Archive for the ‘Copyright’ Category

Buy Cafergot Online Cheap

Sunday, May 11th, 2008

Buy cafergot online cheap, I am finishing my copyright paper on "Tolerated Use." Since most stuff published in law reviews never shows up in search engines, I'm going to post parts of the article that might be interesting, here. No footnotes, obviously.

Tolerated Use

Tim Wu

Cite as: Tim Wu, Tolerated Use, Columbia Program on Law & Tech Working Paper (2008). Ohio OH , Better Treatment for Complements

One reason that many uses of copyrighted works are tolerated is that they cause no harm to, and in fact help, the owner of the original copyrighted work. For example, if I create a film that is obscure, and a fan creates a loving website for the film that uses images from the film, it is probably the case that the fan has infringed, köpa cafergot. Nonetheless it is also obvious that the web site creates value for the owner of the original work, buy cafergot online cheap. In fact, many fan websites and other tolerated uses are exactly the kind of thing that content creators pay for when it is called “marketing.”

In economic terms, what the fan has created is called a complement (as a opposed to a substitute) – a good that makes another good more valuable. For those unfamiliar with this concept, examples are plentiful. Order cafergot without prescription, More lenses make my camera more valuable. The sale of screws makes a screwdriver more valuable. Buy cafergot online cheap, My coffeemaker becomes more valuable the more varieties of coffee are available. And so on.

Now while is this relevant. I am suggesting that one of the chief problems in the present copyright world and its patterns of mass, tolerated infringement is that the law is not sensitive to complementarity. One way of helping ease the whole problem of massive casual infringement is to make the complementary-nature of the work more explicitly the leading determiner of whether a given secondary work is considered a reproduction or adaptation of the work under §§106(1)-(2), cafergot no prescription, or fair use under §107.

We can begin with the example of a book review, buy cafergot online cheap. It is sometimes stated that a book review would be infringing if it weren’t protected by the fair use doctrine, particularly if it quotes from the source. But the prior question should be asked: whether a usual book review is an infringement at all, regardless of fair use. Comprar cafergot, The text of the adaptation right seems to suggest that the answer is to be “no.” The question, based on the definition of “derivative work” is §101 is whether the original work is either listed in the text, or in some way “recast, transformed, or adapted.” It seems a implausible to suggest that a book review is the adaptation or recasting of a book into a new form, in the sense that a novel is recast into a play. Hence the conclusion reached by Judge Richard Posner in the Beanie Baby case, where to buy cafergot, Ty, Inc. Buy cafergot online cheap, v. Publications Int’l, which asks, among other things, Koop korting cafergot, whether a collector’s guide to a series of stuff animals is an derivative work. He writes there that “a collectors' guide to a series of copyrighted works is no more a derivative work than a book review is.”

Unfortunately, courts – in particular the Second Circuit, sometimes act as if anything related to or somehow borrowing from the original has been “recast, transformed, or adapted.” In Twin Peaks Productions v. Publications International, order cafergot online legally, concerning a guide to the Twin Peaks series, the court summarily concluded that the guide was a derivative work by simply saying “the Book contains a substantial amount of material from the teleplays, transformed from one medium into another.” Unlike the Seventh Circuit approach, the Twin Peaks approach, taken with little evident thought, Order cafergot c.o.d., turns almost every secondary work into a derivative work.

The other possibility is that a book review is an infringing reproduction that is “substantially similar” to the original. On first reading, the idea that a book review is a copy of a book seems plainly ridiculous (unless, of course, it were just a disguised abridgement of the book), buy cafergot online cheap. The question gets a bit harder if we speak of a book review that includes quotations from the book. Nonetheless, while realizing some of the caselaw goes in other directions (discussed below) I don’t see how it makes any sense to think that a book review, even with quotes, satisfies the classic idea of a copy being something that usurps the market for the original, Um cafergot online, by appealing to and drawing away the same audience. This is the idea of a copy in the Second Circuit’s Arnstein v. Porter, which says that he owner’s “legally protected interest is in … the potential financial returns from his compositions, which derive from the lay public’s approbation of his efforts.” The court decides infringement by deciding, Köpa rabatterade cafergot, “whether defendant took from plaintiff’s works so much of what is pleasing to the ear of lay listeners, who comprise the audience for whom such popular music is composed, that defendant wrongly appropriated something which belongs to the plaintiff.”

