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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Blockchain -- panacea or bubble?
By Ryan E. Long on March 11, 2018 at 4:17 pm
Block chain technology is taking the world by storm. From banking to health care, many tout block chain and the bit coin it enables as a cure-all. Others think bit coin is heading towards the edge. In between are those who see practical applications of block chain but caution on addiction to bit coin. On February 26th at the University of Copenhagen, I made a presentation entitled "Block chain technology -- good, bad, or somewhere in between?" This entry gives you a sneak preview of that talk.
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A Mixed Result for Cox in the Fourth Circuit
By Annemarie Bridy on February 4, 2018 at 7:51 am
The Fourth Circuit has issued its decision in BMG v. Cox. In case you haven’t been following the ins and outs of the suit, BMG sued Cox in 2014 alleging that the broadband provider was secondarily liable for its subscribers’ infringing file-sharing activity. In 2015, the trial court held that Cox was ineligible as a matter of law for the safe harbor in section 512(a) of the DMCA because it had failed to reasonably implement a policy for terminating the accounts of repeat infringers, as required by section 512(i). In 2016, a jury returned a $25M verdict for BMG, finding Cox liable for willful contributory infringement but not for vicarious infringement. Following the trial, Cox appealed both the safe harbor eligibility determination and the court’s jury instructions concerning the elements of contributory infringement. In a mixed result for Cox, the Fourth Circuit last week affirmed the court’s holding that Cox was ineligible for safe harbor, but remanded the case for retrial because the judge’s instructions to the jury understated the intent requirement for contributory infringement in a way that could have affected the jury’s verdict.
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Popularity doesn't equal truth.
By Ryan E. Long on January 25, 2018 at 3:59 pm
Popularity doesn't equal truth. And yet Facebook's recent proposal to rank the trustworthiness of news sources based on popularity is loosely equating truth with popularity. In so doing, Facebook may be putting form over function.
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A New Front in the Set-Top Box Piracy Wars: Can Sony’s Safe Harbor Save TickBox TV?
By Annemarie Bridy on November 26, 2017 at 5:34 pm
(NB: This headline does not obey Betteridge’s Law.)
Hollywood studios, led by Universal, have sued TickBox TV in federal district court in California, bringing their campaign against set-top box (STB) piracy stateside after a big win earlier this year in the EU. Last spring, the Dutch film and recording industry trade association BREIN prevailed in copyright litigation against the distributor of a STB called the Filmspeler. The CJEU held that the Filmspeler’s distributor, Wullems, directly infringed the plaintiffs’ copyrights—specifically, their right of communication to the public—by selling STBs loaded with software add-ons that provided easy access to infringing programming online. (I blogged about the Filmspeler case here.)
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Golan v. Holder - Heartland Angels, Inc. Supreme Court Amicus Brief in support of Golan
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Golan v. Holder - Public Knowledge Supreme Court Amicus Brief in support of Golan
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Golan v. Holder - American Library, et al. Supreme Court Amicus Brief in support of Golan
BRIEF AMICI CURIAE OF AMERICAN LIBRARY ASSOCIATION, ASSOCIATION OF COLLEGE AND RESEARCH LIBRARIES, ASSOCIATION OF RESEARCH LIBRARIES, UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN DEAN OF LIBRARIES, INTERNET ARCHIVE AND WIKIMEDIA FOUNDATION IN SUPPORT OF PETITIONERS
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Golan v. Holder - Justice and Freedom Fund's Supreme Court Amicus Brief in support of Golan
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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.
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Murphy v. Millennium Radio Group, LLC, Craig Carton and Ray Rossi
We filed an amicus brief in the Third Circuit on behalf of Brave New Films urging affirmance of the district court’s finding of fair use and rejection of plaintiff’s DMCA claims.
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Bouchat v. Baltimore Ravens and NFL, et al.
We filed an amicus brief in the Fourth Circuit in support of the Baltimore Ravens and the NFL urging the Fourth Circuit to grant rehearing or rehearing en banc, after a divided panel ruled that the Raven’s incidental use of a copyrighted logo in historical game films was not a fair use.
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Aguiar v. Webb
We defended a documentary filmmaker who was sued for copyright infringement for clips appearing in his documentary about Count Dante, an enigmatic, Chicago martial arts legend.
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Adult film producer Strike 3 Holdings settles copyright infringement case
"Firms such as Strike 3 sending scores of DMCA take-down notices to alleged copyright offenders that threaten them with lawsuits is “a lot of work for everyone,” Ben Depoorter, a professor at the University of California, Hastings College of the Law, told the Northern California Record.
“It is an expensive strategy of issuing subpoenas, finding IP addresses and people’s identities,” Depoorter said."
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Appeals court revives Oracle's copyright claim against Google
"Annemarie Bridy, a professor of intellectual property at the University of Idaho College of Law, said in an interview the ruling could stifle software innovation by opening up developers to potential liability for copyright infringement.
“This is a ruling that could have a significant chilling effect on software developers,” she said, noting that they rely on computer code like Oracle’s to make apps communicate with each other."
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Hecla takes aim at critical film with copyright claim
"“This was a classic case of a documentary commenting on a mine and using some of a promotional video as part of that documentary,” said Daniel Nazer, a staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital rights group based in San Francisco."
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Linking Is Not Copyright Infringement, Boing Boing Tells Court
"“Boing Boing’s reporting and commenting on the Playboy photos is protected by copyright’s fair use doctrine,” EFF Senior Staff Attorney Daniel Nazer says, commenting on the case."
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Copyright & Fair Use Issues in the Visual Motion Arts (Past Event)
Please RSVP http://bpfairuse.eventbrite.com Password: 950battery 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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The Right of Publicity in the Digital Age (Past Event)
Speaker:
Daniel Nazer
Staff Attorney, Electronic Frontier FoundationTopics:
Right of publicity law is a mess. Courts apply a variety of tests and apply these tests inconsistently to different forms of media. At the same time, the right of publicity impacts a wide range of speech--from movies, to computer games, to baseball cards. Uncertainty about the relevant standards makes it difficult to advise clients about the scope of the right.
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Meet the Center for Internet and Society 2013 (Past Event)
Come meet CIS and hear about our exciting work and ways to get involved.
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3D Printing: Is the Law Ready for the Future? (Past Event)
Three dimensional printing turns bits into atoms. The technology is simply amazing. These machines draw on programming, art and engineering to enable people to design and build intricate, beautiful, functional jewelry, machine parts, toys and even shoes. In the commercial sector, 3D printing can revolutionize supply chains as well. As the public interest group Public Knowledge wrote once, "It will be awesome if they don't screw it up."
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Victoria Stodden - Hearsay Culture Show #196 - KZSU-FM
November 6, 2013
This week, David Levine interviews Prof. Victoria Stodden of Columbia University.
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Prof. Deven Desai - Hearsay Culture - Show #190 - KZSU-FM
July 24, 2013
CIS Affiliate Scholar David Levine interviews Prof. Deven Desai of Thomas Jefferson Law School, on 3D printing.
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Ron Epstein - Hearsay Culture - Show #188 - KZSU-FM
July 10, 2013
CIS Affiliate Scholar David Levine interviews Ron Epstein, CEO of EpicenterIP, on non-practicing entities/patent trolls/patent investors.
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Dr. Virginia Crisp - Hearsay Culture - Show #185 - KZSU-FM
May 22, 2013
CIS Affiliate Scholar David Levine interviews Dr. Virginia Crisp, Lecturer at Middlesex University, on Kim Dotcom and copyright infringement.
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