Comment: Copyright\u27s Public-Private Distinction

I would like to focus my remarks on the question of user privacy. In her fascinating paper for this Symposium, Professor Litman expresses a guarded optimism that in its forthcoming decision in MGM v. Grokster, I the Court will retain the staple article of commerce doctrine that it first articulated in Sony. She opines, however, that the user privacy strand of the Sony decision is a lost cause. I don\u27t believe that it\u27s possible to retain the staple article of commerce doctrine while abandoning user privacy. At least in the realm of networked digital technologies, the two concepts are inextricably linked. To explain why, I would like to begin by examining a concept that I\u27ll call copyright\u27s public-private distinction. This distinction does not concern the presence or absence of state action, but rather the presence or absence of conduct triggering legal accountability

Creativity and Culture in Copyright Theory

Creativity is universally agreed to be a good that copyright law should seek to promote, yet copyright scholarship and policymaking have proceeded largely on the basis of assumptions about what it actually is. When asked to discuss the source of their inspiration, individual artists describe a process that is intrinsically ineffable. Rights theorists of all varieties have generally subscribed to this understanding, describing creativity in terms of an individual liberty whose form remains largely unspecified. Economic theorists of copyright work from the opposite end of the creative process, seeking to divine the optimal rules for promoting creativity by measuring its marketable byproducts. But these theorists offer no particular reason to think that marketable byproducts are either an appropriate proxy or an effective stimulus for creativity (as opposed to production), and more typically refuse to engage the question. The upshot is that the more we talk about creativity, the more it disappears from view. At the same time, the mainstream of intellectual property scholarship has persistently overlooked a broad array of social science methodologies that provide both descriptive tools for constructing ethnographies of creative processes and theoretical tools for modeling them

Copyright, Derivative Works, and the Economics of Complements

From an economic perspective, copyright is irrational. In defining the scope of a copyright owner\u27s exclusive rights, it treats situations that have similar economic consequences differently, as infringement in one case and not in the other, and situations that have radically different economic consequences similarly. This essay explores such area in which copyright exhibits economic irrationality: Copyright\u27s treatment of complements. Where a lower price on a substitute reduces demand for the original, a lower price on a complement increases it. So defined, copyright addresses whether a copyright owner will control three different types of complements: (i) complementary products, such as MP3 players and VCRs, that increase the accessibility of copyright works; (ii) complementary uses of copyrighted works, such as radio airplay; and (iii) complementary reworkings of copyrighted works, such as movies based upon a novel. Although the economic consequences associated with these complements are identical, copyright treats these complements differently. Some are infringing, at least, some of the time; others are not. This essay explores this irrationality and proposes a unifying principle: Where a given use, reuse, or product is a strong complement to a copyrighted work, and would, in the absence of copyright\u27s intervention, be available in a naturally competitive market, the copyright owner should not have the exclusive right to control such a use, reuse, or product

Copyright, Derivative Works, and the Economics of Complements

From an economic perspective, copyright is irrational. In defining the scope of a copyright owner\u27s exclusive rights, it treats situations that have similar economic consequences differently, as infringement in one case and not in the other, and situations that have radically different economic consequences similarly. This essay explores such area in which copyright exhibits economic irrationality: Copyright\u27s treatment of complements. Where a lower price on a substitute reduces demand for the original, a lower price on a complement increases it. So defined, copyright addresses whether a copyright owner will control three different types of complements: (i) complementary products, such as MP3 players and VCRs, that increase the accessibility of copyright works; (ii) complementary uses of copyrighted works, such as radio airplay; and (iii) complementary reworkings of copyrighted works, such as movies based upon a novel. Although the economic consequences associated with these complements are identical, copyright treats these complements differently. Some are infringing, at least, some of the time; others are not. This essay explores this irrationality and proposes a unifying principle: Where a given use, reuse, or product is a strong complement to a copyrighted work, and would, in the absence of copyright\u27s intervention, be available in a naturally competitive market, the copyright owner should not have the exclusive right to control such a use, reuse, or product

Copyright, Derivative Works, and the Economics of Complements

From an economic perspective, copyright is irrational. In defining the scope of a copyright owner\u27s exclusive rights, it treats situations that have similar economic consequences differently, as infringement in one case and not in the other, and situations that have radically different economic consequences similarly. This essay explores such area in which copyright exhibits economic irrationality: Copyright\u27s treatment of complements. Where a lower price on a substitute reduces demand for the original, a lower price on a complement increases it. So defined, copyright addresses whether a copyright owner will control three different types of complements: (i) complementary products, such as MP3 players and VCRs, that increase the accessibility of copyright works; (ii) complementary uses of copyrighted works, such as radio airplay; and (iii) complementary reworkings of copyrighted works, such as movies based upon a novel. Although the economic consequences associated with these complements are identical, copyright treats these complements differently. Some are infringing, at least, some of the time; others are not. This essay explores this irrationality and proposes a unifying principle: Where a given use, reuse, or product is a strong complement to a copyrighted work, and would, in the absence of copyright\u27s intervention, be available in a naturally competitive market, the copyright owner should not have the exclusive right to control such a use, reuse, or product

