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"Fair Use"
The period for filing amicus curiae (“friend of the court”) briefs in the appellate phase of the Georgia State University copyright and fair use case has closed, so it is a good time to take stock of who has weighed in on each side, and what their arguments look like. Even though this will be [...]
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A new ruling came out last week in one of the most interesting cases involving appropriation art, the ongoing dispute between photographer Patrick Cariou and appropriation artist Richard Prince. I wrote about the unfortunate decision from the district court back in 2011, and on Thursday the Second Circuit Court of Appeals reversed that decision, [...]
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Another day, another silly brief filed in support of the plaintiff publishers in the Georgia State copyright infringement appeal. This one comes from the American Association of University Presses (AAUP). I wish it were not the case, but I am past being shocked that university presses are so anxious to support a lawsuit [...]
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PREFACE — On Friday morning I wrote two blog posts. One, about whether libraries should stop buying materials from the publishers that are suing Georgia State, I posted right away. The other, about the amicus brief filed in that case by two former Registrars of Copyright, I saved and intended to post today. But [...]
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Last week we saw the first real flurry of activity reported in the publisher appeal of the Georgia State University fair use victory. The news items and filings call our attention to both the legal and the political aspects of the appeal.
Starting with the law, over the weekend I gave the publishers’ [...]
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Note to readers — a commenter has correctly pointed out that I was a bit over-enthusiastic in this post. It is not strictly true that no infringement has been found in any of the cases against libraries. In the Georgia State case the Judge did find five instances of infringement among the seventy-five digital excerpts [...]
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It is not a case that draws much attention from higher education circles, but the case of WNET et al. v Aereo has drawn an amicus brief that should worry anyone who is interested in how copyright law serves or inhibits innovation and competition. What is most disturbing is that the gross misunderstanding of [...]
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What a stretch of four months it has been!
First, in July, we had the ruling in the Georgia State lawsuit affirming that most of the excerpts for teaching that were challenged as copyright infringement were actually fair use. The decision is being appealed, but libraries go in to that appeal on the winning side, [...]
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There have been quite a few stories about the news that Google has settled with the Association of American Publishers in its long-running lawsuit alleging copyright infringement in the Google Books project. There are stories in the NY Times, Chronicle of Higher Education and Inside Higher Ed.
As all of the stories [...]
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To the surprise of no one, I think, the plaintiff publishers in the Georgia State litigation filed a notice of appeal on Monday. There has already been considerable coverage of this decision, in, for example, Inside Higher Ed, the Chronicle of Higher Education, and Library Journal.
The actual Notice of Appeal is [...]
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As Duke University’s first Scholarly Communications Officer, Kevin Smith’s principal role is to teach and advise faculty, administrators and students about copyright, intellectual property licensing and scholarly publishing. 
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