The Center for Internet and Society at Stanford Law School is a leader in the study of the law and policy around the Internet and other emerging technologies.
Copyright and Fair Use
A healthy copyright system must balance the need to provide strong economic incentives through exclusive rights with the need to protect important public interests like free speech and expression. Fair use is foundational to that balance. It's role is to prevent copyright from stifling the creativity it is supposed to foster, and from imposing other burdens that would inhibit rather than promote the creation and spread of knowledge and learning.
The Fair Use Project (FUP) was founded in 2006 to provide legal support to a range of projects designed to clarify, and extend, the boundaries of fair use in order to enhance creative freedom and protect important public rights. It is the only organization in the country dedicated specifically to providing free and comprehensive legal representation to authors, filmmakers, artists, musicians and other content creators who face unmerited copyright claims, or other improper restrictions on their expressive interests. The FUP has litigated important cases across the country, and in the Supreme Court of the United States, and worked with scores of filmmakers and other content creators to secure the unimpeded release of their work.
-
Non-Residential Fellow
-
Brett Frischmann
Affiliate ScholarBrett Frischmann’s expertise is in intellectual property and internet law. After clerking for the Honorable Fred I. Parker of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and practicing at Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering in Washington, DC, he joined the Loyola University Chicago law faculty in 2002. He has held visiting appointments at Cornell and Fordham. Read more » about Brett Frischmann
-
Lauren Gelman
Non-Residential FellowLauren is an experienced attorney, frequent speaker and start-up advisor who has worked in the field of Internet law and policy since 1995. She is the founder of BlurryEdge Strategies, a legal and strategy consulting firm located in San Francisco that advises technology companies and investors on cutting-edge legal issues. Lauren previously led the Center for Internet and Society at Stanford Law School and taught at the Law School and the Department of Engineering. Read more » about Lauren Gelman
-
Jennifer Granick
Director of Civil LibertiesJennifer Granick is the Director of Civil Liberties at the Stanford Center for Internet and Society. Jennifer returns to Stanford after stints as General Counsel of entertainment company Worldstar Hip Hop and as counsel with the internet boutique firm of Zwillgen PLLC. Before that, she was the Civil Liberties Director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Jennifer practices, speaks and writes about computer crime and security, electronic surveillance, consumer privacy, data protection, copyright, trademark and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Read more » about Jennifer Granick
Pages
-
First Amendment Challenges in the Digital Age
By Marvin Ammori • January 31, 2012 at 6:43 am
Next Friday, February 10, the Stanford Technology Law Review is holding its annual symposium, and this year's topic is an important one: First Amendment Challenges in the Digital Age. Of the three panels, one is devoted to privacy and another to copyright. The third is devoted to a long, ambitious law review article ... written by me. Read more » about First Amendment Challenges in the Digital Age
-
Fire in the Blood
By Documentary Film Program • January 26, 2012 at 4:03 pm
An intricate tale of “monopoly, medicine and mass murder”, FIRE IN THE BLOOD is the story of how Western governments acting on behalf of pharmaceutical companies blocked access to low-cost AIDS drugs for the Third World in the years after 1996 – causing ten million or more unnecessary deaths – and the improbable group of people who decided to fight back. Read more » about Fire in the Blood
-
Megaupload: A Lot Less Guilty Than You Think
By Jennifer Granick • January 26, 2012 at 11:47 am
The recent Department of Justice decision to indict Megaupload for copyright infringement and related offenses raises some very thorny questions from a criminal law perspective. A few preliminaries: I’m responsible for the musings below, but I thank Robert Weisberg of Stanford Law School for taking the time to talk through the issues and giving me pointers to some relevant cases. Also, an indictment contains unproven allegations, and the facts may well turn out to be different, or to imply different things in full context.
DMCA SAFE HARBOR: BELIEVE IT AND IT WILL BECOME REAL: As a matter of criminal law, the discussion of whether Megaupload did what it needed to do to qualify for the DMCA Safe Harbor misses the point. Did they register an agent? Did they have a repeat infringer policy? These are all interesting CIVIL questions. But from a criminal law perspective, the important question is did Defendants BELIEVE they were covered by the Safe Harbor? This is because criminal infringement requires a showing of willfulness. The view of the majority of Federal Courts is that “willfulness” means a desire to violate a known legal duty, not merely the will to make copies. Read more » about Megaupload: A Lot Less Guilty Than You Think
-
CIS Is Going Dark To Stop SOPA
By Anthony Falzone • January 17, 2012 at 10:45 am
A wave of opposition has crashed over the House's Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Senate's Protect I.P. Act (PIPA) based on the tremendous threat they pose to free speech and innovation online. It appears the House may be poised to abandon SOPA after the White House issued a statement making clear it would not support the bill. But the Senate is still pressing ahead with PIPA's most dangerous provisions intact, including those that would force internet service providers to block access to entire sites through DNS blocking and other means that threaten both the universality and the security of the internet itself.
