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.
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Non-Residential Fellow
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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PROTECT IP Act (S.968) and Stop Online Privacy Act (H.R.3261)
Author(s):Marvin AmmoriPublication Date:December 8, 2011Publication Type:Regulatory FilingLetter to Congress explaining that proposed copyright legislation would violate the First Amendment and be struck down in court. Read more » about PROTECT IP Act (S.968) and Stop Online Privacy Act (H.R.3261)
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Cariou v. Prince - Amicus Brief
Author(s):Anthony FalzoneDaniel NazerJulie AhrensPublication Date:November 2, 2011Publication Type:Litigation BriefAmicus brief filed 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 - Amicus Brief
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A Legitimate Interest in Promoting the Progress of Science: Constitutional Constraints on Copyright Laws
Author(s):David OlsonPublication Date:October 13, 2011Publication Type:Academic WritingThe Supreme Court certified two questions in Golan v. Holder: (1) Does section 514 of the Uruguay Round Agreements Act (“URAA”) violate the Progress Clause of the Constitution? (2) Does the URAA violate the First Amendment? This Essay argues that section 514 violates the Progress Clause’s requirement that copyright laws “promote the Progress of Science.” This is because the statute bequeaths copyright status without in return achieving any net increase in the creation or dissemination of creative works. Read more » about A Legitimate Interest in Promoting the Progress of Science: Constitutional Constraints on Copyright Laws
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Golan v. Holder - Petitioners' Reply Brief
Author(s):Anthony FalzoneDaniel NazerJulie AhrensPublication Date:August 31, 2011Publication Type:Litigation BriefSupreme Court Reply Brief filed by Petitioners. Read more » about Golan v. Holder - Petitioners' Reply Brief
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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
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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
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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
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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
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Why Hollywood Studios Care About the NFL's Baltimore Ravens Logo
Date published:April 9, 2013The MPAA says that if an artist suing the league is victorious at an appeals court, it could raise problems for movies containing logos, signs, billboards and other copyrighted works. Read more » about Why Hollywood Studios Care About the NFL's Baltimore Ravens Logo
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Ravens Logo Appeal Threatens Filmmaker Rights, MPAA Says
Date published:April 9, 2013Julie Ahrens, an attorney for the amici, noted Tuesday that the MPAA, the International Documentary Association and Film Independent aren't always necessarily on the same side of the fair use issue. The fact that they all teamed up in this case testifies to the importance of the kind of uses that could be affected by the appeals court's ruling, as well as the well-settled state of the legal precedent in this area, she said.
“We don't want the Fourth Circuit to jeopardize that case law,” she told Law360. Read more » about Ravens Logo Appeal Threatens Filmmaker Rights, MPAA Says
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EFF patent lawyer rates lawyer-rating patent ‘terrible’
Date published:April 4, 2013""It's a terrible patent," says Daniel Nazer, a staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation and its exemplary Patent Busting Project. "It's a classic example of the patent office not doing a good job."" Read more » about EFF patent lawyer rates lawyer-rating patent ‘terrible’
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Comment: AP win in copyright ruling could put search startups at risk
Date published:March 22, 2013“What I find troubling about it is that she keeps distinguishing Meltwater versus ‘legitimate’ online search tools, but it’s not really clear what that definition is,” Julie Ahrens, director of copyright and fair use for the Stanford Law School’s Center for Internet & Society, told MLex in an interview Friday.
Download PDF of Mlex article. Read more » about Comment: AP win in copyright ruling could put search startups at risk
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2/10: CIS Speaker Series - Andrew McLaughlin: How To Get A Job in Tech Policy (Past Event)
February 10, 2011Stanford Law SchoolAndrew is a lawyer (Harvard '94) who has worked as Deputy Chief Technology Officer of the U.S. in the Obama White House, Director of Global Public Policy at Google, Vice President and Chief Policy Officer at ICANN, Senior Fellow at the Berkman Center, and as a member of the litigation team that successfully challenged the Communications Decency Act before the Supreme Court in 1997.Please RSVP for this free event. Read more » about 2/10: CIS Speaker Series - Andrew McLaughlin: How To Get A Job in Tech Policy
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5/19: EFF Geek Reading with Cory Doctorow (Past Event)
May 19, 2010San FranciscoJoin EFF for a fundraising event featuring award-winning writer Cory Doctorow. Cory will be reading from his newly released novel, For the Win. This is his first visit to the Bay Area in over a year, so don't miss your opportunity to hear him read from his ground-breaking new work. Read more » about 5/19: EFF Geek Reading with Cory Doctorow
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5/6: Legal Frontiers in Digital Media (Past Event)
May 6, 2010Stanford Law SchoolFor more information and to register for this event please visit: http://mlrc-digitallaw.stanford.edu/
A joint conference of:
• Media Law Resource Center
• Stanford Law School Center for Internet & Society
• John S. Knight Journalism Fellowships at StanfordThis intensive two-day event is designed for lawyers and Web publishing professionals responsible for sorting out the emerging legal issues surrounding the distribution of content on digital platforms. Read more » about 5/6: Legal Frontiers in Digital Media
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2/25: Wireside Chat with Lawrence Lessig (featuring Eclectic Method) (Past Event)
February 25, 2010Stanford Law SchoolThe Open Video Alliance is teaming up with the Harvard Berkman Center to deliver a global webcast of a talk by Lawrence Lessig. It's happening February 25th from 6:00 to 7:30 EST, live from Cambridge, MA. Along with the Cambridge event, OVA is hosting live webcast screenings around the world with special guests. The event hosted by the Stanford Fair Use Project will feature a live VJ mashup with Eclectic Method. Read more » about 2/25: Wireside Chat with Lawrence Lessig (featuring Eclectic Method)
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SOPA, PIPA and Internet Freedom - Where Do We Go From Here? Video
April 23, 2012
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? Video
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Julie Cohen - Hearsay Culture - Show #159 - KZSU-FM
March 16, 2012
A talk show on KZSU-FM, Stanford, 90.1 FM, hosted by CIS Affiliate Scholar David S. Levine. The show includes guests and focuses on the intersection of technology and society. How is our world impacted by the great technological changes taking place? Each week, a different sphere is explored. This week, David interviews Prof. Julie Cohen of Georgetown Law, author of the book Configuring the Networked Self. For more information, please go to http://hearsayculture.com. Read more » about Julie Cohen - Hearsay Culture - Show #159 - KZSU-FM
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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)
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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)