The following post comes from Cala Coffman, a 2L at Scalia Law and Research Assistant at C-IP2.
At the recent C-IP2 conference entitled IP on the Wane: IP on the Wane: Examining the Impacts as IP Rights Are Reduced, one panel discussed the current state of copyright law, the pressures it has come under in recent years, and their differing perspectives on how the digital world is shaping copyright. Read more
The following post comes from Liz Velander, a recent graduate of Scalia Law and a Research Assistant at CPIP.
By Liz Velander
In mid-December, the Senate Intellectual Property Subcommittee, led by its Chairman, Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC), held a hearing entitled “The Role of Private Agreements and Existing Technology in Curbing Online Piracy.” Read more
The following post comes from Yumi Oda, an LLM Candidate at Scalia Law and a Research Assistant at CPIP.
By Yumi Oda
As part of its year-long review of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), the Senate Subcommittee on Intellectual Property tackled yet another contentious issue in our copyright system—fair use. Read more
Earlier this week, the Supreme Court handed down its decision in Fourth Estate v. Wall-Street.com, a case examining the registration precondition to filing a suit for copyright infringement in the federal district courts. While I agree with the Court’s exegesis of the statute at issue, it’s worth noting how the Court’s construction leaves many, if not most, copyright owners in the lurch. Read more
By Matthew Barblan & Kevin Madigan
In 2013, CPIP published a policy brief by Professor Bruce Boyden exposing the DMCA notice and takedown system as outdated and in need of reform. The Failure of the DMCA Notice and Takedown System explained that while Section 512 of the DMCA was intended as a way for copyright owners and service providers to work together to fight infringement in the digital age, the notice and takedown system has been largely ineffective in managing the ever-increasing amount of piracy. Read more
The Second Circuit’s recent opinion in Capitol Records v. Vimeo is, to put it mildly, pretty bad. From its convoluted reasoning that copyrights under state law for pre-1972 sound recordings are limited by the DMCA safe harbors, despite the explicit statement in Section 301(c) that “rights or remedies” under state law “shall not be annulled or limited” by the Copyright Act, to its gutting of red flag knowledge by limiting it to the nearly-impossible situation where a service provider actually knows that a specific use of an entire copyrighted work is neither fair nor licensed yet somehow doesn’t also surmise that it’s infringing, it’s hard to see how either result is compelled by the statutes, much less how it was intended by Congress. Read more
Here’s a brief excerpt of my new post that was published on IPWatchdog:
Here’s where we are after Capitol Records v. Vimeo: A service provider can encourage its users to infringe on a massive scale, and so long as the infringement it encourages isn’t the specific infringement it gets sued for, it wins on the safe harbor defense at summary judgment. Read more
