Stairway to Litigation: Laches in the Post-Petrella Era
For rock and roll fans, the opening notes to “Stairway to Heaven” are iconic. The band has amassed a huge fan base, and the song is arguably one of the…
Remixing Transformative Use: A Three-Part Proposal for Reform
Recently the Second Circuit held, in Cariou v. Prince, that Prince’s unlicensed appropriation of Patrick Cariou’s photographs, with what many consider to be only minor modifications, was fair use rather…
Media Law and Copyright Implications of Automated Journalism
Computer-generated journalism is just one type of information that will be disseminated with increasing frequency as similar technologies are adapted to various ends. The popularity of algorithmic reporting will require…
Song on Wire: A Technical Analysis of ReDigi and the Pre-Owned Digital Media Marketplace
In October 2011, an online marketplace for reselling pre-owned digital music emerged. The founders of this online marketplace aptly named it ReDigi. In January 2012, ReDigi was promptly sued by…
Recognizing the Perfect Monkey Selfie
Back in 2011, an Indonesian macaque snapped a grinning self-portrait. Naturally, it became an Internet sensation. The camera owner, British wild-life photographer Daniel Slater, is now suing Wikipedia for copyright…
Start on a Good Foot: The Implications of Grooveshark’s Guilty Verdict
A recent Federal Court ruling has left the online streaming service Grooveshark in critical condition. On September 29th, 2014, the Southern District of New York, in an opinion delivered by…
3-D Printing Your Way down the Garden Path: 3-D Printers, the Copyrightization of Patents, and a Method for Manufacturers to Avoid the Entertainment Industry’s Fate
What happens when a home user can scan and print a physical item, or download plans to print a physical item from the Internet, as easily as he or she…
License and Registration, Please: Using Copyright “Conditions” to Protect Free/Open Source Software
FOSS (free/open source software) is a growing player in the end-user market, as evidenced by the popularity of everything from Wordpress to Firefox. One of its key appeals to developers…
Using Copyright to Combat Revenge Porn
The dawning of the information age, coupled with a greater understanding of the value of intellectual property, has increased the quantity of proprietary information businesses choose to keep as trade…
The Merger and the Damage Done: How the DOJ Enabled an Empire in the Live Music Industry
In 2010, the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice approved the merger of Ticketmaster and Live Nation, who combined to form Live Nation Entertainment. This paper revisits the Department's…