Law Commons^™

There's No Such Thing As Independent Creation, And It's A Good Thing, Too, Christopher Buccafusco

Faculty Scholarship

Independent creation is the foundation of U.S. copyright law. A work is only original and, thus, copyrightable to the extent that it is independently created by its author and not copied from another source. And a work can be deemed infringing only if it is not independently created. Moreover, independent creation provides the grounding for all major theoretical justifications for copyright law. Unfortunately, the doctrine cannot bear the substantial weight that has been foisted upon it. This Article argues that copyright law’s independent creation doctrine rests on a set of discarded psychological assumptions about memory, copying, and creativity. When those …

Of Bass Notes And Base Rates: Avoiding Mistaken Inferences About Copying, Christopher Buccafusco, Rebecca Tushnet

Faculty Scholarship

To prove copyright infringement, a plaintiff must convince a jury that the defendant copied from the plaintiff’s work rather than independently creating it. To prove copying, especially cases involving music, it’s common for plaintiffs and their experts to argue that the similarities between the parties’ creative works are so great that it is simply implausible that the defendant’s work was created without copying from the plaintiff’s work. Unfortunately, in its present form, the argument is mathematically illiterate: It assumes, without any underlying evidence, that the experts know or could reasonably estimate how likely it is that a song with similarity …

Comments On Preliminary Draft 8 [Black Letter And Comments], Jane C. Ginsburg

Faculty Scholarship

PD8 represents a great deal of labor, for which the Reporters deserve recognition. As detailed below, however, PD8’s occasional departures from or omissions of statutory text may not only be misleading or confusing, but – as has been the case with prior drafts – often have the result, if not the purpose, of whittling down the scope of copyright protection. In addition to identifying those instances and explaining their consequences, the following comments will suggest clarifications to some of the Comments and Illustrations.

Comments On Council Draft 6 [Black Letter And Comments], Jane C. Ginsburg, June M. Besek

Faculty Scholarship

We appreciate the Reporters’ incorporation of some of our comments on recent drafts. There remain, however, certain flaws in CD6 that should be addressed. We explain the issues, below.

Comments On Preliminary Draft 7 [Black Letter And Comments], Jane C. Ginsburg, June M. Besek

Faculty Scholarship

PD7 is often confusing, largely as a result of failure to provide important explanations or definitions, or to tell the reader where that information can be found. Key terms, such as “edicts of law” and “formalities” remain undefined. Formalities are a principal topic of PD7; they deserve a more thorough description than the draft contains, addressing what formalities are, whether every declaratory obligation (or option) is a “formality,” or only those that go to the existence or enforcement of copyright (this is the Berne Convention meaning of “formality”).

Comments On Preliminary Draft 6, Jane C. Ginsburg, June M. Besek

Faculty Scholarship

We briefly reiterate the principal General Comments we made with respect to PD5, because PD6 continues, including in its two new sections, to manifest the same overall shortcomings: (i) the relationship of the draft to the statute remains highly inconsistent; (ii) the Restatement needs a consistent and transparent methodology for restating a statute; and (iii) continuing to carry on without clear methodological principles will undermine the utility of this project and the credibility of the ALI.

Letter To Council Members Regarding Council Draft 3, Jane C. Ginsburg, June M. Besek

Faculty Scholarship

We understand that the ALI Council will consider Council Draft 3 (CD3) of the Restatement of the Law, Copyright (Copyright Restatement) project at its meeting on October 17-18, 2019. The Council may not appreciate how controversial a project this is: the U.S. Copyright Office, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, the American Bar Association’s Section of Intellectual Property Law, the New York City Bar Association’s Committee on Copyright and Literary Property, academics and other Advisers and Liaisons have expressed serious concerns about this and previous Council Drafts and Preliminary Drafts; indeed, the Register of Copyrights deplored the project as a …

Brief Of Public Law Scholars As Amici Curiae In Support Of Petitioners, Chris Dove, Ernest A. Young

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Minds, Machines, And The Law: The Case Of Volition In Copyright Law, Mala Chatterjee, Jeanne C. Fromer

