Professional creators following the case Allen v. Cooper were no doubt disappointed by the Supreme Court’s March 23 decision—a unanimous holding that the States (and/or their agents) are generally free to infringe copyrights with impunity. But perhaps authors of works should not to be entirely discouraged on this matter, because it seems clear from the opinions written that the Justices would have ...

I’ll tell the story again.  This blog began the day a friend of mine—a very smart one—shared an article on Facebook that was patently untrue.  When I confronted him about this, he responded that he cared more about the “issue” than the veracity of the article.  The double-take triggered by his cognitive dissonance led me to poke around and discover that the false ...

A new business called OmniQ has filed an amicus brief urging the Supreme Court to grant cert in ReDegi v. Capitol Records, alleging that the Second Circuit’s opinion in December 2018 effectively brings an end to the First Sale doctrine.  The company is developing a patent pending model that (presumably) would facilitate an online market for “used” and hard-to-find motion pictures.  Its brief ...

“Content is king” was the catch-phrase of the 1990s and the heady (headless really) days of the Dot Com bubble.  And although that stopped being a slogan with the resurgence of Web 2.0, it was still true.  Content was still king except the would-be tech giants figured out that they didn’t need to create content but instead just make someone ...

An editorial appeared in The Hill written by Martin Skladany, associate professor of law at Penn State.  Titled To curb dangers of media consumption, let’s reconsider copyright law, the article comprises an incoherent litany of social complaints; but to the extent one can glean any thesis from its dissociated and unsupported declaratives, I suppose it would be the following: “…excessive ...

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