Digital Copyright

Author(s):  
Jessica Litman

The general public is used to thinking of copyright (if it thinks of it at all) as marginal and arcane. But copyright is central to our society’s information policy and affects what we can read, view, hear, use, or learn. In 1998 Congress enacted new laws greatly expanding copy owners’ control over individuals’ private uses of their works. The efforts to enforce these new rights laws have resulted in highly publicized legal battles between established media, including major record labels and motion picture studios, and upstart internet companies such as MP3.com and Napster.In this book, I question whether copyright laws crafted by lawyers and their lobbyists really make sense for the vast majority of us. Should every interaction between ordinary consumers and copyright-protected works be restricted by law? Is it practical to enforce such laws, or expect consumers to obey them? What are the effects of such laws on the exchange of information in a free society? My critique exposes the 1998 copyright law as an incoherent patchwork. I argues for reforms that reflect the way people actually behave in their daily digital interactions.The Maize Books edition includes both an afterword written in 2006 exploring the rise of peer-to-peer file sharing and a new Postscript reflecting on the consequences of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act as it nears its twentieth birthday.

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Lemley

We have argued elsewhere that peer-to-peer (p2p) file sharing posessignificant new challenges to the enforcement of copyright law. Copyrightowners' initial response to these challenges - to try to shut down thetechnologies that facilitate file sharing - is bad for society. Wesuggested that it would be preferable to lower enforcement costs forcopyright owners by making dispute resolution by copyright owners againstdirect infringers quick and cheap, so that copyright owners would be moreinclined to pursue such direct infringers instead of suing innovators.While enforcement costs are likely always to be too great to allow pursuitof every infringer, lower costs would allow for enforcement against moreinfringers, increasing any given infringer's chance of being sued. In thisarticle, we explain how such a dispute resolution system might work, andpropose a draft amendment to the copyright act to implement the system.


Copyright laws provide the legal framework to the business of publishing, and authors and publishers have benefitted enormously over the last 100 years or more from the existing copyright regime. The objective of copyright law is to reward the creativity of authors while ensuring that the general public has access to the creativity and innovation of authors. Publishers invest in the content and intellectual property rights assigned to them by authors. What provides value to their investment is the protection provided by copyright laws to the seamless acquisition and transfer of the intellectual property asset. This paper, the first of its kind on authors and copyright in India, focuses on Indian author perceptions on the role of publishers in protecting copyright.


2011 ◽  
Vol 7 (5) ◽  
pp. 16-21
Author(s):  
G.V. Poryev ◽  
Keyword(s):  

2002 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 25-33 ◽  
Author(s):  
Siu Man Lui ◽  
Sai Ho Kwok
Keyword(s):  

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