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
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. Read more about U.S. Copyright Office Section 512 Study: Comments in Response to Notice of Inquiry
Piracy Fuels the Fashion Industry
When, in 2011, Oprah Winfrey asked Ralph Lauren how he “keeps reinventing,” Mr. Lauren answered: “You copy. Forty-five years of copying; that’s why I’m here.” Mr. Lauren, a Jewish kid from the Bronx who built a spectacular career reinterpreting the look of the old WASP aristocracy, was at least partly joking. But what made the quip funny was the fact that knockoffs are — and always have been — a pervasive part of fashion. Read more about Piracy Fuels the Fashion Industry
Urban Guerrilla & Piracy Surveillance: Accidental Casualties in Fighting Piracy in P2P Networks in Europe
Rediscovering Cumulative Creativity from the Oral Formulaic Tradition to Digital Remix: Can I Get a Witness?
For most of human history the essential nature of creativity was understood to be cumulative and collective. This notion has been largely forgotten by modern policies regulating creativity and speech. As hard as it may be to believe, the most valuable components of our immortal culture were created under a fully open regime as far as access to pre-existing expressions and reuse was concerned. Read more about Rediscovering Cumulative Creativity from the Oral Formulaic Tradition to Digital Remix: Can I Get a Witness?
Megaupload Indictment Leaves Everyone Guessing - Part 2
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
Megaupload.com Indictment Leaves Everyone Guessing - Part 1
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
Communia and the European Public Domain Project: A Politics of the Public Domain
Digital technology has made culture more accessible than ever before. Texts, audio, pictures and video can easily be produced, disseminated, used and remixed using devices that are increasingly user-friendly and affordable. However, along with this technological democratization comes a paradoxical flipside: the norms regulating culture's use — copyright and related rights — have become increasingly restrictive. This book brings together essays by academics, librarians, entrepreneurs, activists and policy makers, who were all part of the EU-funded Communia project. Read more about Communia and the European Public Domain Project: A Politics of the Public Domain
Valuing Attribution and Publication in Intellectual Property
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