YouTube’s ContentID Copyright Infringement Flagging System: Using Its Corporate-Assuaging Origins in Viacom v. YouTube as a Jumping-Off Point for the Way It’s Been Used and Altered over the Years
Emily Tate The idiosyncrasy of the Internet often invites colorful analogies in its description: high seas and piracy, Wild West and lawless frontier. This is not undeserved; despite great strides over the course of its development, the Internet remains unexamined and unregulated in many ways, and the regulations that do exist are largely self-governed. Copyright law in particular has proven contentious for lawmakers who are forced to balance digital rights management on a massive scale with the rights of end users. Nowhere is this conflict more apparent than in the practices of the video-sharing juggernaut YouTube. Read Full Text Here
Who’s Fault Is It Anyway? The Modern State of 3D Printing Copyright Liability
Marx Calderon When new technology arises, lawmakers struggle to keep up: how do I perform the balancing act of managing risk through regulation without stymying innovation. An ongoing struggle is the 3D printer and its copyright liability. 3D printers take a complicated manufacturing process and puts in our homes instead of a factory. The ease in which a person can create an object at home is an incredible feat, but it comes with consequences. Specifically, owners of copyrighted images are weary of their products being reproduced at home and sold in a secondary market. This article briefly describes the source...
Defenseless in the Zombie Infested Internet: Why Audio-Visual Works Demand Exemption Under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act
Eric Maher In the aftermath of Napster and Pirate Bay’s shameless disregard for copyrights, DRM strategies are necessary to protect the incentives that encourage artists and programmers to create and publicly display their works. Yet the security risks associated with DRM levy a high cost on the public, on whose patronage the content creators depend. By restricting research and investigation into security risks in popular public technologies, U.S. copyright law, particularly under the anti-circumvention provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (“DMCA”), removed necessary safeguards for the public. The large influx of new consumer electronics demands exemption from the anti-circumvention...
Interpreting Chamberlain’s “Reasonable Relation” Between Access and Infringement in the Digital Mill
Zoe Argento The nature of the “reasonable relation” test goes to the heart of the DMCA and its impact on innovation. If the “reasonable relation” between access and infringement is too broad, the DMCA will stifle many ideas which build on protected works, because the public will be prevented from accessing works for the purpose of creating improved versions and interoperable products. Innovation depends in large measure upon building on the works of others. As Sir Isaac Newton famously said, “If I have seen farther than others, it is because I have stood upon the shoulders of giants.” On the...