The Supreme Court on October 12th heard oral arguments in Andy Warhol Foundation (AWF) v. Lynn Goldsmith, and presumably every copyright nerd (pro and con) was listening. In general, I would describe the Court as consistent—all justices focused on the narrow question presented with very little discussion outside those lines. The question, which badly needs an answer, is this: What ...
Imagine someone getting caught shoplifting while wearing a tee shirt that says: “I have no intention of committing petty larceny.” Right? So, when the store presses charges, the defendant’s attorney is probably not going to say, “But the tee shirt your honor! Did you read the tee shirt?” It’s not a perfect analogy. But this parable of the absurd is ...
Dear Authors (“the undersigned”): It’s not your fault. You mean well. But you are simply wrong to have signed that letter—the one written and orchestrated by Fight for the Future (FFTF), which misrepresents the case Hachette et al., v Internet Archive as an attack on libraries. If I were not a copyright nerd, and I were told that this lawsuit ...
I have written extensively about state sovereign immunity (a.k.a.,11th Amendment immunity) as it relates to copyright owners’ inability to hold states and state actors liable for recklessly and knowingly infringing protected works. State immunity for violations of federal statutes against persons is a maddening subject—rife with judicial and historical contradictions and implications that reach far beyond intellectual property. Among the ...
Apropos my recent response to the EFF’s standard policy of shrugging at online piracy, I want to highlight one paragraph from the post to which I replied. Katherine Trendacosta wrote: From the fever-pitch moral panic of the early 2000s, discussions about “piracy” disappeared from pop culture for about a decade. It’s come back, both from the side explaining why and the side that wants ...