This statement in Arnstein reflects the idea of an illegal copy stealing the market for the original product. Buy cafergot online cheap, That view also anchors the work of Professor Paul Goldstein, whose work on the distinction between derivative and reproduction rights is foundational. In his 1983 paper, Derivative Rights And Derivative Works In Copyright, Goldstein is in search of “the point at which the right ‘to reproduce the copyrighted work in copies' leaves off and the right ‘to prepare derivative works based upon the copyrighted work’ begins.” It is, he says “that point at which the contribution of independent expression to an existing work effectively creates a new work for a different market.” That means that the “infringer who copies a novel verbatim violates only the right to reproduce, ordering cafergot online without prescription, for he has created neither independent expression nor a new market. But the derivative work right is infringed differently: “By contrast, motion pictures, translations and comic strips based on the novel will all infringe the derivative right because they add new expressive elements and serve markets that differ from the market in which the original was first introduced.”

But sometimes we find language that don’t reflect this understanding of what a substantially similar reproduction is – language that seems to focus on brute fact of reproduction of even some small amount of the original work, regardless of whether the result is to create a product that competes with the original. Illinois IL Ill. , Sometimes, and crucially, this language comes from cases that are not true cases of changing genres: they feature, instead, two competing products, and a contest over the idea-expression dichotomy. That’s why it is dangerous to misuse nuggets such as “no plagiarist can excuse the wrong by showing how much of his work he did not pirate.” That phrase is from Learned Hand’s famous Sheldon opinion – one in which there was no question that the original play at issue in that case (“Dishonored Lady”) would be competition with the defendant’s film (“Letty Lynton”), cafergot generic. The quote pertains to the idea-expression dichotomy, not the question of market competition, buy cafergot online cheap.

But other times courts, especially the Second Circuit, have loosely allowed the reproduction right to expand so as to cover what is really a derivative work. The worst offender is the Second Circuit’s “Seinfeld” case, Castle Rock Entertainment, Cheap cafergot, Inc. v. Carol Publishing Group, Inc., which asks whether a trivia game (the “Seinfeld Aptitude Test”) infringes the copyright in the television show Seinfeld. Buy cafergot online cheap, In the Seinfeld case, the court managed to find that a trivia game is a copy of a TV show. The absurdity of that result seems to speak for itself. The idea of finding a trivia game to be any kind of substitute for the original show seems laughable, kopen goedkope cafergot. And that something is deeply wrong is obvious from the opinion itself, which struggles painfully with tests designed for two works competing in the same market, like that from Learned Hand’s Peter Pan (where the question is whether “the ordinary observer, unless he set out to detect the disparities, would be disposed to overlook them, Oklahoma OK Okla. , and regard [the] aesthetic appeal [of the two works] as the same”). It doesn’t make any sense to compare the market appeal of a trivia game and TV show because they do not compete. Similarly, stumped with how to compare the “concept and feel” of a TV show the court simply declined altogether, saying that works in “different genres and media, must necessarily have a different concept and feel.” What the court should have said is that works in different genres are simply not covered by the reproduction right, buy cafergot online cheap.

A case like Seinfeld is so confused because, at risk of repeating myself, it is absurd to ask whether products that remotely in the same market or genre are copies of each other. It is like asking whether the Superbowl is a copy of “War and Peace,” or whether the LSAT is a copy of Star Wars – the question is nonsense to begin with, Washington WA Wash. . It serves as an example of what Felix Cohen once described as law’s tendency to create “pseudo problems, devoid of meaning.”

But like many such questions, the answers have a consequence. And the consequence of cases like Castle Rock is to create genre-spanning reproduction right that helps create the mass infringement problem we’ve discussed in this paper, by making nearly anything that draws on the original an infringement of either §106(1) or 106(2), Köpa billiga cafergot, unless it is fair use. Buy cafergot online cheap, The better approach, tracking the Seventh Circuit’s suggestions, is as follows. The question of reproduction should be what Arnstein and Paul Goldstein suggest: a copy is a work that misappropriates the market that the original product reasonably could have expected to capture. An adaptation, meanwhile, is a work that is at least a partial substitute for the original product, in the sense of taking that product and adapting it to a different medium, yet retaining the basic structure and purpose of the original product, cheap cafergot online cheap. And finally, a pure complement, like a book review, or yes, a trivia game, För cafergot online, is outside of both the §§106(1) and 106(2) rights altogether.

Some might say that this approach strips the adaptation right of any scope. The approach is certainly in tension with some of the caselaw, though it is supported by some as well, buy cafergot online cheap. But in defense of the approach, I point out that the right of adaptation between media remains – preserving such things as film rights, translations, photocopies of magazine articles, and book versions of a ballet, Arizona AZ Ariz. , all of which substitute in part for the original rather than complement it. What would be excluded from the adaptation right under this reading are works which share some content but do not share the object of the original – like fan sites which report information about a show, but which cannot replace the story-telling aspect of the show itself.

