To: CLS Participants (Web only; e-mail alert)
From: Nicholas Johnson
Re: CLS/Reading Assignments for February 23, 2000
Note: February 23 we will be continuing our examination of the impact of the Internet on copyright law that we began February 16. Review last week's assignment for any copyright material you have not yet mastered, since we will be building on it. (a) There will be a brief, short answer quiz at the beginning of the hour over this material. (b) I refer to "pages" to give you some sense of how long these reading assignments are. But because printing differs from one computer to another the assigned sections of documents are identified by their intra-document headings.
Copyright: The Law.
1. We will be referring once again to Professor Stacey L. Dogan's contributions to Learning Cyberlaw in Cyberspace: Copyright in Cyberspace. Last week we concentrated on his Sections 1 and 2. This evening we will finish up with his Sections Three and Four (we will skip Section Five).
2. Recall the reference to the U.S. Copyright Office Web page and its reference to the Copyright Act sections Chapter 1 of the Act, and the Cornell Law link to the Legal Information Institute Copyright Chapter 1.
Copyright: "Exclusive Rights: The Right to Make Copies"
3. Review Sec. 106 from one of those sources or the first page of Dogan's Section Three.
4. Read Dogan's Section Three, Part A, with his (included) MAI Systems Corp. v. Peak Computer, Inc. (6 pages).
Copyright: "Exclusive Rights: The Right to Make Copies: ISP Liability for Copying Initiated by Subscribers"
5. Read Dogan's Section Three, Part B, with his (included) Religious Technology Ctr. v. Netcom On-Line Communication Services, Inc. and his "Comments, notes and questions" (on my printout pp. 7-21). (Note that we return to additional material from this case later in the evening.)
6. Skip Dogan's Part C ("The Exclusive Right to Prepare Derivative Works"), although you are, of course, not forbidden to read it and may want to do so if your a games freak.
Copyright: "Exclusive Rights: The Right to Make Copies: Browsing, Linking, and Framing as Copyright Infringement"
7. Read his Part D ("Browsing, Linking, and Framing as Copyright Infringement") with his (included) brief references back to MAI v. Peak and RTC v. Netcom and edited version of Futuredontics, Inc. v. Applied Anagramics, Inc. with "Comments, notes and questions" (on my printout pp. 25-29).
Copyright: "Exclusive Rights: The Right to Make Copies: Fair Use"
8. Read Professor Dogan's Section Four -- only 5 pages in its entirety. It contains a copy of Sec. 107 (which review/read), and the reference back to RTC v. Netcom (included) mentioned above.
9. Click on "site" in his "Real-World Hypothetical" (on
the last page of Section Four), and also go to my main Web page, and "What's
New," and click on the Suzanne Choney article/link. Reflect on, and be
prepared to discuss: Has Free Republic violated the copyright of the Los
Angeles Times. Have I violated the copyright of the San Diego Union?
Copyright: Its Future on the Internet8. Read John Perry Barlow, "The Economy of Ideas," Wired 2.03, March 1994. (This is the Pinedale, Wyoming, cattle rancher who wrote lyrics for the Grateful Dead and helped found the eff (electronic frontier foundation) with Lotus developer Mitch Kapor. A mind stretching piece with which we begin our consideration of the role of copyright as cyberspace law. 16 pages.)
9. If you have time (it won't be part of the quiz, but will be discussed and part of the quiz next week if we don't get to it February 16 -- so you won't be wasting your time to read it now) read Eric Schlachter, "The Intellectual Property Renaissance in Cyberspace: Why Copyright Law Could be Unimportant on the Internet," 12 Berkeley Tech. L. J. 15. The text and endnotes are at two different locations. The link I've provided takes you to a page where you can click on text.html and note.html to get you to both. (18 pages text; 10 pages notes.)