New, extraordinary royalty rates threaten the diversity and the existence of Internet radio. Learn about the underlying copyright legislation, how it was implemented, and what CIS’s Cyberlaw Clinic and Collegiate Broadcasters are doing about it in the Courts, in Congress and in the Copyright Office.
Monday, April 7, 2003
12:30 – 1:30 p.m.
Room 80 (Moot Courtroom)
Free and Open to all!
Lunch Served
Monday, March 31, 2003
12:30-1:30 pm
Moot Court Room
Stanford University Law School
Lunch will be provided
All Welcome
about the speaker
Richard Stallman is the founder of the GNU project, launched in 1984
to develop the free operating system GNU (an acronym for "GNU's Not
Unix"), and thereby give computer users the freedom that most of them
have lost. GNU is free software: everyone has the freedom to copy it
and redistribute it, as well as to make changes either large or small.
The GNU/Linux system, basically GNU with Linux added as the kernel, is
used on tens of millions of computers today. See www.gnu.org for more
The human population isn't doubling every 18 months, but the ability of computers to keep track of us is. Until recently, the biggest threat to privacy was Moore's law, a blind force carrying us to a dystopian future. Since 9/11, this force is guided and accelerated by deliberate policy. How do we get out of this mess?Monday, March 10, 2003
12:30-1:30 pm
Moot Court Room
Stanford University Law School
Lunch will be provided
All Welcome
About the Speaker
Philip R. Zimmermann is the creator of Pretty Good Privacy. For that, he was the target of a three-year criminal investigation, because the government held that US export restrictions for cryptographic software were violated when PGP spread all around the world following its 1991 publication as freeware. Despite the lack of funding, the lack of any paid staff, the lack of a company to stand behind it, and despite government persecution, PGP nonetheless became the most widely used email encryption software in the world. After the government dropped its case in early 1996, Zimmermann founded PGP Inc. That company was acquired by Network Associates Inc (NAI) in December 1997, where he stayed on for three years as Senior Fellow. In August 2002 PGP was acquired from NAI by a new company called PGP Corporation, where Zimmermann now serves as special advisor and consultant. Zimmermann currently is consulting for a number of companies and industry organizations on matters cryptographic.
Dr. Mark Cooper will discuss threats to the dynamically innovative Internet posed by the anticompetitive practices of advanced telecommunications network owners. Cooper’s new book, CABLE MERGERS AND MONOPOLIES: MARKET POWER IN DIGITAL MEDIA AND COMMUNICATIONS NETWORKS, combines “new economy” concepts of communications platforms with traditional industrial organization concepts. He argues that two forms of market power ignored by antitrust practice in the latter part of the 20th century – vertical leverage and monopsony (buyer market power) – are critical challenges to open communications in the digital information age. Refusal to interconnect and withholding of network functionalities directly contribute to the disappointing market performance of the high-speed Internet. These should be seen as violations of antitrust and communications law and remedied by public policy.Monday, March 3, 2003
This talk will present a roadmap of emerging legal problems in the area of Digital Rights Management (DRM) that are less frequently discussed in legal and policy circles. The talk will cover issues such as
Art. I, sec. 8, cl. 8 of the Constitution reads: "Congress shall have Power To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries." The Clause is typically known as the Copyright Clause, the Patent Clause, or the Intellectual Property Clause, but the power granted to Congress encompasses more than just authority regarding patents and copyrights. A more accurate descriptor is the Science and Useful Arts Clause.
Legal historian Ed Walterscheid will discuss the Clause from an historical perspective, seeking to delineate which language of the Clause constitutes a grant of power to Congress, what the scope of the grant is, and what limitations, if any, exist on this congressional power. He will suggest that the copyright power of Congress is not nearly as plenary as Congress and the Solicitor General of the United States seem to believe it is.
In the past dozen years, we have witnessed an accelerating set of changes in
the ways in which music and movies are made and distributed. Enormous
social and economic benefits could be reaped through full exploitation of
the new technologies. Sadly, the legal system has thus far frustrated
rather than facilitated realization of those benefits. This talk will
explain how and why things went awry and then explore three alternative ways
in which the legal system might be reformed.
Monday, January 13, 2003
3:30-5:00 pm
Moot Court Room
Stanford University Law School
Directions
Julian Dibbell will discuss real-world legal issues rooted in virtual-world
economies. In the last five years, virtual worlds like the massively
multiplayer role-playing games EverQuest and Ultima Online have become
sources of genuine wealth for their inhabitants. Scarce in-game items and
well-developed player accounts sell on eBay for hundreds of dollars, with
assets accruing to players at a rate that dwarfs the GNP per capita of major
economies like India's and China's. But who actually owns this wealth? The
companies that create the virtual worlds, or the players who generate the
virtual economies? At least one lawsuit has sought to resolve this question,
David Goldberg, one of Europe's preeminent free expression scholars, will present his latest paper that examines how Europe is approaching the free expresion vs. censorship debate stemming from 'children and the Internet' (or pornography online) issues. This includes the various debates, policies, decisions, recommendations, action plans, task forces, content rating & filtering schemes, hotlines, and educational/awareness raising programs. In it he explains that understanding how the issue is being dealt with (at least in Europe) requires awareness of “the precautionary principle” and of other legal actions based on Article 12 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child.
Martin Garbus is a founding partner of Frankfurt Garbus Kurnit Klein & Selz, PC. One of the country's leading trial lawyers, Mr. Garbus has tried complex commercial, intellectual property, estate, and criminal cases, as well as media cases in nearly every state in the country. He has appeared before the United States Supreme Court as well as the highest state and federal courts in numerous states on many occasions. His courtroom work has ranged from long jury trials in complex estate cases and securities cases to arbitrations and short bench trials.
He has represented most of the major book publishers, movies companies and media conglomerates in the United States and abroad in commercial and media actions. He has also represented major entities in new media, Internet companies, networks and cable television and radio industries, including Channel 4, PBS, Pearson and Penguin-Putnam Books in the United States and Australia, Fox and Warner Bros., and Michael Bloomberg and his business entities, in business transactions as well as litigations. As part of his communications and intellectual property practice, he has represented the publishers of Salman Rushdie and Henry Miller and has personally represented actors such as Spike Lee, Al Pacino, Richard Gere, and Robert Redford, and authors such as David Halberstam, as well as such well-known political dissidents such as Vaclav Havel, Nelson Mandela and Anatoly Sakharov. He has also served as a consultant on the media and communications in Canada, England, Australia, the former Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia, Poland and Hungary.