Faculty Scholarship

The increasing prevalence of ever-sophisticated technology permits machines to stand in for or augment humans in a growing number of contexts. The questions of whether, when, and how the so-called actions of machines can and should result in legal liability thus will also become more practically pressing. One important set of questions that the law will inevitably need to confront is whether machines can have mental states, or — at least — something sufficiently like mental states for the purposes of the law. This is because a number of areas of law have explicit or implicit mental state requirements for …

Copyright Owners' Putative Interests In Privacy, Reputation, And Control: A Reply To Goold, Wendy J. Gordon

Faculty Scholarship

My own view is that Goold overstates the explanatory role of tort law. But even were that not the case, the courts need to reach some kind of “settled” understanding on these various interests before a cause of action is created or definitively rejected, and that no such consensus on the three matters mentioned yet exists, whether they are viewed as forms of tort or otherwise. Goold’s work may nevertheless be an important step toward reaching closure on these and other open questions in copyright law.

Fair Use And The New Transformative, Brian Sites

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Authorship And The Boundaries Of Copyright: Ideas, Expressions, And Functions In Yoga, Choreography, And Other Works, Christopher Buccafusco

Faculty Scholarship

This essay uses the Ninth Circuit’s opinion in Bikram’s Yoga College of India v. Evolation Yoga as an opportunity to analyze the nature of copyrightable authorship and the mechanisms that the law uses to screen out uncopyrightable content from otherwise copyrightable works. I argue that although the court likely reached the right result in Bikram, it did so in a confused and poorly supported manner. The court misunderstood the nature of the idea/expression distinction, the role of section 102(b), and the appropriate mechanism for screening out functional features of works. These aspects of the court’s opinion are widespread in copyright …

The Moral Psychology Of Copyright Infringement, Christopher Buccafusco, David Fagundes

Faculty Scholarship

Numerous recent cases illustrate that copyright owners sue for infringement even when an unauthorized use of their work causes them no economic harm. This presents a puzzle from the perspective of copyright theory as well as a serious social problem, since infringement suits designed to remedy non-economic harms tend to stifle rather than encourage creative production. While much scholarship has critiqued copyright’s economic theory from the perspective of authors’ incentives to create, ours is the first to explore this issue from the perspective of owners’ motivations to sue for infringement. We turn to moral psychology, and in particular to moral …

The Questionable Origins Of The Copyright Infringement Analysis, Shyamkrishna Balganesh

Faculty Scholarship

Central to modern copyright law is the test for determining infringement, famously developed by Judge Jerome Frank in the landmark case of Arnstein v. Porter. The “Arnstein test,” which courts continue to apply, demands that the analysis be divided into two components: actual copying – the question whether the defendant did in fact copy – and improper appropriation – the question whether such copying, if it did exist, was unlawful. Somewhat counterintuitively, though, the test treats both components as pure questions of fact, requiring that even the question of improper appropriation go to a jury. This jury-centric approach …

The Concept Of 'Harm' In Copyright, Wendy J. Gordon

Faculty Scholarship

This essay examines the tort of copyright infringement. It argues that the ideas of "harm" and "fault" already play a role in the tort’s functioning, and that an ideally reformulated version of the tort should perhaps give a more significant role to “harm.” The essay therefore examines what “harm” can or should mean, reviewing four candidates for cognizable harm in copyright law (rivalry-based losses, foregone fees, loss of exclusivity, and subjective distress) and canvassing three philosophical conceptions of "harm" (counterfactual, historical-worsening, and noncomparative). The essay identifies the appropriateness vel non of employing, in the copyright context, each harm-candidate and each …

The In Rem Forfeiture Of Copyright-Infringing Domain Names, Andrew Sellars

Faculty Scholarship

In the summer of 2010, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Division of the Department of Homeland Security began "Operation In Our Sites," an enforcement sweep targeted towards websites allegedly dealing in counterfeit goods and copyright-infringing files. The operation targeted the websites by proceeding in rem against their respective domain names. For websites targeted for copyright infringement, ICE Agents used recently-expanded copyright forfeiture remedies passed under the 2008 PRO-IP Act, providing no adversarial hearing prior to the websites being removed, and only a probable cause standard of proof.