If this legislation passes -- in this version or another -- legitimate websites will be threatened. Some will disappear. Tomorrow, the CIS website will disappear (along with many others) to protest the misguided approaches SOPA and PIPA employ, and to demonstrate the threat they pose. We'll be back on Thursday. In the meantime, read up on the dangers these bills pose, and what you can do to make a difference.
If you want take your site down, here are some tools from CloudFlare and Webmonkey that make it easy. Read more » about CIS Is Going Dark To Stop SOPA
Pages
-
Megaupload.com Indictment Leaves Everyone Guessing - Part 1
Author(s):Anthony FalzoneJennifer GranickPublication Date:March 15, 2012Publication Type:Other WritingDays after anti-piracy legislation stalled in Congress, the U.S. Department of Justice coordinated an unprecedented raid on the Hong Kong-based website Megaupload.com. New Zealand law enforcement agents swooped in by helicopter to arrest founder Kim Dotcom at his home outside of Auckland, and seized millions of dollars worth of art, vehicles and real estate. Six other Megaupload employees were also arrested. Meanwhile, the Justice Department seized Megaupload's domain names and the data of at least 50 million users worldwide. Read more » about Megaupload.com Indictment Leaves Everyone Guessing - Part 1
-
Megaupload Indictment Leaves Everyone Guessing - Part 2
Author(s):Anthony FalzoneJennifer GranickPublication Date:April 6, 2012Publication Type:Other WritingDaily/Journal Op/Ed
The first part of this article outlined the mechanics of the Megaupload website, and the novel questions of criminal inducement on which the government's indictment is premised. Here, we explore two more extensions of existing law on which the indictment is based, and the impact this prosecution is likely to have on Internet innovators and users alike. Read more » about Megaupload Indictment Leaves Everyone Guessing - Part 2
-
The Social Layer of Freedom of Information Law
Author(s):David LevinePublication Date:March 1, 2012Publication Type:Academic WritingIt is now received wisdom that a properly functioning democracy requires transparency and accountability — information shared with the public that allows the public to know what its government is doing. It is equally uncontroversial to say that social media allows for an unprecedented amount of informal but structured dissemination and analysis of information. Despite these two basic points, U.S. freedom of information law has failed to harness the power of these new social media networks and, more importantly, formats in a way that amplifies public knowledge of government information. Read more » about The Social Layer of Freedom of Information Law
-
Valuing Attribution and Publication in Intellectual Property
Author(s):Christopher SprigmanPublication Date:February 27, 2012Publication Type:Academic WritingThis is the third in a series of articles focusing on the experimental economics of intellectual property. In earlier work, we have experimentally studied the ways in which creators assign monetary value to the things that they create. That research has suggested that creators are subject to a systematic bias that leads them to overvalue their work. Read more » about Valuing Attribution and Publication in Intellectual Property
Pages
-
Associated Press v. Meltwater
Meltwater News ("Meltwater") is a search engine and research tool that allows users to search for and obtain information about news items that have been made publicly available on the Internet. Read more » about Associated Press v. Meltwater
-
Cariou v. Prince
We filed an amicus brief in the Second Circuit on behalf of The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts urging the appeals court to reverse a district court decision that ignored established fair use principles that many artists rely upon in creating their work. Read more » about Cariou v. Prince
-
Golan v. Holder
The FUP filed this suit on behalf of a University of Denver conductor and others, challenging Congress’s restoration of copyright to works that had entered the public domain. Read more » about Golan v. Holder
-
Sony v. Tenenbaum
We filed an amicus brief on behalf of the Electronic Frontier Foundation asking the First Circuit to affirm the district court’s reduced damages award in Sony v. Tenenbaum, a file-sharing case in which a jury originally ordered a college student to pay $675,000 for infringing copyright in 30 songs. Read more » about Sony v. Tenenbaum
Pages
-
Christopher Sprigman on creativity without copyright
Date published:July 17, 2012 -
Christopher Sprigman on creativity without copyright
Date published:July 17, 2012 -
The Growing Power of the Meme
Date published:June 14, 2012For the originator of a meme, legal protections are slim, and that’s the way it should be, says copyright attorney Anthony Falzone, executive director of the Fair Use Project at Stanford Law School. “If you’re the first person to do the video S- -t Girls Say, that doesn’t mean someone else can’t use the same idea with girls saying different stuff,” he says. “Just because you’re the first one to do something doesn’t mean you should be the only one to get to do it.”