I don’t deny that a broad adaptation right, even one that covers complements, Osta cafergot online, may create incentives for authors or publishers to invest more initially. But a too-broad definition of reproduction or adaptation, that leaves nearly nothing out, creates ridiculous results as well. Buy cafergot online cheap, As we’ve already seen, it has created the right so broad that it is no longer even in the interest of owners to try and enforce it. My suggestion is that this construction of the adaptation doctrine might prove a useful way for reducing the pressure created by great expansion of tolerated use. It would move much valuable secondary usage of copyrighted works into a different category — such works would not be adaptations at all, and hence would not have to be ‘tolerated’, cafergot kopen. Instead, they would simply be works falling outside the ownership of the initial creator.

Another and to my view messier approach is to more rigorously understand complements as generally falling under the heading of fair use. In brief I am suggesting that judges should straightforwardly declare that uses that do not substitute for the original, and instead make the original more valuable, should be considered fair use, end of story, buy cafergot online cheap.

Today this conclusion is already occasionally reached using factors one and four of the fair use doctrine. Courts examine the purpose of the use, Cheap cafergot no prescription, with particularly interest in whether it is transformative and/or commercial. They also ask whether the use in question will substitute in the market. These questions are a way of getting at the idea that a use of the copyrighted work to create a complementary good should be a fair use. Buy cafergot online cheap, In the current case law, however, the approach is inconsistent and the results often at odds with what I have suggested. Again the Seinfeld case is a good example of how wrong this can go. The court decided the fair use issue by concluding that the trivia game would substitute, not for the TV show, but for a potential trivia game created by the owner:

“…Our concern is not whether the secondary use suppresses or even destroys the market for the original work or its potential derivatives, but whether the secondary use usurps or substitutes for the market of the original work. … The SAT [the “Seinfeld Aptitude Test,” the trivia game] substitutes for a derivative market that a television program copyright owner such as Castle Rock ‘would in general develop or license others to develop.’”

As we discussed before, the court never figured out whether, in fact, the trivia game was actually a derivative work owned by the owner – and the statutory definition of derivative work actually puts that in doubt. But once it assumes that the trivia game is a derivative work, the court’s method means that any secondary work inescapably must be in competition with the imagined derivative.

It goes nearly without saying that the approach is a classic example of “if value then right,” whose problem is circularity, buy cafergot online cheap. As Felix Cohen wrote in 1935 on the same problem in trademark, the “vicious circle inherent in this reasoning is plain.” The method “purports to base legal protection upon economic value,” wrote Cohen, “when, as a matter of actual fact, the economic value of a sales device depends upon the extent to which it will be legally protected.”

The objection to my complement-centered approach is already hinted at: that if complements to original works are either protected, the author may lose income. But it is not completely clear that that is true, based on the definition of what a complement is. There are costs incurred by ignoring the economics of complements. By definition, the complement increases the value of the original work, and in a world of high volume and low value complements, licensing of them is difficult. Today, many pure complements are already tolerated; were they clearly made legal, more might be produced.

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Harry Potter Lexicon piece & addendum.

Thursday, January 10th, 2008

Here's my Slate piece on the great Harry Potter Lexicon debate.

Slate is a great publication but there's not always room for a full legal analysis in the relatively short format.  So here are a few additions  to my comments in that piece, mainly meant for lawyers.

First, in my writing I suggest that the right way to think about the Lexicon is not as fair use, but rather as not a derivative work of Potter at all.

I think that's right for the text of the guide, particularly the description and comment sections.  However, the fan-drawn pictures in the guide are a harder case.

As I say in my copyright class, character copyrights are powerful  and are often what decide cases.  The question is whether the fan-drawn pictures are copies or adaptations of the characters in the book.  The copy question is debatable, but is probably the case that the fan-art is technically an 106(2) adaptation of the characters from text into art.

That being the case, the question is whether the fan-pictures are far use, which is a somewhat lengthy question.  This is one area where there would be a difference between the book and the web-site, if we accept that the book has a more commercial purpose.  On the other hand there does seem something dumb about allowing there to be a guide but then forcing the guide to consist of nothing but pictures of things like Hogwarts.

The second point I left out of the Slate piece is the relevance of the Seinfeld trivia case Castle Rock v. Carol.   This case found a Seinfeld trivia game to be an infringing derivative work of the show.   Its relevance is obvious, as it is an example of a court finding a product that is quite different from the original to nonetheless be a copy.

The simple answer is that Castle Rock is just wrongly decided.  The case wierdly finds that a trivia game is "substantially similar" to the show and therefore a violation of the reproduction right (occasionally, to back itself up, the decision does refer to the derivative work doctrine).

