Monday, April 10, 2006

Litman on personal use

The Chicago Intellectual Property Colloquium, jointly sponsored by Loyola University Chicago and the Chicago-Kent School of Law of the Illinois Institute of Technology, had Jessica Litman in on 3/28/06 to talk about her early draft paper on personal use. I'm not sure how many other non-students/non-faculty were in the smallish group that day but it was a very interesting paper and I'm looking forward to the final version. What particularly resonated with me is the idea that the rhetoric could use some tuning up, and that there should be some push back against the notion that silence (or lack of specificity) in the copyright law = prohibited uses. She pointed out in her talk that the content community has used this tactic very effectively in pushing for what they claim are minor changes, which are actually quite revolutionary, such as the DMCA, and in gaining traction for ideas like the broadcast flag.

I'm adding this one to my personal talking points about copyright, which I've been building mentally. [A not-new talking point: DRM = bad news for everyone, even the large corporations that think they need it.]

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