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 FellowJennifer Granick fights for civil liberties in an age of massive surveillance and powerful digital technology. As the new surveillance and cybersecurity counsel with the ACLU's Speech, Privacy and Technology Project, she litigates, speaks, and writes about privacy, security, technology, and constitutional rights.
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Martin Husovec
Affiliate ScholarMartin Husovec is an Assistant Professor at the University of Tilburg (Tilburg Institute for Law, Technology and Society & Tilburg Law and Economics Center). He is also a IMPRS-CI Doctoral Research Fellow at Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition, Affiliate Scholar at Stanford Law School’s Center for Internet & Society (CIS) and Impact Litigator at European Information Society Institute (EISi), an independent non-profit organization based in Slovakia focusing on the overlap of technology, law & society.
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David Levine
Affiliate ScholarDavid S. Levine is an Associate Professor of Law at Elon University School of Law and an Affiliate Scholar at the Center for Internet and Society at Stanford Law School (CIS). He is also the founder and host of Hearsay Culture on KZSU-FM (Stanford University), an information policy, intellectual property law and technology talk show for which he has recorded over 190 interviews since May 2006. Hearsay Culture was named as a top five podcast in the ABA's Blawg 100 of 2008 and can be found at http://hearsayculture.com. -
Ryan E. Long
Non-Residential FellowRyan is a cooperating attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation in San Francisco. Since starting his law practice over 10 years ago, he has been collaborating with clients to create and implement effective strategies to litigate over, or negotiate, sophisticated technology and media transactions. Before starting his practice in 2016, Ryan was an antitrust and securities litigator at Milberg LLP in New York City and a legal consultant to the American Enterprise Institute in Washington D.C.
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Is Bad News for LiveJournal Bad News for the DMCA Safe Harbors? (Post 2 of 3)
By Annemarie Bridy on April 10, 2017 at 11:56 am
This is the second of three posts on the Ninth Circuit’s decision in Mavrix v. LiveJournal. The first post considered (and found fault with) the court’s conclusion that LiveJournal’s moderation and curation of user-submitted posts created a triable issue of fact on the question of the site’s eligibility for the section 512(c) safe harbor for sites that store material “at the direction” of users. This post will consider the court’s analysis of issue (3) of the six issues I called out in the first post: whether, in the absence of takedown notices, LiveJournal had actual or red flag knowledge that the watermarked Mavrix photos were infringing.
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Is Bad News for LiveJournal Bad News for the DMCA Safe Harbors? (Post 1 of 3)
By Annemarie Bridy on April 9, 2017 at 8:38 am
The Ninth Circuit has decided Mavrix Photographs v. LiveJournal, and the outcome is in every respect bad news for LiveJournal. In some respects, it’s also bad for the safe harbors themselves, as I’ll explain below and in subsequent posts. The district court in the case granted summary judgment for LiveJournal on grounds that there were no material factual disputes concerning LiveJournal’s eligibility for safe harbor under Section 512(c) of the DMCA. Mavrix alleged that LiveJournal infringed copyrights in its watermarked photographs. Users submitted the photos to LiveJournal along with celebrity gossip news items, and the site's moderators posted them following a fairly intensive screening process (including screening for copyright infringement). There was no question in the case that LiveJournal complied with the DMCA’s notice and takedown requirements when it received notices from right holders. However, Mavrix did not send notices for any of the photos in suit. LiveJournal removed the photos when Mavrix filed its complaint.
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Amazon’s Kodi Box Ban and Copyright Liability for Device Distributors
By Annemarie Bridy on March 31, 2017 at 4:20 pm
Amazon’s latest effort to mitigate IP infringement in its third-party seller program is a ban on the sale of streaming media devices (“Kodi boxes”) that promote piracy. In addition to banning sales of the devices, Amazon reserves the right to destroy any offending physical inventory in its warehouses. The new policy raises not-so-new questions about the ability of copyright holders to control the distribution of dual-use technologies that can (but needn’t necessarily) be used to infringe copyrights.
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Leaks, geeks, & reporters
By Ryan E. Long on March 27, 2017 at 5:07 pm
The recent spat of Washington D.C. leaks is "unusually active," according to FBI Director Mr. James Comey. Even if the leaks are as normal as they are in an allergic nose dealing with New Orleans spring pollen, what are the legal and ethical issues in leaking such confidential information, unknowingly reverse engineering it, or in publishing the leaks?
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U.S. Copyright Office Section 512 Study: Comments in Response to Notice of Inquiry
These comments were prepared and submitted in response to the U.S. Copyright Office's December 31, 2015 Notice and Request for Public Comment on the impact and effectiveness of the DMCA safe harbor provisions in Section 512 of Title 17.
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Digital Piracy Debunked: a Short Note on Digital Threats and Intermediary Liability
In the last two decades, the industry has deployed endlessly the rhetoric of the “digital threat” in order to demand harsher measures against digital piracy. Recently, the “digital threat” discourse called for enhanced liability of online intermediaries, especially those whose platforms may be used to infringe copyright. This short paper shows that the “digital threat” discourse is based on shaky grounds. Two related arguments might run against this approach. First, market conditions might incentivise piracy. -
Trademark Use Doctrine in the European Union and Japan
Trademark Use Doctrine in the European Union and Japan
Martin Husovec
Tilburg University - Tilburg Institute for Law, Technology, and Society (TILT); Tilburg Law and Economics Center (TILEC); Stanford University - Stanford Law School Center for Internet and Society
March 4, 2016
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Stupid Patent Of The Month: Infamous Prison Telco Patents Asking Third-Parties For Money
Plenty of businesses rely on third-party payers: parents often pay for college; insurance companies pay most health care bills. Reaching out to potential third-party payers is hardly a new or revolutionary business practice. But someone should tell the Patent Office. Earlier this year, it issued US Patent No. 9,026,468 to Securus Technologies, a company that provides telephone services to prisoners.
