As a member of the Authors Guild, I occasionally peek at the discussion board, and any topics pertaining to copyright naturally get my attention. It appears that a common question among authors of both fiction and nonfiction is whether they may quote song lyrics in their books. Further, it seems that a typical experience for many writers is that they ...
Shortly after the Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in Warhol v. Goldsmith, I wandered deep into the tall grass, PJs tucked into my boots, thinking about the fair use analysis in the difficult context of fine art. And then the Supreme Court delivered Justice Breyer’s opinion in Google v. Oracle, which, among other transgressions, broke a cardinal rule by ...
Once the die was cast (i.e. after oral arguments) in Google v. Oracle, I don’t think I was alone in feeling that if the Supreme Court held that the computer code at issue in this case was not properly a subject of copyright protection, that would be an acceptably narrow decision, even though many might disagree with it as a ...
In late January, I published a post advocating that we go ahead and cancel some culture. That piece was addressing the subject of platform responsibility, asserting that Facebook et al should feel free to stop amplifying disinformation, hate-mongering, and (unfortunately) sedition and that it should do so without all the dithering about speech rights. There, I asserted that neither Facebook, ...
The Bernie meme has been a lot of good fun and probably the kind of release valve many of us needed by the time we arrived battered, exhausted, and relieved to watch a peaceful Inauguration Day. My personal favorites are Bernie Merch Table, Bernie Yalta, and Bernie Chicago. And by now, almost everyone knows that Sanders’s campaign team had sweatshirts ...
