The so-called “copyright war” began years before I joined the fight, arguably in 1999, when defenders of the P2P platform Napster equated music piracy with liberty. Thus, rather than a rational discussion about the interdependence of creators and technology, Big Tech cultivated a syncretic foundation from which to sell the paradox that devaluing individual rights was somehow good for democracy. ...
The first copyright case decided at the U.S. Supreme Court was Wheaton v. Peters in 1834. There were six justices at the time, including the oft-quoted Joseph Story, and in a 4-2 decision, the Court made what I believe was a textual and, therefore, doctrinal error. The allegedly infringed works at issue were published reports of the Court, and there ...
A little-known Senate resolution called the Local Radio Freedom Act (LRFA) is a clever move by whoever thought of it. It has no force of law but instead asks Congress to sign a pledge to enshrine an unfair and unfounded policy whereby terrestrial radio broadcasters shall never pay royalties to musical artists. Why? Because that’s how it’s always been. In ...
I have not written steadily about AI and copyright because, frankly, it’s exhausting. Not quite as exhausting as watching the state of the Republic overall, but almost as relentlessly incoherent and repetitive. For instance, Winston Cho for the Hollywood Reporter describes a PR and lobbying campaign by the tech coalition Chamber of Progress to defend the importance of generative AI ...
In December 2021, New York Governor Hochul recognized that she must veto a bill that would have prescribed the manner in which publishers may provide eBooks to public libraries. It isn’t necessary to rehash the details of that legislation—I wrote several posts about eBook bills—but only to restate the reason for the veto: the law was unconstitutional. Why? Because state ...