Read the full publication at the original link below. Read more » about The Growing Power of the Meme
-
If You've Ever Sold a Used iPod, You May Have Violated Copyright Law
Date published:June 8, 2012CIS Affiliate Scholar Marvin Ammori's latest article for The Atlantic.
The Supreme Court will soon hear a case that will affect whether you can sell your iPad -- or almost anything else -- without needing to get permission from a dozen "copyright holders." Here are some things you might have recently done that will be rendered illegal if the Supreme Court upholds the lower court decision: Read more » about If You've Ever Sold a Used iPod, You May Have Violated Copyright Law
Pages
-
Searching for a Middle Ground: Can We Stop Online Piracy While Still Protecting Speech? (Past Event)
April 12, 2012UNC School of LawCIS Affiliate Scholar David Levine will be speaking on a panel at UNC about online privacy. Read more » about Searching for a Middle Ground: Can We Stop Online Piracy While Still Protecting Speech?
-
Transformation, Copyright, and the Right of Publicity in the Digital Age (Past Event)
April 11, 2012Cogswell Polytechnical CollegeCopyright Law and Fair Use with Daniel Nazer, CIS Resident Fellow Read more » about Transformation, Copyright, and the Right of Publicity in the Digital Age
-
SOPA, PIPA and Internet Freedom Where Do We Go From Here? (Past Event)
April 9, 2012Stanford Law SchoolJoin us for an evening conversation with CIS Executive Director of the Fair Use Project Anthony Falzone and Congressman Darrell Issa where they will discuss topics about SOPA, PIPA and internet freedom. Read more » about SOPA, PIPA and Internet Freedom Where Do We Go From Here?
-
Screening of Our Summer In Tehran (Past Event)
April 3, 2012UC BerkeleyWatch a screening of Documentary Film Program participant, Our Summer in Tehran. Read more » about Screening of Our Summer In Tehran
Pages
-
Sonia Katyal - Contrabrand: Art, Advertising and Property in the Age of Corporate Identity (Audio)
March 7, 2012
Stanford Center for Internet and Society Speakers Series Talk - Read more » about Sonia Katyal - Contrabrand: Art, Advertising and Property in the Age of Corporate Identity (Audio)
-
Sonia Katyal - Contrabrand: Art, Advertising and Property in the Age of Corporate Identity (Video)
March 7, 2012
In her talk, based on her forthcoming book from Yale Press, Contrabrand: Art, Advertising and Property in the Age of Corporate Identity, Sonia Katyal will discuss the intersection of art, commercial speech, and trademark law within the First Amendment, and will show how the law has shifted in response to the constitutional challenges the branding movement has created. In her talk, Katyal will focus on the "antibranding" movement in popular art and culture, which she defines to include the expressive activities of artists and activists who direct their energies towards challenging corporate branding. The greatest threat to cultural and artistic freedom, she argues, stems not from the pervasive power of the government, but instead from the powerful reach of corporate branding over artistic and consumer response. Read more » about Sonia Katyal - Contrabrand: Art, Advertising and Property in the Age of Corporate Identity (Video)
-
PROTECT IP/SOPA - 2012 STLR Symposium - First Amendent Challenges in the Digital Age (Audio)
March 1, 2012
STLR Symposium 2012 - Co-Hosted by the Center for Internet and Society Read more » about PROTECT IP/SOPA - 2012 STLR Symposium - First Amendent Challenges in the Digital Age (Audio)
-
PROTECT IP/SOPA - 2012 STLR Symposium - First Amendent Challenges in the Digital Age (Video)
March 1, 2012
STLR Symposium 2012 - Co-Hosted by the Center for Internet and Society
February 10, 2012
Audio VersionModerator: Declan McCullagh, Chief Political Correspondent, CNET
Panelists:
Corynne McSherry, Intellectual Property Director, Electronic Frontier Foundation;
Mike Masnick, Editor, Techdirt Blog;
Betsy Zedek, Senior Counsel, Content Protection, Fox Group Legal
A.J. Thomas, Partner, Jenner & Block Read more » about PROTECT IP/SOPA - 2012 STLR Symposium - First Amendent Challenges in the Digital Age (Video)