Even under normal circumstances, anyone can be forgiven for missing the memo that by the end of this month, the Librarian of Congress, Dr. Carla Hayden, will make her pick for the new Register of Copyrights. The process has been going for so long that I assume that at this stage Dr. Hayden has her choices down to a handful ...
With the first three DMCA review hearings before the Senate Subcommittee on IP, it was fairly easy to identify the salient matters most likely to survive beyond this inquiry period and become part of the substantive debate on possible legislative revision. For instance, the need to more clearly define constructive, or “red flag,” knowledge in Section 512 is a recurring ...
(NOTE: This post relies on information presented in Part I.) In my first post in this series, I tried to summarize (albeit in nearly 3,000 words) the reasons why the states, and arms of the states, may freely infringe intellectual property without fear of being sued for monetary damages. I referred to the Eleventh Amendment as a pain in the ...
Ever since the case Allen v. Cooper first appeared on my radar, and especially after the Supreme Court handed down its decision in late March, I have been admittedly a wee bit obsessed with the subject of state sovereign immunity (a.k.a. Eleventh Amendment immunity). What is Eleventh Amendment immunity? In a nutshell, it means you cannot sue a state (including ...
I think Senator Blumenthal summed it up about right, as he was quoted in this week in the Wall Street Journal: “I’ve certainly been one of Congress’ loudest critics of Section 230, but I have no interest in being an agent of Bill Barr’s speech police.” In the post I wrote right after Trump threw a hissy fit because Twitter ...
