Copyright and the Challenge of the New

Copyright and the Challenge of the New
Author: Brad Sherman
Publisher: Kluwer Law International B.V.
Total Pages: 288
Release: 2012-08-01
Genre: Law
ISBN: 9041142118

Copyright is not, as is often thought, something that is periodically ‘extended’ to cover a new field or medium; rather, copyright redefines itself whenever its efficacy is challenged. While many factors have contributed to this process, the most consistent has been the challenges created by new technologies. The contributing authors build upon this insight to show that copyright law is, and has always been, a creature of technology. Each chapter focuses on a specific technology or group of technologies – photography, telegraphy, the phonogram, radio, film, the photocopier, the tape player, television, and computer programs – emphasizing the changes that each technology instigated and the challenges and opportunities it created. Perhaps the most profound insight of this extraordinary book is the authors’ claim – ably supported in a series of intriguing chapters – that the way the law responds and reacts to new technologies is always mediated by the political, social, economic, and cultural environment in which the interaction occurs. For example, these chapters describe and explain how: statutory schemes of remuneration arose from failures to effectively police new forms of piracy; persistent litigation and lobbying by copyright owners forces legislatures and courts to devise new laws; content (e.g., sporting events) generates new rules of access to broadcasts; and ‘fair copying’ (e.g., by libraries) is the necessary exception that proves the rule. As well as providing insight into the ways that copyright law interacted with old technologies when they were new, the book also offers important insights into problems and issues currently confronting copyright law and policy such as the appropriate scope of copyright and the relation between copyright and the public interest. With the broad perspectives opened by these essays, academics, practitioners and policymakers in the field will find themselves well equipped to deal with the problems that will inevitably be created by technologies in the future.

Copyright, Fair Use, and the Challenge for Universities

Copyright, Fair Use, and the Challenge for Universities
Author: Kenneth D. Crews
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 270
Release: 1993-12-15
Genre: Education
ISBN: 9780226120553

The recent lawsuit against Kinko's Copies for copyright infringement has exposed the confusion and heightened the fear of liability surrounding copyright issues in colleges and universities. This volume offers an enlightening explanation of copyright and the ambiguous concept of fair use as they affect and are affected by higher education. In the first large-scale study of its kind, Kenneth D. Crews surveys the copyright policies of ninety-eight American research universities. His analysis reveals a variety of ways in which universities have responded to—and how they could better manage—the conflicting goals of copyright policies: avoiding infringements while promoting lawful uses that serve teaching and research. He explains in detail the background of copyright law and congressional guidelines affecting familiar uses of photocopies, videotapes, software, and reserve rooms. Crews concludes that most universities are overly conservative in their interpretation of copyright and often neglect their own interests, adding unnecessary costs and obstacles to the lawful dissemination of information. Copyright, Fair Use, and the Challenge for Universities provides administrators, instructors, lawyers, librarians, and educational leaders a much-needed exegesis of copyright and how it can better serve higher education.

Copyright in the Digital Era

Copyright in the Digital Era
Author: National Research Council
Publisher: National Academies Press
Total Pages: 103
Release: 2013-04-30
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 0309278988

Over the course of several decades, copyright protection has been expanded and extended through legislative changes occasioned by national and international developments. The content and technology industries affected by copyright and its exceptions, and in some cases balancing the two, have become increasingly important as sources of economic growth, relatively high-paying jobs, and exports. Since the expansion of digital technology in the mid-1990s, they have undergone a technological revolution that has disrupted long-established modes of creating, distributing, and using works ranging from literature and news to film and music to scientific publications and computer software. In the United States and internationally, these disruptive changes have given rise to a strident debate over copyright's proper scope and terms and means of its enforcement-a debate between those who believe the digital revolution is progressively undermining the copyright protection essential to encourage the funding, creation, and distribution of new works and those who believe that enhancements to copyright are inhibiting technological innovation and free expression. Copyright in the Digital Era: Building Evidence for Policy examines a range of questions regarding copyright policy by using a variety of methods, such as case studies, international and sectoral comparisons, and experiments and surveys. This report is especially critical in light of digital age developments that may, for example, change the incentive calculus for various actors in the copyright system, impact the costs of voluntary copyright transactions, pose new enforcement challenges, and change the optimal balance between copyright protection and exceptions.

Copyright’s Highway

Copyright’s Highway
Author: Paul Goldstein
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Total Pages: 262
Release: 2003-06-19
Genre: Law
ISBN: 0804779201

From eighteenth-century copyright law, to current-day copyright issues on the internet, to tomorrow's "celestial jukebox"—a digital repository of books, movies, and music available on demand—Paul Goldstein presents a thorough examination of the challenges facing copyright owners and users. One of the nation's leading authorities on intellectual property law, Goldstein offers an engaging, readable, and intelligent analysis of the effect of copyright on American politics, economy, and culture. Goldstein presents and analyzes key legal battles, including Supreme Court decisions on home taping and 2 Live Crew's contested sampling of Roy Orbison's "Pretty Woman." In this revised edition, the author expands the discussion to cover electronic media, including an examination of recent Napster litigation, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, and the vexed Secure Digital Music Initiative, under which record companies attempted to develop effective encryption standards for their products. Praise for the first edition: "A clever and vibrant book that traces copyright history from the invention of the printing press through current challenges to copyright from new technologies . . . . Most compelling [on] multimedia technologies." —Sabra Chartrand, The New York Times "This eminent authority writes with clarity, lucidity and a wry sense of humor about a subject whose complexities can be daunting." —Jonathan Kirsch, Los Angeles Times "A wonderfully American tale of how law, literature, politics and megabucks intersect." —William Petrocelli, San Francisco Chronicle