This Paper examines three specific harms resulting from Operation In Our Sites, and …

User-Generated Content Sites And Section 512 Of The Us Copyright Act, Jane C. Ginsburg

Faculty Scholarship

This book chapter considers the liability of entrepreneurs of ‘user-generated content’ (UGC) sites. These immensely popular fora, such as YouTube and My Space, enable their participants to post and view a great variety of content, not all of it in fact generated by the posting user. The legislative compromise worked out between telecommunications providers and content owners in the 1998 ‘Digital Millennium Copyright Act’ provides the statutory framework, at once insulating the operators of UGC sites from debilitating copyright sanctions, while still affording meaningful relief to copyright owners. The statutory criteria to qualify for the section 512(c) safe harbor are …

International Issues: Which Country's Law Applies When Works Are Made Available Over The Internet, Jane C. Ginsburg

Faculty Scholarship

My topic is International Implications, a topic that would not exist but for the Internet. When access to archival materials was on a physical basis, patrons came to the archive and consulted the material on site; the material did not leave the archive, much less get sent overseas. Even digitized materials, if consulted on site, do not present the problems that arise if the archives puts this material on a website, which is accessible around the world, that ubiquity being the default condition ofthe Internet.

Let us consider some problems that might arise and which have international consequences. First of …

Separating The Sony Sheep From The Grokster Goats: Reckoning The Future Business Plans Of Copyright-Dependent Technology Entrepeneurs, Jane C. Ginsburg

Faculty Scholarship

In MGM v. Grokster, the U.S. Supreme Court established that businesses built from the start on inducing copyright infringement will be held liable, as judges will frown on drawing one's start-up capital from other people's copyrights. The Court's elucidation of the elements of inducement suggests that even businesses not initially built on infringement, but in which infringement comes to play an increasingly profitable part, may find themselves liable unless they take good faith measures to forestall infringements. This Article addresses the evolution of the U.S. judge-made rules of secondary liability for copyright infringement, and the possible emergence of an obligation …

The Cyberian Captivity Of Copyright: Territoriality And Authors' Rights In A Networked World, Jane C. Ginsburg

Faculty Scholarship

In this essay, the point of view I wish to take is that of authors who create or disseminate works over digital networks. I believe that their situation reflects both perspectives. Like the Avignon popes and the fifth century Roman emperors, authors might be considered displaced persons, because others might cast their works into the digital Empyrean, disconnected from physical points of attachment to any particular jurisdiction. But, like the Germanic tribes that crossed the Rhine River late in December 406, at least some authors might also be considered the displacers, because they choose to exploit the newly-found technological irrelevance …

Copyright And Control Over New Technologies Of Dissemination, Jane C. Ginsburg

Faculty Scholarship

The relationship of copyright to new technologies that exploit copyrighted works is often perceived to pit copyright against progress. Historically, when copyright owners seek to eliminate a new kind of dissemination, and when courts do not deem that dissemination harmful to copyright owners, courts decline to find infringement. However, when owners seek instead to participate in and be paid for the new modes of exploitation, the courts, and Congress, appear more favorable to copyright control over that new market. Today, the courts and Congress regard the unlicensed distribution of works over the Internet as impairing copyright owners' ability to avail …

The Cyberian Captivity Of Copyright: Territoriality And Authors' Rights In A Networked World, Jane C. Ginsburg

Faculty Scholarship

Let me start with two items of received wisdom: 1) Copyright is territorially-based; 2) Cyberspace is not. But copyrighted works circulate in cyberspace. What does that mean for their protection? I have not labeled this essay "The Cyberian Captivity of Copyright," just because the title is alliterative and fittingly portentious for an inaugural lecture. Rather, like the "Babylonian Captivity" of the papacy in Avignon that the title recalls, it suggests a displacement of an international institution. This need not mean, however, that the displacement is a Bad Thing - after all, the French probably have a more favorable view of …

Electronic Rights In Belgium And France: General Association Of Professional Journalists Of Belgium V. Central Station (Brussels Court Of First Instance, October 16, 1996; Brussels Court Of Appeals, October 28, 1997); Union Of French Journalists V. Sdv Plurimedia (Strasbourg Court Of Grand Instance, February 3, 1998) Symposium On Electronic Rights In International Perspective, Jane C. Ginsburg

