tl;dr Summary The DMCA’s procedure for taking down allegedly infringing material is (ahem) nearly universally disliked. Rights holders can’t figure out why it’s so hard to take infringing material down, and consumers and service providers can’t figure out why it’s so...
I Fought (for) the Law; Who Wins? When I started law school, I had only the vaguest idea of what lawyers did. I figured it had something to do with arguing in front of juries and judges, writing legal briefs and contracts. That’s what I expected to learn in law...
As Between the Director and the Producers, Who Owns a Movie’s Copyright? When the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences hands out the award for Best Picture, the award goes to the movie’s producers. The director, the actors, the cinematographers, make-up...
Fair Use Has a Weird Relationship with Trademark By now you know that fair use is a squishy, fact-intensive, unpredictable but absolutely necessary feature of copyright law. But at least fair use’s role in copyright law is well understood. It’s just hard to apply....
If You Call it Art, Is it Automatically Fair Use? By now you’ve probably heard that Richard Prince is a jerkface. Or that he is a trolling genius. I am not here to dispute either of those things. They are not mutually exclusive, for one thing. To the contrary,...
