Science and Technology Law Commons^™

Unlocked And Loaded: Government Censorship Of 3d-Printed Firearms And A Proposal For More Reasonable Regulation Of 3d-Printed Goods, Danton L. Bryans

Indiana Law Journal

This Comment analyzes the regulations in place on 3D-printed firearms and proposes a new standard for regulating 3D-printed goods. Part I provides a brief primer on 3D printing and 3D-printed firearms. Part II turns to the events surrounding Defense Distributed’s creation of the world’s first 3D-printed firearm and the subsequent government censorship of the corresponding CAD files. Part III discusses the regulations affecting 3D-printed firearms and why these regulations are ill-suited for CAD files and 3D-printed goods. Part IV analyzes the implications of treating CAD files and 3D-printed goods as equivalents of traditional goods. Finally, Part V offers a proposal …

The Protection Of Performers Under U.S. Law In Comparative Perspective, Daniel Gervais

IP Theory

The majority opinion of the Ninth Circuit panel in Garcia v. Google, Inc. stands for the proposition that an actor has copyright in her performance. The case was described as horrific and generated a significant amount of traffic on listservs and social media.

In the opinion, Chief Judge Kozinski made three key points. First, that there was originality in the performance, as required under Feist. The Feist court found that creative choices were necessary to generate sufficient originality to warrant copyright protection. Using Feist as backdrop, the Garcia majority found that:

An actor’s performance, when fixed, is copyrightable if …

Copyright And Cross-Cultural Borrowing: Indo-Western Musical Encounters, Arpan Banerjee

IP Theory

This article traces the history of how Western rock musicians and hip-hop musicians, separated by many decades, have borrowed elements from Indian music. Conversely, the article also discusses how Indian film music composers have frequently, and rather blatantly, copied Western melodies. While cross-cultural borrowing raises complex socio-political questions, this article focuses on some practical legal questions that arise from such borrowing. The article discusses lawsuits filed by artists in India and the United States — from a much-publicized lawsuit against Dr. Dre by the Indian film music composer Bappi Lahiri, to a more recent lawsuit against another Indian film composer …

No Comment: Will Cariou V. Prince Alter Copyright Judges’ Taste In Art?, Christine Haight Farley

IP Theory

Even before Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc. made transformativeness the name of the game in fair use law, judges have been in search of artistic speech in their copyright fair use determinations, especially in appropriation art cases. Judges often find themselves ascribing meaning both to the defendant’s work and the plaintiff’s work when comparing the two in order to determine whether defendant’s art is new. So while many commentators attribute appropriation artist Jeff Koons’s victory in Blanch v. Koons after a string of losses to the development in fair use law contributed by Campbell, I instead argue that …

Are The Courts Singing A Different Tune When It Comes To Music?: What Ever Happened To Fair Use In Music Sampling Cases?, Michael B. Landau

IP Theory

As "fair use" has become more common as a defense to copyright infringement, often successfully, it has not gained any ground in cases involving music sampling. In the years since Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc., we have seen the introduction of "transformative use" to fair use analysis. "Transformative use" has led to the holdings that thumbnail reproductions of photographs, parodies of novels, parodies of advertisements, changed artworks, the inclusion of legal briefs in searchable databases, the inclusion of music in film, and the mass digitization of millions of books are all "fair use." Almost every day we read of …

Commentary: Revisiting The Derivative Works Exception Of The Copyright Act Thirty Years After Mills Music, Robert S. Meitus

IP Theory

No abstract provided.

Living Gardens, Living Art, Living Tradition, Roberta R. Kwall

IP Theory

Copyright protection in the United States begins from the moment of a work’s “creation.”1 Although this rule is codified in the statute, the underlying issues of how and when “creation” occurs are rarely, if ever, explored. Under the current law, as soon as an author creates a copyrightable work of authorship and fixes that work in a tangible medium of expression, the work is entitled to protection. This formulation ignores the critical issues of whether fluid works of authorship that are constantly evolving can be subject to copyright protection and, if so, what is the scope of such protection. Not …

Are We Serious About Performers’ Rights?, Mary Lafrance

IP Theory

Do performers have rights in the expressive works they help to create? Historically, the rights of performers have received far less attention that the rights of traditional authors. The law has been reluctant to recognize performers as authors and, to the extent that performers’ rights are recognized, they are secondary to, and more limited than, the rights of traditional authors. Recent developments, however, have brought performers’ intellectual property rights to the forefront. For a number of reasons, performers in the United States have increasingly begun to assert authorship rights in the works they help to create. In addition, recent international …

Pre-1972 Sound Recordings: Why Does The Law Treat Them Differently?, June M. Besek

IP Theory

No abstract provided.