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Vargas v. BT
We successfully defended Grammy-nominated American music producer, composer, and songwriter, Brain Transeau’s (better known by his stage name, BT), against spurious copyright infringement claims.
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Fairey v. The Associated Press
We represented visual artist Shepard Fairey in connection with the AP’s claim that his iconic “Hope” poster in support of President Obama’s campaign infringes the AP’s copyrights. We represented Fairey because we believe his artistic transformation of a news photograph to convey a political message fell within the protection of the fair use doctrine and presented an important example of why fair use is essential for free expression.
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Shloss v. Estate of Joyce
After the Estate of James Joyce refused to allow a scholar to quote Joyce in her book, we successfully defended her right under the fair use doctrine to use the quotes she needed to illustrate her scholarship. After we prevailed in the case, the Estate paid $240,000 of our client’s legal fees.
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Brave New Films v. Savage
After Original Talk Radio Network, the nationwide distributor of Michael Savage’s radio show, issued a takedown notice against a video critical of Savage’s portrayal of Muslims, we filed a lawsuit that convinced the company to withdraw its objections to our client’s film.
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Getty Images Takes Google Grievances to EU
"The type of claim Getty is making "failed in the United States in Perfect 10 v. Google," noted Ben Depoorter, Sunderland Chair at UC Hastings College of the Law.
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals held that Google's framing and hyperlinking as part of an image search engine constituted fair use because it was highly transformative.
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Can't find Prince on Spotify? Here's how to listen
""And there's no way this would be some kind of market substitute for the original Prince song", Electronic Frontier Foundation lawyer Daniel Nazer said. The channel did something similar after Michael Jackson died in 2009 and after Whitney Houston died in 2012."
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Patent owner balks at fee award, cites newly issued—and similar—patent
"In an e-mail to Ars regarding the reconsideration request, EFF lawyer Daniel Nazer pointed out that Garfum already argued this application was relevant to its case, and that was rejected by the judge.
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Can Silly Patents Help Fight Frivolous Lawsuits?
"Daniel Nazer, the Mark Cuban Chair to Eliminate Stupid Patents at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a high-tech civil liberties group, is amused by Reben's project — but he's not so sure it's going to help.
"The patent office looks for prior art when they review patents," he says, "but they tend to look in pretty narrow domains like published technical journals. ... Part of our work is to try and get the patent office to look more broadly.""
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How Public is the Public Domain? - Copyright Society 2012 Mid-Winter Meeting (Past Event)
Mid-winter meeting hosted by the Copyright Society. Six California-based associations promoting copyright law education and understanding are invited.
Anthony Falzone, Executive Director of the Fair Use Project, is par tof the panel: How Public is the Public Domain
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12/7 - What's Wrong with SOPA? (Past Event)
RSVP for this free event today.
6:00pm Reception - Neukom Faculty Lounge - Neukom Building 7:00pm Panel - Room 290 - Law School Building Live streaming through UStream will be available and a final video recording will be available on our YouTube channel. -
Meet the Center for Internet and Society (Past Event)
Learn about the Center for Internet and Society. Come meet CIS and hear about our exciting work and ways to get involved. Learn about the Fair Use Project, Consumer Privacy Project, and more. Lunch will be provided. RSVP for this free event today.
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5/9: CIS Speaker Series: Tim Wu discusses his new book THE MASTER SWITCH (Past Event)
Tim Wu is an author, policy advocate and author of The Master Switch. He is a professor at Columbia Law School, the chairman of media reform organization Free Press, and is working for the FTC as a senior advisor. Wu was recognized in 2006 as one of 50 leaders in science and technology by Scientific American magazine, and in 2007 Wu was listed as one of Harvard's 100 most influential graduates by 02138 magazine.
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The Key to Fair Use: Transformation
December 12, 2013
December 12, 2013 - Copyright and Fair Use Issues in the Visual Motion Arts
The song you sampled for an intro sequence that you don't have the license for-
The uncredited movie clips you inserted into a montage-
The image you pulled from social media-
You can use those in your production, because they're all covered by Fair Use ... right?
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Four Factors of Fair Use
December 12, 2013
December 12, 2013 - Copyright and Fair Use Issues in the Visual Motion Arts
The song you sampled for an intro sequence that you don't have the license for-
The uncredited movie clips you inserted into a montage-
The image you pulled from social media-
You can use those in your production, because they're all covered by Fair Use ... right?
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Commons Myths about Fair Use & Copyright
December 12, 2013
December 12, 2013 - Copyright and Fair Use Issues in the Visual Motion Arts
The song you sampled for an intro sequence that you don't have the license for-
The uncredited movie clips you inserted into a montage-
The image you pulled from social media-
You can use those in your production, because they're all covered by Fair Use ... right?
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Daniel Nazer - Hearsay Culture Show #197 - KZSU-FM
November 20, 2013
This week, David Levine interviews Daniel Nazer, a Staff Attorney on the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s intellectual property team, focusing on patent reform.
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