This is the first in a series of posts summarizing CPIP’s 2014 Fall Conference, “Common Ground: How Intellectual Property Unites Creators and Innovators.” The Conference was held at George Mason University School of Law on October 9-10, 2014. Videos of the conference panels and remarks, as well as panel summaries, will be available soon. Read more
Category: Copyright
Intellectual Property, Innovation and Economic Growth: Mercatus Gets it Wrong
By Mark Schultz & Adam Mossoff
A handful of increasingly noisy critics of intellectual property (IP) have emerged within free market organizations. Both the emergence and vehemence of this group has surprised most observers, since free market advocates generally support property rights. Read more
Supreme Court Says Aereo has to Play by the Rules
Today in American Broadcasting Companies, Inc. v. Aereo, Inc. the Court held that Aereo’s television service, which re-transmits over-the-air TV signals to subscribers does indeed transmit performances to the public within the meaning of the Copyright Act.
Aereo tried to engineer its system around the law by using individual micro-antennas assigned to each subscriber. Read more
Taking a Whack at the DMCA: The Problem of Continuous Re-Posting
By Steven Tjoe
On Thursday March 13, the House Judiciary Committee held a hearing on the Digital Millennium Copyright Act’s (DMCA) notice and takedown system. Among the witnesses testifying at the hearing was CPIP Fellow Professor Sean O’Connor (Washington University School of Law), who offered his insights on Section 512 from his unique position as a law professor, former musician, and counsel to web businesses. Read more
Improving the DMCA's Notice and Takedown System
In conjunction with today’s House Judiciary Committee hearing on the DMCA, CPIP Senior Scholar Prof. Mark Schultz published a critique of the notice and takedown system this morning on AEI’s TechPolicyDaily Blog.
In his critique, Prof. Schultz discusses CPIP’s policy brief by Prof. Read more
IP as a Source of Personal and Economic Freedom
CPIP’s Mark Schultz authored an excellent essay today in TechPolicyDaily.com advocating intellectual property as a source of personal and economic freedom. The essay, “A Free Market Perspective on Intellectual Property Rights,” describes parallels between physical property and intellectual property and dispels several denigrating myths about intellectual property’s role in a free market. Read more
Crowdfunding's Impact on Start-Up IP Strategy
The Failure of the DMCA Notice and Takedown System
Today, CPIP released an important new policy brief, The Failure of the DMCA Notice and Takedown System: A Twentieth Century Solution to a Twenty-First Century Problem, by Professor Bruce Boyden of Marquette University Law School. Professor Boyden argues that the DMCA notice and takedown system is outdated and not up to the task of reducing the availability of infringing copies of creative works. Read more
The Internet Does Not Reset the Copyright-Free Speech Balance
Today, CPIP released an important new policy brief, “The Internet Does Not Reset the Copyright-Free Speech Balance,” by Sean O’Connor, Professor of Law at the University of Washington School of Law in Seattle. Professor O’Connor argues that “the First Amendment and copyright law maintain the same complementary relationship in cyberspace that they have in regular space.” Read more
Mercatus’s Unhelpful Business Advice to the Creative Industries
Washington, D.C. is full of smart people with great ideas about how other people should run their lives and businesses. The more innocent of first hand knowledge and practice they are, the more generous and enthusiastic they seem to be with their advice. Read more