Revising Copyright Law for the Information Age

Abstract

Our current copyright law is based on a model devised for print media, and expanded with some difficulty to embrace a world that includes live, filmed and taped performances, broadcast media, and, most recently, digital media. Our copyright law has been addressed primarily to commercial and institutional actors who participated in copyright-related businesses. Most of the current proposals for interpreting or amending copyright law to apply to digital technology have come from copyright holders or their defenders. The public appears to believe that the copyright law incorporates a distinction between commercial and non-commercial behavior. If the overwhelming majority of actors regulated by the copyright law are ordinary end-users, it makes no sense to insist that each of them retain copyright counsel in order to fit herself within niches created to suit businesses and institutions, nor is it wise to draw the lines where the representatives of today’s current stakeholders insist they would prefer to draw them.

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