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Faculty Publications

University of South Carolina

Free speech

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Beyond The Schoolhouse Gates: The Unprecedented Expansion Of School Surveillance Authority Under Cyberbulling Laws, Emily Suski Oct 2014

Beyond The Schoolhouse Gates: The Unprecedented Expansion Of School Surveillance Authority Under Cyberbulling Laws, Emily Suski

Faculty Publications

For several years, states have grappled with the problem of cyberbullying and its sometimes devastating effects. Because cyberbullying often occurs between students, most states have understandably looked to schools to help address the problem. To that end, schools in forty-six states have the authority to intervene when students engage in cyberbullying. This solution seems all to the good unless a close examination of the cyberbullying laws and their implications is made. This Article explores some of the problematic implications of the cyberbullying laws. More specifically, it focuses on how the cyberbullying laws allow schools unprecedented surveillance authority over students. This …


Fair Use As A Matter Of Law, Ned Snow Jan 2011

Fair Use As A Matter Of Law, Ned Snow

Faculty Publications

Courts have recently abandoned the centuries-old practice of construing fair use as an issue of fact for the jury. Fair use now stands as an issue of law for the judge. This change is threatening traditional contours of copyright law that protect fair-use speech. Courts, then, must reform their current construction of fair use by returning to its origins— fair use as a factual matter for the jury. Yet even if courts do construe fair use as a matter of fact, the question remains whether courts should ever decide fair use as a matter of law. To answer this question, …


The Forgotten Right Of Fair Use, Ned Snow Jan 2011

The Forgotten Right Of Fair Use, Ned Snow

Faculty Publications

Free speech was once an integral part of copyright law; today it is all but forgotten. At common law, principles of free speech protected those who expressed themselves by using another's expression. Free speech determined whether speakers had infringed a copyright. To prevail on a copyright claim, then, a copyright holder would need to prove that the speaker’s use fell outside the scope of permissible speech - or in other words, that the use was not fair. Where uncertainty prevented that proof, fair use would protect speakers from the suppression of copyright. Today, however, all this has changed. Copyright has …