The Unrealized Promise of the Next Great Copyright Act

The Unrealized Promise of the Next Great Copyright Act
Author: Christopher S. Reed
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
Total Pages: 272
Release: 2019
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1788975952

p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 10.0px Arial} The Unrealized Promise of the Next Great Copyright Act provides a unique perspective on one of the most active periods of copyright policy discourse in the United States since the enactment of the Copyright Act of 1976. Christopher S. Reed documents and assesses the major issues confronting the U.S. copyright system today, offering an inside view of the Copyright Office’s attempts at reform as part of a comprehensive account of the complex dynamics between key stakeholder communities, government and legislation.

Copyright's Highway

Copyright's Highway
Author: Paul Goldstein
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Total Pages: 327
Release: 2019-05-14
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1503609235

“One of the most brilliant, lucid, and readable explanations of what is increasingly America’s national treasure: our intellectual property.” —Scott Turow In Copyright’s Highway, one of the nation’s leading authorities on intellectual property law offers an engaging and intelligent analysis of the effect of copyright on American politics, economy, and culture. From eighteenth-century copyright law, to the “celestial jukebox,” to the future of copyright issues in the digital age, Paul Goldstein presents a thorough examination of the challenges facing copyright owners and users. In this fully updated second edition, the author expands the discussion to cover the latest developments and shifts in copyright law for a new audience of scholars and students. This expanded edition introduces readers to present and future debates regarding copyright law and policy, including a new chapter on the technological shift in emphasis from producer to consumer and the legal shift from exclusive rights to exceptions and limitations to those rights. From Gutenberg to Google Books, Copyright’s Highway, Second Edition, offers a concise, essential resource for the internet generation. Praise for Copyright’s Highway “Paul Goldstein’s eloquent call for a more human-centered discipline of copyright blends perception and prescription to great effect, indicating to the reader how far copyright has yet to go to help creativity flourish—and how it might cover the distance.” —Jonathan Zittrain, Harvard University “Goldstein can make the complex issues of copyright law accessible and captivating without sacrificing the nuances of law, politics, and custom that underlie them. With this second edition of Copyright’s Highway, Goldstein adds timely narratives, such as the Google Book Project, to illustrate the evolving nature of copyright law and its importance to our everyday lives.” —Marshall Leaffer, Indiana University Maurer School of Law “A much-awaited new edition of Paul Goldstein’s landmark synthesis of the history and policies of US copyright law. Goldstein’s comprehensive and deep understanding of the legal, economic, and technological interests at stake thoroughly illuminates this sensitive and accessible study. A new concluding chapter meticulously and critically examines the challenges of “competing with free” and the landscape-altering consequences of copyright’s encounter with internet platforms.” —Jane C. Ginsburg, Columbia University

Wired Shut

Wired Shut
Author: Tarleton Gillespie
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 405
Release: 2009-09-18
Genre: Law
ISBN: 0262250837

How the shift toward "technical copy protection" in the battle over digital copyright depends on changing political and commercial alignments that are profoundly shaping the future of cultural expression in a digital age. While the public and the media have been distracted by the story of Napster, warnings about the evils of "piracy," and lawsuits by the recording and film industries, the enforcement of copyright law in the digital world has quietly shifted from regulating copying to regulating the design of technology. Lawmakers and commercial interests are pursuing what might be called a technical fix: instead of specifying what can and cannot be done legally with a copyrighted work, this new approach calls for the strategic use of encryption technologies to build standards of copyright directly into digital devices so that some uses are possible and others rendered impossible. In Wired Shut, Tarleton Gillespie examines this shift to "technical copy protection" and its profound political, economic, and cultural implications. Gillespie reveals that the real story is not the technological controls themselves but the political, economic, and cultural arrangements being put in place to make them work. He shows that this approach to digital copyright depends on new kinds of alliances among content and technology industries, legislators, regulators, and the courts, and is changing the relationship between law and technology in the process. The film and music industries, he claims, are deploying copyright in order to funnel digital culture into increasingly commercial patterns that threaten to undermine the democratic potential of a network society. In this broad context, Gillespie examines three recent controversies over digital copyright: the failed effort to develop copy protection for portable music players with the Strategic Digital Music Initiative (SDMI); the encryption system used in DVDs, and the film industry's legal response to the tools that challenged them; and the attempt by the FCC to mandate the "broadcast flag" copy protection system for digital television. In each, he argues that whether or not such technical constraints ever succeed, the political alignments required will profoundly shape the future of cultural expression in a digital age.