http://hdl.handle.net/2027.42/55736 http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/retrieve/204103 http://hdl.handle.net/2027.42/55736 Search the Channel search http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/simple-search http://hdl.handle.net/2027.42/64044 Title: Billowing White Goo<br/><br/>Authors: Litman, Jessica<br/><br/>Abstract: In this paper, written for a symposium on Fair Use: Incredibly Expanding or Extraordinarily Shrinking?, I argue that the size of the fair use footprint has remained about the same over the past three decades, while the size and scope of copyright's exclusive rights have expanded markedly. In order to protect a broader range of worthy uses under the fair use umbrella, courts have adopted new tests tailored to privilege particular sorts of uses, but in doing so they haven't expanded fair use so much as they have moved it around. In part I of the paper, I briefly summarize the recent history of fair use from the Copyright Office's initial recommendations that Congress codify it through the tests the courts have articulated for applying it. I then turn to the expansion in exclusive rights under section 106. Some of that expansion derives from the architecture of the 1976 Act. Although Congress sought, with particular exceptions, to draft the statute to incorporate the substance of extant law, it drafted the bounded exclusive copyright rights in broad terms and the exceptions to those rights in specific terms. Over 30 years, the specifically worded exceptions have grown obsolete much more quickly than the broadly worded exclusive rights, leaving those rights subject to fewer and narrower exceptions than when the law was enacted. This may be a poor design for copyright laws in policy terms, but it was a choice Congress made. In contrast, the massive recent expansion in the scope of individual section 106 exclusive rights is occurring outside of the legislative process. Advocates have persuaded courts to construe each of the once-bounded exclusive rights more broadly. Once discrete exclusive rights are morphing into an all-purpose general use right. Our understanding of copyright is evolving into the notion that all uses of copyrighted work must be authorized, either by the statute or by the copyright owner. Unauthorized uses, it would follow, must be piracy. I argue that that construction of the copyright statute is completely untenable, especially as it applies to personal uses. Moreover, I suggest, expansion of that sort is as a practical matter inconsistent with a resolve to keep fair use cabined within traditional boundaries as a special privilege for exceptional cases. Tue, 01 Jan 2008 00:00:00 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/2027.42/64043 Title: Creative Reading<br/><br/>Authors: Litman, Jessica<br/><br/>Abstract: In this short essay, a comment on Rebecca Tushnet’s Payment in Credit: Copyright Law and Subcultural Creativity, 70 Law & Contemporary Problems 133 (2007), I argue that scholars have undervalued the copyright interests of readers, listeners and viewers. Contemporary scholarship ignores the central importance of audience interests in the copyright scheme; it treats the question of whether a use of copyrighted material should be lawful almost entirely by adopting the viewpoint of the copyright owner. Yet a copyright law designed to encourage creativity in the production and dissemination of works of authorship should also encourage creativity in the works’ enjoyment. Copyright experts have focused so much attention on giving copyright owners tools to prevent infringement that we have lost sight of the need to maintain historical copyright liberties that have traditionally given readers, listeners, and viewers the freedom to enjoy works of authorship. Mon, 01 Jan 2007 00:00:00 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/2027.42/64042 Title: The Copyright Revision Act of 2026<br/><br/>Authors: Litman, Jessica<br/><br/>Abstract: In this lecture, the Twelfth Annual Honorable Helen Wilson Nies Memorial Lecture in Intellectual Property Law, I suggest we may be gearing up to persuade Congress to embark on a new round of copyright revision. If history is any guide, we already know what a revised copyright law is likely to look like: it will be longer, broader, more complicated and less flexible than the one we have now. Before committing ourselves to that enterprise, we should take the opportunity to imagine what the copyright system might look like if we were free to write on a blank slate. I urge that we should enact a statute that is much shorter and simpler, that gives creators a larger share of copyright goodies and distributors a smaller one, and that builds in enough freedom so that the law won’t encumber reading, viewing, or listening in counterproductive ways. Fri, 01 May 2009 00:00:00 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/2027.42/56223 Title: Lawful Personal Use<br/><br/>Authors: Litman, Jessica Fri, 01 Jun 2007 00:00:00 GMT