluids of involuntary hosts and leave behind diseases or venom. Fleas, ticks, bedbugs, and mosquitoes are all bloodsuckers that are best avoided. Others, like the leech, suck blood in ways that can be very helpful to a host, promoting blood flow and healing. Vampires are fictional, sentient bloodsuckers that have populated various entertainment genres for centuries. Copyrights, too, can suck blood metaphorically in productive and destructive ways, or simply suck, period, when they senselessly impede free-flowing veins of information. And though they are not (yet) immortal, copyrights last a very long time.

In Copyright’s …