Faculty Scholarship

Like many national presses in Europe, the Belgian press divides ideologically. Each daily newspaper represents the views of a political party, or expresses the perspective of a political or religious belief. Newspaper readers therefore tend to select the newspaper that most closely corresponds to their world-view. Ten publishers of Belgian dailies and weeklies formed a consortium, Central Station, to operate a website that would offer a crossection of all the participating periodicals' articles on a variety of subjects. The articles would appear in print in their separate newspapers in the morning, but would be available that evening on the Central …

Legislative Inaction On The Information Superhighway: Bargaining In The Shadow Of Copyright Law, Maureen A. O'Rourke

Faculty Scholarship

As a practical matter, the development of law in the form of enacted legislation often does not keep pace with societal change. At first glance, this fact seems somewhat disturbing since the law, according to some philosophies, should reflect social consensus. However, this is neither remarkable nor cause for concern. The law's processes are deliberative, involving time-consuming public testimony and debate. Thus, the law often plays "catch-up" with social change. This reactive rather than pro-active decision-making is generally desirable as the law is likely to change to reflect well-considered social judgments rather than passing social fancies. This column briefly examines …

Extraterritoriality And Multiterritorality In Copyright Infringement, Jane C. Ginsburg

Faculty Scholarship

Extraterritorial application of U.S. law, as Professor Curtis Bradley demonstrates, is highly suspect, if not illegitimate, unless clearly authorized by Congress. The apparently “extraterritorial” character of much recent copyright litigation has led some U.S. courts to dismiss for lack of subject matter jurisdiction or on grounds of forum non conveniens when the cases present offshore points of attachment. As copyright commerce becomes increasingly international, some of these dismissals may be unwarranted. They also may be incorrect in their refusal to apply U.S. law or retain U.S. jurisdiction over the parties: the decisions may be too quick to perceive "extra"-territoriality in …

Putting Cars On The "Information Superhighway": Authors, Exploiters, And Copyright In Cyberspace, Jane C. Ginsburg

Faculty Scholarship

The advent of the "Information Superhighway" has sparked much speculation about the roles of authorship, of readership, and of literary property in the vast system of interlinked computer networks that has come to be known as "cyberspace." Through computers linked to a digital network, users can access and add to vast quantities of material. At least in theory, every computer user can become his, or her own publisher, and every terminal can become a library, bookstore, or audio and video jukebox.

The prospect of pervasive audience access to and ability to copy and further disseminate works of authorship challenges the …

Copyright Without Walls?: Speculations On Literary Property In The Library Of The Future, Jane C. Ginsburg

Faculty Scholarship

This essay considers the application and adaptation of copyright law to the library of the future. In this "library without walls," works will be accessible by computer to users near and far. While a printed book usually is read by only one person at a time, that same book in digital format may be simultaneously consulted by as many users as have PCs linked by modem to the library. Where collecting quotations from printed sources today requires transcription or photocopying, in the library of the future it may be possible to download and print out excerpts, or even the entire …

A Tale Of Two Copyrights: Literary Property In Revolutionary France And America, Jane C. Ginsburg

Faculty Scholarship

The French and U.S. copyright systems are well known as opposites. The product of the French Revolution, French copyright law is said to enshrine the author: exclusive rights flow from one's (preferred) status as a creator. For example, a leading French copyright scholar states that one of the "fundamental ideas" of the revolutionary copyright laws is the principle that "an exclusive right is conferred on authors because their property is the most justified since it flows from their intellectual creation." By contrast, the U.S. Constitution's copyright clause, echoing the English Statute of Anne, makes the public's interest equal, if not …

Copyright Law, David Goldberg, Jane C. Ginsburg

Faculty Scholarship

In 1983 and 1984 the federal courts continued to interpret the changes in copyright law effectuated by the 1976 Copyright Act. During this period the United States Supreme Court decided its first copyright case since adoption of the 1976 Act. In general, the year's decisions tend to accord expanded copyright protection to authors. Several decisions, however, have provoked or exacerbated uncertainties in a number of areas, including the protection accorded nonfiction works, the "fair use" excuse to copyright infringement, and compliance with the U.S. copyright formality of affixing notice to published copies of a work.