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
-
Gaylord v. U.S. Postal Service - Amicus Brief
Author(s):Anthony FalzoneJulie AhrensPublication Date:July 15, 2009Publication Type:Litigation BriefAmicus brief filed in the Federal Circuit on behalf of the Andy Warhol Foundation, and several other amici, including the Warhol Museum, contemporary artists Barbara Kruger, Thomas Lawson, Jonathan Monk, and Allen Ruppersberg, and a variety of law professors. Read more » about Gaylord v. U.S. Postal Service - Amicus Brief
-
Salinger v. Colting, et al. - Preliminary Injunction Order
Publication Date:July 1, 2009Publication Type:Litigation Brief -
Shloss v. Estate of Joyce - Order on Fee Award
Publication Date:May 29, 2009Publication Type:Litigation BriefThe Court ordered the Estate to pay more than $326,000 in attorneys' fees. After initially appealing that decision to the Ninth Circuit, the Estate thought better of it and agreed to pay $240,000 in fees to resolve the matter once and for all. Read more » about Shloss v. Estate of Joyce - Order on Fee Award
-
Brave New Films v. Savage - Order Denying Savage's Motion to Dismiss
Publication Date:April 15, 2009Publication Type:Litigation BriefMichael Savage’s motion to be dismissed as a defendant in Brave New Films’ wrongful DMCA takedown lawsuit was denied by Judge Illston on April 15. Read more » about Brave New Films v. Savage - Order Denying Savage's Motion to Dismiss
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
-
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
-
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
-
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’
-
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
Pages
-
5/9: CIS Speaker Series: Tim Wu discusses his new book THE MASTER SWITCH (Past Event)
May 9, 2011Stanford Law School, Room 290Tim 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. Read more » about 5/9: CIS Speaker Series: Tim Wu discusses his new book THE MASTER SWITCH
-
5/2: CIS Speaker Series - A Defensive Patent License Proposal (Past Event)
May 2, 2011Stanford Law SchoolUpdated 5/10/2011
Check out pictures from the CIS Speaker Series Talk - A Defensive Patent License Proposal Read more » about 5/2: CIS Speaker Series - A Defensive Patent License Proposal
-
4/27: Intellectual Property and Individual Liberty: Friends or Foes (Past Event)
April 27, 2011Stanford Law SchoolAnthony Falzone and Mark Schultz will debate whether significant developments in U.S. copyright law protects or violates individual freedom. Falzone, Executive Director of the Fair Use Project and a Lecturer in Law at Stanford Law School, will evaluate the affects of copyright law on freedom of expression, while Prof. Schultz will assess the affects of copyright law on the liberty of IP creators and owners. Professor Paul Goldstein will moderate. Professor Paul Goldstein will moderate. Lunch will be served. Hosted by the Stanford Federalist Society Read more » about 4/27: Intellectual Property and Individual Liberty: Friends or Foes
-
4/25: Copyright, Remix and the Art of Collaborative Media: A conversation with Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Anthony Falzone (Past Event)
April 25, 2011Stanford Law SchoolUpdated April 27, 2011Check out photos from the Joseph Gordon-Levitt talk.
hitRECORD.org is a project Joseph Gordon-Levitt started almost five years ago. They have evolved into a professional open production company that creates and develops art and media collaboratively. Rather than just exhibiting and admiring each other's work as isolated individuals, they invite users to gather and collectively work on projects together. Read more » about 4/25: Copyright, Remix and the Art of Collaborative Media: A conversation with Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Anthony Falzone
Pages
-
First Amendment Architecture - STLR Symposium 2012 - First Amendment Challenges in the Digital Age (Video)
February 29, 2012
STLR Symposium 2012 - Co-Hosted by the Center for Internet and Society
February 10, 2012 -
Taking Forgetting Seriously - 2012 STLR Symposium - First Amendment Challenges in the Digital (Video)
February 28, 2012
STLR Symposium 2012 - Co-Hosted by the Center for Internet and Society Read more » about Taking Forgetting Seriously - 2012 STLR Symposium - First Amendment Challenges in the Digital (Video)
-
First Amendment Architecture - STLR Symposium 2012 - First Amendment Challenges in the Digital Age (Audio)
February 28, 2012
STLR Symposium 2012 - Co-Hosted by the Center for Internet and Society
February 10, 2012 -
Taking Forgetting Seriously - 2012 STLR Symposium - First Amendment Challenges in the Digital Age (Audio)
February 28, 2012
STLR Symposium 2012 - Co-Hosted by the Center for Internet and Society Read more » about Taking Forgetting Seriously - 2012 STLR Symposium - First Amendment Challenges in the Digital Age (Audio)