Autonomous Weapons And Accountability: Seeking Solutions In The Law Of War, Kelly Cass

Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review

Autonomous weapons are increasingly used by militaries around the world. Unlike conventional unmanned weapons such as drones, autonomous weapons involve a machine deciding whether to deploy lethal force. Yet, because a machine cannot have the requisite mental state to commit a war crime, the legal scrutiny falls onto the decision to deploy an autonomous weapon. This Article focuses on the dual questions arising from that decision: how to regulate autonomous weapon use and who should be held criminally liable for an autonomous weapon’s actions. Regarding the first issue, this Article concludes that regulations expressly limiting autonomous weapon use to non-human …

Silencing The Call To Arms: A Shift Away From Cyber Attacks As Warfare, Ryan Patterson

Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review

Cyberspace has developed into an indispensable aspect of modern society, but not without risk. Cyber attacks have increased in frequency, with many states declaring cyber operations a priority in what has been called the newest domain of warfare. But what rules govern? The Tallinn Manual on the International Law Applicable to Cyber Warfare suggests existent laws of war are sufficient to govern cyber activities; however, the Tallinn Manual ignores fundamental problems and unique differences between cyber attacks and kinetic attacks. This Article argues that several crucial impediments frustrate placing cyber attacks within the current umbra of warfare, chiefly the problems …

Aclu V. Clapper: The Fourth Amendment In The Digital Age, Erin E. Connare

Buffalo Law Review

No abstract provided.

Drone Drain: How The Faa Can Avoid Draining (And Instead Spur) The American Drone Industry By Adding Nuance To Its Draft Small Uas Rules, Brooks Lindsay

Washington Journal of Law, Technology & Arts

The Federal Aviation Administration has done much right in the past few months with its draft small UAS rules, but should add nuance to the draft to avoid draining America’s nascent drone industry. This Article, which was submitted as an official comment to the FAA by the University of Washington’s world-renowned College of Engineering, recommends five essential modifications to enable American competitiveness in this field. First, the FAA should maintain the line-of-sight requirement as a baseline, but allow uses beyond line-of-sight for pilots and aircraft certified to fly with First-Person View or autonomous technology. Second, the FAA should create exceptions …

Small Data Surveillance V. Big Data Cybersurveillance, Margaret Hu

Faculty Publications

This Article highlights some of the critical distinctions between small data surveillance and big data cybersurveillance as methods of intelligence gathering. Specifically, in the intelligence context, it appears that "collect-it-all" tools in a big data world can now potentially facilitate the construction, by the intelligence community, of other individuals' digital avatars. The digital avatar can be understood as a virtual representation of our digital selves and may serve as a potential proxy for an actual person. This construction may be enabled through processes such as the data fusion of biometric and biographic data, or the digital data fusion of the …

The Legality Of President Reagan's Proposed Space-Based Ballistic Missile Defense System, John Topping

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

The Transfer Of Technology And Unclos Iii, Douglas Yarn

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

Protection Of Computers And Computer Software Before The United States International Trade Commission: In Re Certain Personal Computers And Components Thereof, Nicholas N. Leach

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

Avoiding Ethical Problems In Social Media, Nicole G. Iannarone

Faculty Publications By Year

No abstract provided.

Toil And Technology: Innovative Technology Is Displacing Workers To New Jobs Rather Than Replacing Them Entirely, James Bessen

Faculty Scholarship

At the Quiet Logistics distribution center north of Boston in the United States, a robot lifts a shelf and transports it through the warehouse to a workstation. There, an employee picks an item from the shelf and places it in a shipping box. Each robot in the distribution center does the work of one and a half humans.

Robots and other technologies are transforming supply chains, tracking items from source to consumer, minimizing shipping time and cost, automating clerical tasks, and more. But are they eliminating the need for human workers, leading to persistent technological unemployment?

Idump: How The United States Should Use Disposal Bans To Legislate Our Way Out Of The Electronic Waste Crisis, Nick Raffaele

William & Mary Environmental Law and Policy Review

No abstract provided.