Copyright Reading Group

The Libraries host a monthly reading group for copyright fans in the library, on campus, and with affiliated organizations.  We meet the first Monday of every month, in Room 1638 of the Du Bois Library.  Permalink: http://library.umass.edu/copyright-reading-group

Upcoming Meetings : Summer of Music!

  • JULY 18, MONDAY (rescheduled from 7/5 Tue), noon – Pre-1972 sound recordings! They’re not copyrighted. Why not? And what does the new case ABS v. CBS, recognizing a new copyright in a “re-mastered” recording, tell us about reproductions of public domain works in Bridgeman v. Corel
  • June 6, Monday, noon – “Music Sampling: De Minimis, Fair Use, and Industry Practice.”  We’ll discuss the 2005 Bridgeport v. Dimension Films case and the 2016 VMG Salsoul v. Madonna case.

  • May 2, Monday, noon, Room 1320 – “Stairway to Copyright Infringement: Led Zeppelin, Spirit, and the Confounding Question of Chord Progression Copyrightability”. We’ll discuss the allegations made about Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven”.

 

Previous Meetings:

Transformative Fair Use (May 2013)

  • Suntrust Bank v. Houghton Mifflin, aka the Wind Done Gone case : Transformative Fair Use 1 (Case available at findlaw.com) – Monday 5/13 1pm, Room 2601
  • Bill Graham Archives v. Dorling Kindersley : Transformative Fair Use 2 – Friday 5/24, Room 1949 (Case available at FairUse.Stanford.edu)

Copyrightability and Non-Copyrightability (Fall 2013)

  • Feist v. Rural, 499 US 340 (1991) : Copyrightability of Factual Information – Monday Nov. 4, 2013, Room 1949. (Case linked at Cornell.edu)
  • Harney v. Sony (1st Cir. 2013): Copyrightability of Factual Information in Documentary Photographs – Monday, Dec. 2, 2013, Room 1949 (Case at findlaw)

Transformative Fair Use (Jan.-April 2014)

  • SOFA v. Dodger (9th Cir. 2013): Fair Use of video in a musical theater production – Monday, January 13, 2014. (Case available at 9th Circuit website.)
  • Internet Search Engines : Perfect 10 v. Amazon, 508 F.3d 1146 (9th Cir. 2007).  – Friday, February 14, 2014 (orig. sched. for Feb. 3) Room 1949. (Case available at Google Scholar.)

Copyright Term and Extension (May 2014)

First Sale Summer! (Summer 2014)

  • Kirtsaeng v. Wiley, 568 US ___ (2013) – June 9 (orig. June 2), 2014, (Monday) noon, Room 1949
  • Kirtsaeng v. Wiley, 568 US ___ (2013), continued – July 14, 2014, noon, Room 1949
  • Capitol Records v. ReDigi (SDNY March 30, 2013) (PDF at USC.) – August 4, 2014, noon, Room 1949

Licensing Copyrighted Works (Fall 2014)

  • Sept. 8, 2014, noon, Room 1949 – ProCD v. Zeidenberg, 86 F.3d 1447 (7th Cir. 1996). (Case linked at Cornell.edu.)
  • Oct. 6, 2014, noon, Room 1949 – UMG Recordings v. Augusto, 628 F.3d 1175 (9th Cir. 2011) (Case linked at findlaw.com), and for background, Bobbs-Merrill v. Straus, 210 U.S. 339 (1908) (Case linked at findlaw.com)
  • Nov. 17, 2014, noon, Room 1949 – Cambridge University Press v. Patton (aka Georgia State University ereserves case) – a Minor detour from licensing back to fair use, but we’ll pay careful attention to the effects of licensing availability on the fair use determination.  (PDF of opinion; link to my notes.)  Note — the whole thing is interesting, but the key pieces we will discuss are pp.46-112, the majority’s fair use analysis. That’s 66 pages, but they’re double-spaced, so think of it more like 33 pages.  Not so bad!
    • pp. 1-43 Procedural history & facts
    • pp. 44-45 Standards of review
    • p. 45 – Eleventh Amendment argument (not addressed)
    • pp. 46-112 – Copyright Clause & fair use 
    • pp. 113-129 – J. Vinson’s “concurrence”

