I recently compiled a list of the biggest developments in copyright law in 2008, based on a not very systematic survey. I thought it would be worth sharing here, as I know that I often wish for lists like this myself. So here for your perusal is my list, grouped by topic:
I try to make note here of significant scholarly accomplishments by my faculty colleagues, but our students often do great work as scholars, too. Drawing on his expertise in the field of Chinese culture — he has a Ph.D. in Chinese Language and Literature — 3L Charles Stone has written a fascinating law review comment on classical Chinese attitudes towards intellectual property. I see now that he is presenting on Chinese views regarding intellectual property and the rule of law at the University of Chicago School of Business on Thursday. Information on the event is here.
It’s official: the RIAA is throwing in the towel on its litigation campaign against filesharers. Wall Street Journal; CNET News. (One footnote: although the “campaign” is over, apparently individual battles will continue against heavy downloaders or uploaders.) This will not come as a surprise to my Internet law students; we spent the last couple of weeks of class discussing the content industry’s options, and the class was nearly unanimous that the lawsuits were unlikely to be effective. The only dissenters from that view opined that maybe the campaign was succeeding as a sort of public service announcement—use only legitimate sites and don’t upload! But as we noted in class, changing individual behavior from the top down is very difficult to pull off. It’s inefficient, in the sense that you aren’t likely to get much bang for your buck.
And indeed, that seems to be what’s behind the decision to end the lawsuits. The RIAA is a trade organization, funded by the member companies. And the member companies are apparently unhappy with the amount that they’ve been ponying up lately in the form of dues. A related report out today indicates that the record labels will be cutting back on their contributions this year.
So now there are two questions to ponder, one for today and one for a later post: first, how much of a success or failure was the litigation campaign? And second, what next?