Anthony Falzone
Tony Falzone is the Deputy General Counsel at Pinterest, Inc. Read more » about Anthony Falzone
Tony Falzone is the Deputy General Counsel at Pinterest, Inc. Read more » about Anthony Falzone
Tim is a Fellow at the Center for Internet & Society. He splits his time between representing authors, filmmakers, musicians, and others who rely on copyright fair use in creating their works, and pursuing a scholarly research agenda. Tim’s research interests include trademark theory, copyright and trademark fair use, and various doctrinal areas governed by the First Amendment, including commercial speech and campaign finance regulation. Read more » about Tim Greene
Marcia Hofmann is a senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, where she focuses on computer crime and security, electronic privacy, free speech, and other digital civil liberties issues. She is also a non-residential fellow at Stanford Law School's Center for Internet and Society and an adjunct professor at the University of California Hastings College of the Law. Read more » about Marcia Hofmann
David Levine is an Assistant Professor of Law at Elon University School of Law and an Affiliate Scholar at the Center for Internet and Society (CIS). Aside from the copyright and fair use areas for which CIS has become known, Dave's research interests include the operation of intellectual property law at the intersection of the technology field and public life, intellectual property's impact on transparency, and the impact of copyright law in the arts. Read more » about David Levine
By Zohar Efroni • February 13, 2008 at 12:57 pm
Next month Stanford CIS is hosting a conference about Legal Futures. Judging by the list of participants, the upcoming even should be nothing less than electrifying. This post is unrelated to the conference. In fact, it is not about legal “futures” at all. Rather, it is about legal “pasts.” Read more » about Old-Style Canadian Formalities and Copyright Reform
By Zohar Efroni • December 18, 2007 at 3:29 pm
I have never seen an SSRN paper receiving 1700 recorded downloads in mere three days or so. This is exactly what happened to “The Magnificence of the Disaster: Reconstructing the Sony BMG Rootkit Incident” by Deirdre Mulligan and Aaron Perzanowski, forthcoming in the Berkeley Technology Law Journal. It is by far the most meticulous analysis of the Rootkit debacle available. Among other things, the authors propose to amend the DMCA to lodge a statutory exception that would allow both circumvention and trafficking in TPMs to the extent undertaken to investigate or eliminate protection measures that create or exploit security flaws or vulnerabilities that compromise the security of personal computers. Read more » about Mulligan and Perzanowski on the Sony BMG Rootkit Fiasco
By Zohar Efroni • October 31, 2007 at 2:21 pm
Today was the official publication of a new amendment to the German Copyright Act. The amendment will enter into force in January 1st, 2008. After four long years of discussions, debates and negotiations, the final text is now available. A few highlights: Read more » about German Copyright Law Amended
By Zohar Efroni • October 26, 2007 at 6:05 am
Prof. Niva Elkin-Koren has uploaded a paper titled Making Room for Consumer Under the DMCA, to be published soon in the BTLJ. The paper provides a terrific analysis and introduces an original perspective, proposing to perceive users of copyrighted works as participating consumers in information markets. This perspective underlies the argument for granting consumers more solid and meaningful protections within copyrights law, inter alia, a right to access cultural goods - despite DRMs. From the abstract: Read more » about Elkin-Koren on Anticircumvention Law and Consumers-as-Participants
Daily/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
Days 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
This 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
The 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
“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
Randy Moore’s dark drama Escape From Tomorrow premiered this week at the Sundance Film Festival and quickly became one of the most buzzed-about oddities in Park City, Utah. Reviews have been mixed but unquestionably intriguing. There’s a chance, though, that the rest of us won’t be able to form our own opinions: Escape From Tomorrow was filmed without permission on location at Disney’s theme parks in Orlando, Fla., and Anaheim, Calif., and it unabashedly incorporates the familiar logos, characters, and theme-park images in a perverse dramatic narrative. Read more » about Will Disney Let You See This Movie?
The AP's argument is "unfounded and dangerous to innovation," according to the brief authored by Julie Ahrens, of Stanford Law School's Center for Internet & Society. Read more » about DVR Protections Invoked to Pause Associated Press
Chris Sprigman, professor of law at the University of Virginia, co-author of The Knockoff Economy: How Imitation Sparks Innovation,and CIS Affiliate Scholar discusses what Apple's latest victory against Samsung means for technological innovation in the future. Read more » about Apple vs. Samsung
Kal Raustiala and Chris Sprigman, continuing their excellent blogging (soon to be in book form) about markets succeeding in absence of intellectual property, have taken a look at the question of whether or not different brands of marijuana can be covered by trademark. With the increasing legality of medical marijuana, it's not uncommon for different strands to get their own brands. However, as the two note, plant varieties cannot be trademarked, but you can build a brand on top of one. Read more » about Can You Trademark Your Pot?
The current crop of cases are an important opportunity for an appellate standard, said Julie Ahrens, an attorney and associate director of the Fair Use Project at Stanford Law School. Ahrens filed an amicus brief supporting Electronic Arts in the Hart case on behalf of three nonprofit organizations, including the Digital Media Law Project, and 10 individual law professors. "We're looking for a clear, predictable rule that limits the application of publicity rights and protects free speech rights," Ahrens said.
Read the full story at the original publication link below. Read more » about Publicity rights up in the air
CIS 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
Anthony Falzone suggests that the defendants’ decision not to assert fair use may have been strategic: “Combs and his label can afford to pay for samples. Many aspiring artists and their fledgling labels—the next generation of would-be moguls hungry to unseat Diddy—cannot.” Read more » about Copyfraud: Techdirt Book Club Selection For April, Part Two
Golan v. Holder involves a challenge to the constitutionality of the 1994 Uruguay Round Agreements Act (URAA), which restored copyright in foreign works previously in the public domain under U.S. copyright law. The plaintiffs in the case have challenged the URAA as contravening both the "limited times" requirement and the First Amendment. In October 2011, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the case and is expected to issue a ruling before June 2012. Read more » about Copyright and the Public Domain After Golan
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. Read more » about Meet the Center for Internet and Society
Creative Commons founder and Stanford professor Lawrence Lessig is giving his final presentation on Free Culture, Copyright and the future of ideas.
After 10 years of enlightening and inspiring audiences around the world with multi-media presentations that inspired the Free Culture movement, Professor Lessig is moving on from the copyright debate and setting his sites on corruption in Washington. Read more » about 1/31: Lawrence Lessig: Final Free Cuture Talk