2015 – 2016

  • NOON, July 20, Monday, Room 1949 – Du Bois Library — Bridgeman Art Library v. Corel Corp.,  36 F. Supp. 2d 191 (S.D.N.Y. 1999) — Sure, you’ve HEARD that copies of public domain artworks aren’t copyrightable themselves, but have you ever read the case?   (See Wikipedia for more info; see Cornell LII for full-text HTML copy.)  It won’t take long, you can wax nostalgic for old technologies, and then come chat with us on Monday, July 20.  We will be following this with Copyright Grand Rounds — so bring any copyright-related news, questions, or weird encounters for discussion.
  • NOON, June 1, Monday, Room 1949 Du Bois Library — Campbell v. Acuff-Rose, 510 U.S. 569 (1994).  Fair use, commercial users in 1st & 4th factors. 2 Live Crew’s rap “parody” of Roy Orbison’s “Pretty Woman”.  (Case available at: US Supreme Court official bound volume and Cornell.edu.) Optionally may be followed by Copyright “Grand Rounds” — so bring your questions and problems.
  • October 5, Monday, NOON – 19th floor, Du Bois Library. – Lenz v. Universal (9th Circuit Sept. 14, 2015). This is the fair use case about the YouTube video of the baby dancing to Prince on YouTube. Do rightsholders have to consider fair use before sending takedown notices? (Related: Is fair use a “right” or merely a “defense”?)
  • November 2, Monday, NOON – Authors Guild v. Google (2d Cir. Oct. 16, 2015).  The Second Circuit states definitively that full-text indexing of books is a fair use, with major implications for data mining, the digital humanities, and use of the factual content in works.
  • December 7, Monday, NOON – Drauglis v. Kappa Map (D.D.C. Aug. 18, 2015). A case on the validity of a Creative Commons license. Can a commercial publisher use a CC BY-SA licensed photograph on a cover of a publication that it sells?  (We’ll talk about licensing, and about derivative works.)

  • FEBRUARY 1, 2016, MONDAY —  For our meeting MONDAY February 1, noon we will focus on open access — specifically the legal mechanism of the nonexclusive license.  It follows on the Creative Commons and licensing discussion we had last year, and there are a couple of short-ish papers you could read in advance of the meeting.  Here are the readings:

    • 17 USC 101 definition of “transfer”
    • 17 USC 205(e) Priority between conflicting transfer of ownership & nonexclusive license
    • Eric Priest 2012,  “Copyright and the Harvard Open Access Mandate”, Northwestern Journal of Technology and Intellectual Property, Vol. 10, p. 377, 2012, available at SSRN athttp://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1890467
    • Frankel & Nestor (Covington & Burling), “Opening the Door: How Faculty Authors Can Implement an Open Access Policy at Their Institutions”, SPARC / MIT white paper, CC BY 3.0, available at  http://sciencecommons.org/wp-content/uploads/Opening-the-Door.pdf 

List of Cases Read

Supreme Court Cases

Lower Court Cases

  • Authors Guild v. Google (2d Cir. July 1, 2013) – March 2014
  • Authors Guild v. HathiTrust (2d Cir. June 14, 2014) – March 2014
  • Bill Graham Archives v. Dorling Kindersley, 448 F.3d 605 (2d Cir. 2006) – May 2013
  • Bridgeman Art Library v. Corel Corp.,  36 F. Supp. 2d 191 (S.D.N.Y. 1999)
  • Cambridge University Press v. Patton (11th Cir. 2014) – Nov. 2014
  • Capitol Records v. ReDigi (SDNY March 30, 2013) – August 4 2014
  • Cariou v. Prince (2d Cir 2013) – April 2014
  • Harney v. Sony (1st Cir. 2013) – Dec. 2013
  • Lenz v. Universal (9th Cir. 2015) – Oct. 2015
  • Morris v. Young (C.D. Cal 2012) – April 2014
  • Perfect 10 v. Amazon, 508 F.3d 1146 (9th Cir. 2007)  –  Feb. 2014
  • ProCD v. Zeidenberg, 86 F.3d 1447 (7th Cir. 1996) – Sept. 2014
  • SOFA v. Dodger (9th Cir. 2013) – Jan. 2014
  • Suntrust Bank v. Houghton Mifflin (11th Cir. Oct. 10 2001) – May 13, 2013
  • UMG Recordings v. Augusto, 628 F.3d 1175 (9th Cir. 2011) – Oct. 2014