copyright

Lessig on the orphan works bill

Zohar Efroni — Tue, 20 May 2008 12:53:37 -0700

Prof. Lessig has an OP-ED in the NYT today about the orphan works bill rolling now in Congress. Among the important points mentioned there, here are my three favorites: (1) to the extent that foreign authors are substantially deprived of copyright protection as a result of the new rule, the amendment will probably violate U.S. international obligations, and it would take the E.U. exactly two seconds to file a WTO complaint. (2) It makes no sense to put so much weight on the issue of “diligent effort” if rightholders are not required to register works, as in the case of patents, for instance. (3) It would be somewhat unfair to apply the rule retroactively to works by authors who relied on full, automatic copyright protection upon creation/fixation.

"Who needs copyright, anyway?"

Zohar Efroni — Sat, 17 May 2008 16:57:16 -0700

John Degen, a Canadian novelist, has a thoughtful post on how he has resolved to make his latest novel, The Uninvited Guest, freely available for download online. It his a short yet touching divulgation of a writer’s musing about copyright protection in the digital age, and about thinking out of the box. He says that the war is over. I’m not sure, but I liked the frankness of an author who writes books with his heart’s blood and his dilemma about coming to terms with the wired reality.

Old-Style Canadian Formalities and Copyright Reform

Zohar Efroni — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 12:57:59 -0800

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.”

1/31: Lawrence Lessig: Final Free Cuture Talk

Amanda Smith — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 10:44:44 -0800

Start: Jan 31 2008 - 1:00pm

End: Jan 31 2008 - 2:00pm

Name of Speaker:

Lawrence Lessig

Topic Description:

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.

Lessig is giving a final talk at Stanford University on the subject, and it is being recorded for the upcoming feature film "Basement Tapes", an open source documentary (see http://www.opensourcecinema.org). Guests will also be treated to a sneak preview of some upcoming scenes from Basement Tapes, and re-mixed work from the Open Source Cinema website.

Please come and give Professor Lessig our appreciation and for a last chance to witness this enlightening and provocative presentation.

Event is free to the public. Everyone is welcome.

You can RSVP here.

Mulligan and Perzanowski on the Sony BMG Rootkit Fiasco

Zohar Efroni — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 15:29:30 -0800

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.

German Copyright Law Amended

Zohar Efroni — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 14:21:24 -0700

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:

Elkin-Koren on Anticircumvention Law and Consumers-as-Participants

Zohar Efroni — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 06:05:38 -0700

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:

Submission of a Reconstruction as Deposit Copy Invalidates Copyright Registration and Nullifies Federal Subject Matter Jurisdict

Amanda Smith — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 17:10:34 -0700

In Torres-Negrón v. J & N Records, L.L.C., the First Circuit determined two issues: whether the plaintiff composer’s submission of a tape recording of himself singing his song and clapping its rhythm by memory, without reference to his original work, met the deposit copy requirement of 17 U.S.C. § 408(b); and whether the failure to submit a deposit copy is a jurisdictional defect in a federal copyright infringement case. Affirming a decision of the United States District Court for the District of Puerto Rico, the First Circuit found that plaintiff’s copyright application was incomplete because it included only a reconstruction of the song, and not a bona fide copy. The court deemed this a material defect and thus denied federal subject matter jurisdiction.

Torres-Negrón v. J & N Records, L.L.C.

Copyright Law and the Information Cost Theory

Zohar Efroni — Sun, 21 Oct 2007 06:01:11 -0700

Intellectual Property as Property: Delineating Entitlements in Information, authored by Prof. Henry Smith was published last summer in the Yale Law Journal. It is an important article, a must-read for IP theory fans, all the more for law-and-economics folks. A blog post is perhaps not the ideal venue to discuss Smith’s insights in depth. The breadth of the theoretical discussion it begs is vast and the potential application of the information cost theory to property issues is enormous. My limited aim here is to share some thoughts about possible applications to copyright law and the tendency to protect technological access-controls under the copyright statue.

Jury Instruction No. 15

Zohar Efroni — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 15:45:24 -0700

The attorney of Jammie Thomas has resolved to appeal the jury verdict entered against her last week. That closely-followed trial culminated in awarding $222k in damages for willful copyright infringement to the music industry. The appeal would focus on jury instruction no. 15, the making-available quandary.