Sticky Knowledge in Copyright

Knowledge is sticky because it adheres to people along social routes, lodged within relational and collective modalities, as well as through copyright\u27s proverbial fixed works that can be transacted more freely. Sticky knowledge may in fact constitute a much larger body of knowledge than we usually acknowledge in intellectual property and may intersect with copyright in unexpected ways. This Article delves into sticky knowledge, which has been referenced often outside of intellectual property and sometimes within the laws of patents and trade secrets but almost not at all within copyright law. Under what circumstances will sticky knowledge encourage robust knowledge transmission-or copyright\u27s goal of encouragement of learning ? Understanding the scope and reach of this kind of knowledge may point to optimal means to encourage knowledge spillovers and reliability

Copyright\u27s Excess: Symposium Foreword

The focal point of this symposium is COPYRIGHT’S EXCESS, Glynn Lunney’s thoughtful and trenchant critique of copyright law’s effects on the U.S. recording industry. Before delving into the book’s contribution and into the chorus of scholarly replies that it has inspired, it first bears mention that both the book and its author share a cardinal strength: practicality. As Professor Lunney’s colleague at Texas A&M, I have heard him remark more than once that each of his three fields of formal study—engineering, then law, and eventually economics—is ultimately concerned with solving problems. Problem solving is also the basic template of COPYRIGHT’S EXCESS. If a principal aim of copyright law in the United States is to encourage the creation of new works, and if the scope and duration of our copyright protection have systematically grown since the Founding, then here immediately we have specified our problem and described our long-accepted solution. But has it really been a solution

Comment: Copyright\u27s Public-Private Distinction

TesisEl presente trabajo de investigación titulado Revaluación de activos fijos y su incidencia en la Situación Financiera de Corporación Rex S.A - 2017”, tiene como finalidad orientar a las empresas a realizar una revaluación voluntaria de sus activos fijos. Muchas de las empresas desconocen los beneficios que puede traer realizar una revaluación de activos, una de la más importante es que afectara directamente en el estado de situación financiera, incrementando los saldos en la Cta. 33 (Inmuebles maquinaria y equipo) y en la Cta. 57(Excedente de revaluación), asimismo permitirá reflejar información actualizada sobre saldos reales y asignación de nuevo tiempo de vida útil a los activos, así como también este incremento nos servirá como respaldo ante las entidades financieras en un posible caso de financiamiento. La revaluación de activos fijos nos servirá como herramienta eficaz para que la gerencia tome decisiones más certeras y precisas

The Copyright Paradox

Copyright law has become an important part of American industrial policy. Its rules are felt by every industry that touches information, and today that means quite a bit. Like other types of industrial policy, copyright in operation purposely advantages some sectors and disadvantages others. Consequently, today\u27s copyright courts face hard problems of competition management, akin to those faced by the antitrust courts and the Federal Communications Commission. How should courts manage competition using copyright? Over the last decade, writers have begun to try to understand the other side of copyright, variously called its innovation policy, communications policy, or regulatory side.Here I want to focus attention on a crucial problem of decisional method that is becoming more clearly important to copyright decisions. Courts in both copyright and antitrust face a choice between what we can characterize as bad actor and welfarist models of deciding cases. The bad actor approach punishes alleged wrongdoers based on malicious behavior of the suspect and the prospect of harm to favored sectors of the economy, like small businesses (in antitrust) or the entertainment industries (in copyright). The welfarist approach, by contrast, calls for judges generally to ignore intent or bad behavior in exchange for a disciplined focus on questions of industry economics and consumer, or user, welfare. The welfarist approach accepts Adam Smith\u27s premise that certain forms of malicious behavior may promote overall social well-being, on balance, though some may not. The tension between these approaches became clear in the Supreme Court\u27s 2005 decision in Metro-Goldwyn Mayer Studios, Inc. v Grokster, Ltd. In Grokster the Court side-stepped a welfarist calculation called for by existing law, and turned instead to a bad actor approach. Faced with a vicious fight between disreputable firms and the incumbent industry, the Court chose to punish the bad guys. To the Court, and to many observers, the Grokster decision was a good political way out of a very difficult problem. As a one-shot political compromise, the decision managed to avoid outraging either the electronics or incumbent distribution industries, and was successful in that regard. However, if Grokster is also meant to serve as a model of how copyright should manage competition, the drawbacks of the Grokster model are manifest