No Safe Harbor: YouTube’s Content Id and Fair Use
Robert Andrea YouTube is arguably the world’s foremost platform for user-generated content. When users upload material to YouTube, there is a possibility that the uploaded content is protected by copyright. Under traditional copyright law, YouTube is technically liable for allowing copyrighted material to be disseminated. But the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) insulates YouTube and other internet service providers from liability if the companies take certain steps to filter out copyrighted material. For YouTube, the only feasible way to fulfill its copyright protection obligations is to utilize automated copyright protection software. Nevertheless, YouTube’s software, Content ID, and the copyright policies...
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...
Judicial Response: A Safe Harbor in the “Fair Use” Doctrine
Pamela R. O’Brien Despite the cries of some commentators that copyright law is dead (or at least that they wish it was), copyright law is fully capable of responding to the challenges posed by the new technologies of the digital revolution. Copyright law initially developed in response to the invention of the printing press, and has a long history of addressing changes in technology. Where Congress has not explicitly made provisions for the new technology, the courts have stretched statutory interpretation and common law doctrines to do so. The courts’ express goal in fitting existing copyright law to new technologies...