The Copyright Act’s Mandatory-Deposit Requirement: Unnecessary and Unconstitutional

Many people are unaware of a federal copyright statute that requires owners of material published in the United States to furnish the federal government with two copies of each item published. Section 407(a) of the Copyright Act of 1976 (17 U.S.C. § 407) states that “the owner of copyright or of the exclusive right of publication in a work published in the United States shall deposit, within three months after the date of such publication—(1) two complete copies of the best edition; or (2) if the work is a sound recording, two complete phonorecords of the best edition, together with any printed or other visually perceptible material published with such phonorecords.” A recent lawsuit highlights constitutional problems with this statutory provision and the undue burdens it can place on publishers. Valancourt has published more than 400 books and adds about twenty new titles yearly; but unlike traditional publishers, Valancourt does not keep copies in stock. Rather, it employs a print-on-demand model, wherein “James edits each book and lays out galleys, but nothing is physically printed until a customer or retailer actually orders a book.” Not keeping books in stock proved problematic when Valancourt received an email on June 11, 2018, from the United States Copyright Office, stating that Valancourt was not complying with the mandatory- deposit requirement and that if he did not comply, he could face large fines. After an unsuccessful attempt to resolve the matter, Valancourt filed a lawsuit in federal court, challenging the constitutionality of section 407, in light of the Fifth Amendment’s Takings Clause and the First Amendment’s protections of freedom of speech and freedom of the press. This Article argues that the mandatory-deposit requirement is unnecessary and, on at least three grounds, unconstitutional

The Visual Artists Rights Act\u27s Recognized Stature Provision: A Case for Repeal

Using as a case study the recent “5Pointz” litigation, a case involving visual artists’ moral-rights claims to graffiti they drew on a piece of private property in Queens, New York, this article examines the threat that Visual Artists Rights Act (VARA)’s grant to visual artists of the right “to prevent any destruction of a work of recognized stature” poses to common-law property and contract rights. This article advances the argument that the default legal rule should be that the rights of property owners (real or personal), including the right to destroy such properties, trump any moral rights that visual artists claim are affixed to a property. Ultimately, this article recommends repealing the aforementioned right “to prevent any destruction of a work of recognized stature,” leaving the traditional rules of property law and contract law to determine when, if ever, visual artists’ moral rights have legal priority over the rights of property owners

COVID-19 and Cancelled 2020 College Football Games Contracts: Force Majeure?

After COVID-19, majeure clauses accounting for the possibility of a pandemic will become the norm in college football game contracts. Indeed, some contracts are already including pandemics in their lists of force majeure-triggering events. Such language has already been added to collegiate game contracts. For example, a contract signed in May 2020 for the 2025 football game between Wisconsin and Miami (Ohio) lists as force majeure-triggering events “regional or global epidemics, pandemics, quarantines, and other similar health threats (e.g.[,] coronavirus, influenza, etc.).” Scholars explain that “the onset of the novel coronavirus pandemic warranted immediate revisitation of college football contracts.” However, such language was not the norm for college football game contracts before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, and this is certainly the case for many, if not most, of the contracts for games cancelled for the 2020 college football season, the first season after the arrival of COVID-19. It remains to be seen whether any non-Power Five schools will pursue any legal claim(s) against the Power Five schools (or their respective conferences) that cancelled their games. The author believes non-Power Five schools should pursue a legal claim because there are solid arguments that a remedy is warranted, considering that COVID-19 did not prevent the playing of the cancelled games and that certain schools that cancelled games have not mitigated injuries resulting therefrom

SEC IN-HOUSE TRIBUNALS: A CALL FOR REFORM

I IN the aftermath of the 1929 crash of the stock market and during the height of the Great Depression, the federal government took steps to strengthen U.S. securities laws.1 To that end, via the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, the U.S. Congress (Congress) created the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), whose “mission [is] to protect investors, maintain fair, orderly, and efficient markets, and facilitate capital formation.”2 As “the primary overseer and regulator of the U.S. securities markets,” the SEC has the power to bring enforcement actions against parties it believes to be in violation of the nation’s securities laws

The Space Infrared Interferometric Telescope (SPIRIT): High-resolution imaging and spectroscopy in the far-infrared

We report results of a recently-completed pre-Formulation Phase study of SPIRIT, a candidate NASA Origins Probe mission. SPIRIT is a spatial and spectral interferometer with an operating wavelength range 25 - 400 microns. SPIRIT will provide sub-arcsecond resolution images and spectra with resolution R = 3000 in a 1 arcmin field of view to accomplish three primary scientific objectives: (1) Learn how planetary systems form from protostellar disks, and how they acquire their inhomogeneous composition; (2) characterize the family of extrasolar planetary systems by imaging the structure in debris disks to understand how and where planets of different types form; and (3) learn how high-redshift galaxies formed and merged to form the present-day population of galaxies. Observations with SPIRIT will be complementary to those of the James Webb Space Telescope and the ground-based Atacama Large Millimeter Array. All three observatories could be operational contemporaneously.Comment: 20 pages, 12 figures, accepted for publication in J. Adv. Space Res. on 26 May 200