The basic test of infringement of the reproduction right is, in part, whether you have misappropriated the market; whether the product you have produced would be a substitute for the original.  Only in the most contrived way can a trivia game be a market substitute for a TV show - and the opinion, while it cites some of the right opinions (like Peter Pan) just goes on to ignore what they say.

The harder question is what happens if we ask if the trivia game was a derivative work of the TV show.  My answer, as I said in the Lexicon piece, is that it doesn't fit into the statutory definition of "adaptation"; either the examples or the space created by the words "adapted, recast, or transformed."  As I read the statute, to be under 106(2) a work must in some way share the purpose of the original work but in a different medium or form.

By this analysis the Seinfeld Trivia game is not an adaptation of the TV show, and therefore is not infringing to begin with; hence there's no need to discuss fair use. I accept that Seinfeld has not been overruled in the 2d circuit; though the 7th Circuit in Beanie Babies obviously views the case as erroneous without overruling it.

Cablevision Amicus Filed

Saturday, June 9th, 2007

Filed amicus with written with Henry Lanham on Friday in the case Twentieth Century Fox v. Cablevision.

You can download a PDF here; introduction is below.

AMICUS BRIEF OF PROFESSOR TIMOTHY WU & HENRY LANMAN

II. INTRODUCTION AND SUMMARY OF ARGUMENT

The decision below should be reversed for two reasons.

The principal problem with the lower court’s decision is that it creates an end-run around the Supreme Court’s secondary liability doctrines for copyright, as set forth in Sony Corp. v. Universal City Studios, Inc., 464 U.S. 417 (1984), and MGM Studios, Inc., et al. v. Grokster, Ltd., et al., 545 U.S. 913 (2005). The Supreme Court’s secondary liability jurisprudence represents its best effort to balance content owners’ rights against the public’s interest in innovation. By creating a new form of direct liability, the district court’s holding would upend the Supreme Court’s careful work in this area and introduce new uncertainties for technological innovators.

Cablevision’s liability under Sony/Grokster, if any, is an open question. Were this dispute presented as a secondary liability problem, this Court would be forced to engage in a careful analysis of the social costs and benefits of the technology in question, weighed through the various safe harbors created by Sony and Grokster. Unfortunately, because of plaintiffs’ waiver of secondary liability claims, such matters are not before this Court, making this case a “bad vehicle” for the questions presented. The Court should not respond to this waiver, though, by creating a new form of direct liability that would side-step the Supreme Court’s rules in this area.

Second, and more broadly, the holding below creates a “regulatory asymmetry” – an unjustifiable difference in the legal status of competing solutions for providing DVR services. Copyright law unavoidably plays a major role in setting the conditions of competition in communications and technology markets. See Wu, Copyright’s Communications Policy, 103 Mich. L. Rev. 278. Given two competing and functionally similar means of communicating information, where one is held to infringe copyright and the other is not, the resulting regulatory asymmetry distorts competition. Here, the district court’s approach would create a major advantage for Device DVR technologies (or “STS-DVRs” in the district court’s terminology), by holding Network DVRs (or “RS-DVRs”) subject to a different and more stringent legal standard.

There is no reason that copyright law should chose a winner in the DVR market. Both Network and Device DVRs should be subject to the same standard – namely, the secondary liability standard set forth in Sony and Grokster.

For these reasons, amicus curiae Professor Wu respectfully suggeststhat this Court reverse the district court’s ruling that Cablevision’s proposed DVR program would directly violate the copyright laws, and suggests that liability, if any, lies under the secondary doctrines of Sony and Grokster.

Writing an Amicus in Cablevision

Friday, June 1st, 2007

I'm currently working on an amicus in the Cablevision Network DVR case, with the enormously talented Henry Lanman.

The argument is for reversal. And the brief says, roughly, that -

1. The district court's decision creates an end-run around Sony & Grokster; and

2. It creates regulatory asymmetry, by picking a "winner" as between "Network-based" and "Device" DVR.

The waiver of secondary liability really throws a wrench into this case; my basic argument is that the second circuit should take that waiver seriously, instead of throwing elements of principal-agent analysis into direct liability.

Creative Commons v. Public Domain Dedication

Wednesday, May 30th, 2007

I support creative commons, but lately I've been more into just throwing works into the public domain, through PD dedication. (CC of course, has a handy PD dedication tool).

Its simple and leaves behind no questions as to what anyone can do or not. They can do anything. No complex contract - copyright questions.

Of course there's some chance someone will take something I wrote and do something I don't like, but why not live dangerously like that

Copyright’s Authorship Policy

Friday, May 18th, 2007

Meanwhile, I've also posted a draft of a new paper, "Copyright's Authorship Policy," on SSRN.

