505 and All That—The Defendant’s Dilemma

Section 505 of the Copyright Act of 1909 was carried forth, without substantive change, into the Copyright Act of 1976. An assessment of section 505 is presented

The Good, the Bad, and the Confusing: User-Generated Video Creators on Copyright

Presents findings from a survey of independent producers of online video content. Examines producers' attitudes toward copyright, assumptions and knowledge about their use of others' intellectual property, and their stake in their own

Copyright, Free Speech, and the Public's Right to Know: How Journalists Think about Fair Use

This study, resulting from long-form interviews with 80 journalists, finds that journalistic mission is in peril, because of lack of clarity around copyright and fair use. Journalists' professional culture is highly conducive to a robust employment of their free speech rights under the copyright doctrine of fair use, but their actual knowledge of fair use practice is low. Where they have received education on copyright and fair use, it has often been erroneous. Ironically, when they do not know that they are using fair use, they nevertheless do so with a logic and reasoning that accords extremely well with today's courts' interpretation of the law. But when they have to actively make a decision about whether to employ fair use, they often resort to myths and misconceptions. Furthermore, they sometimes take unnecessary risks. The consequence of a failure to understand their free speech issues within the framework of fair use means that, when facing new practices or situations, journalists experience expense, delays and even failure to meet their mission of informing the public. These consequences are avoidable, with better and shared understanding of fair use within the experience of journalistic practice, whether it is original reporting, aggregation, within large institutions or a one-person outfit. Journalists need both to understand fair use and to articulate collectively the principles that govern its employment to meet journalistic mission

Is There Such a Thing as Postmodern Copyright?

Back in 1992, artist/entrepreneur Jeff Koons suffered a humiliating setback when the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit repudiated the suggestion that his reuse of objects from public culture might constitute a fair use defense to a copyright infringement claim. Fourteen years later, in a case that again involved a photographer\u27s claim of copyright infringement, Koons triumphed in the same judicial forum. What had changed? This Article explores, in particular, one among a variety of alternative explanations: Koons may have caught the very leading edge of a profound wave of change in the social and cultural conceptualization of copyright law-specifically, the emergence of an understanding that is at least incipiently postmodern in nature

Memorial to Barbara Ringer

The story goes that in 439 BC the retired consul Cincinnatus was summoned from the plow by the Senate and people of Rome. One more time, he saw the Republic through a time of particular peril, resigning office immediately afterwards to return to his rural retirement - to be transmuted into a timeless emblem of selfless probity. Episodes of this kind are even rarer in the annals of the U.S. civil service than in the Roman history. But I had the good fortune to be a witness to one such - Barbara Ringer\u27s return to the Library of Congress in 1993 to co-chair the Advisory Committee on Copyright Registration and Deposit (ACCORD)

What Didn\u27t Happen: An Essay in Speculation

Most of us held off celebrating the beginning of a renewed slow trickle of works into copyright\u27s public domain until the first seconds of New Year\u27s Day, 2019, but (if it hadn\u27t been so early in the day), we would have been entitled to raise a glass at 4:04 PM on the preceding December 27th, when the last substantive business undertaken in 2018 by either house of Congress was concluded in the Senate. (Like the House, which wrapped up its business at 4:02, the World\u27s Greatest Deliberative Body had convened that day at 4:00.) At that moment, a last-minute push to extend copyrights beyond the 20-year bonus terms awarded in the 1998 Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension became a practical and mathematical impossibility. This was all the more true since no legislation to achieve that result had been introduced in either house during the 115th Congress

On the Author Effect: Contemporary Copyright and Collective Creativity

As exemplified by the articles in this volume, recent scholarship on authorship reflects various influences. Among the most important are Michel Foucault\u27s article, What is an Author?, and Benjamin Kaplan\u27s book, An Unhurried View of Copyright. Since the late 1960s, these two texts have influenced work in literary and legal studies respectively. Only recently, however, have the lines of inquiry that Foucault and Kaplan helped to initiate begun to converge

Caught in the Net of Copyright

As an overture to this Comment, I\u27d like to begin with one of my favorite passages from the recent National Information Infrastructure (NII)Task Force Working Group Report on Intellectual Property and the NII-the so-called White Paper.\u27 The passage is not one of the deceptively bland legislative proposals-nor one of the strategic half-truths in the purported summary of current copyright law. Rather, it is a passage from the section on copyright awareness, and it is an excellent example of a good idea gone wrong. The good idea is that our elementary and secondary schools could take a role in preparing students for electronic citizenship, by, among other things, generating discussion of issues associated with intellectual property ownership. Unfortunately, the working out of this idea in the White Paper smacks more of a program of mind control than one of genuine education. High schoolers, we are told, should be taught to just say yes to licensing.\u27 The message for teaching the primary grades is similar. The White Paper notes that basic concepts of intellectual property . . . are easily taught at a young age. More complicated topics ... would likely be reserved for later study. However, complexity of the subject matter alone is not the only consideration