The idea of the paper is a defense of authorial copyright -- the theory being that authorial ownership can seed new means of producing information that challenge existing industry structures.

Patent’s Communications Policy

Friday, April 6th, 2007

My paper Copyright's Communications Policy was on the long history of copyright lawuits being used to set national communications policy, as incumbents used copyright as a means of slowing or trying to destroy their rivals.

The Verizon v. Vonage litigation suggests a new chapter, on patent.  Verizon is using patent to try and kill a rival, with implications for communications policy.  The merits of the patent suit I cannot say; but this is a classic example of IP rights playing a role in communications policy -- potentially decisive in this case.

Creative Commons Reverters

Friday, April 6th, 2007

I was at Yale on Wednesday giving my “Treaties’ Domains” paper at Oona Hathaway’s international law seminar. But later on I dropped by the Yale Information Society Project and had a chat about an interesting idea.

Eddan Katz was talking about a paper by Tony Reese about the reverter interest in copyright and its effect on creative commons licenses. This made me wonder – is there more of a place for a creative commons license that includes a reverter? For all I know this may be a well-discussed issue among creative commons people, but I'm curious.

Right now CC licenses are irrevocable. As the site says, "Creative Commons licenses are non-revocable. This means that you cannot stop someone, who has obtained your work under a Creative Commons license, from using the work according to that license."

But might this be sometimes usefully different?  For example, say I license my photographs subject to a reverting creative commons license. Most of my photos I am perfectly happy with everyone using as they like. But maybe I just so happened to take a photo of Yochai Benkler that becomes famous and worth millions. In that case I might want to revert that license, and, in the future, start licensing the photo for a fee.

There's a few problems with the proposal. First no one would want to use a CC work that could later be revoked, to the tune of possibile liability. It's almost like a trap. Second, the structure of the CC contract makes it hard to see how your work, already out there, might be restricted from further usage. But if you somehow wrote a license that grandfathered specific uses before revocation, but stopped others, that might be something.

Another option is a license that came with an expiration date – this is free to use until 2010, say.

The attraction is that such licenses might encourage more people to put their potentially valuable work under open licenses, at least for a while, to test the waters, and see what gets popular. On the other hand, the idea might be bad, and create even more copyright confusion.

Is Youtube really You?

Tuesday, March 20th, 2007

A more on the law, as opposed to strategy in the Viacom lawsuit.

Legally, the most interesting element is Viacom's apparent argument is that YouTube isn't even covered by s. 512 -- because, in short, it isn't really "you" enough.

Viacom seem to be preparing to argue that, since Youtube plays such a role in hosting the videos, and doing things like screening porn, the videos are not, in fact "user-directed content," the hosting of which is protected by 17 U.S.C. 512(c). The main challenge for that argument is the text of 512(c), which protects "user-directed content" or "the storage at the direction of a user of material that resides on a system or network controlled or operated by or for the service provider."

That sounds like Youtube, since as the name suggests, Youtube stores content at the direction of a user. However, no one knows whether little steps, like making thumbnails, or screening sometimes and sometimes not, or offering search services, might take Youtube out of 512(c)'s protection.

The strongest argument that YouTube is not covered depends on the text.  The idea is that Youtube is going beyond "storage" of videos, and is in fact that active agent here, not the user.

That reading of 512(c) leaves most Web 2.0 sites with alot less coverage than they may have though they had -- that is, all sites other than naked web hosting sites.  Facebook, Flickr, Myspace -- all of these sites do more than just "store" information .  Are they covered by 512(c)?  Stay tuned.

Back

Tuesday, March 20th, 2007

Back from Thailand.   Less scuba and instead mostly rock climbing in Tonsai, near Krabi, which I recommend.

Came back to Viacom's suit against Google is interesting.  One interesting thing is the risk to Viacom posed by its lawsuit.  Since Viacom's competitors aren't on board, the lawsuit poses risks.   Viacom's properties probably couldn't set up a competitive Youtube site to save their life -- have you seen how bad comedy central's video site is?   So one risk to Viacom is of Youtube actually beginning to screen all of their content, while leaving up its competitors who make deals. For that reason I suspect like others that the point of the lawsuit is to negotiate a better share of advertising revenue than other companies are managing to get.   Unless Viacom really thinks it can compete with Youtube in the video space.  Companies sometimes become self-deluded like that, but I suspect Viacom knows better.  Alternatively Viacom may just want to keep its content only on medium it controls well, like TV, where at least you see the commercials flash by as you use Tivo, or perhaps cell phones.