This paper is part of an international collaborative project led by Rebecca Giblin & Kimberlee Weatherall. The premise of the project is this: what if we could start with a blank slate, and write ourselves a brand new copyright system? If we could design a law, from scratch, to encourage...

In a 1999 article, I explored the problem that arises when one party -- whom I called the hiring party -- commissions a work from another party -- whom I called the hired party. The hired party is generally found to be the sole author of the work. The question then becomes: If the hired party is...

Through the last few decades, Congress has rendered much of the law of copyright duration a confusing and chaotic patchwork of rules that are often irreconcilable and simply unworkable. One can learn the rules, of course, but the rules often depend on multiple variables and facts that are...

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act has been criticized for granting too much power to copyright holders, offering them new technological controls that may harm the public interest. But, by considering this exclusively as a copyright issue, we overlook how the DMCA anticipates a technological...

I argue that when a natural monopoly exists, the natural monopoly holder - whether an accused monopolist under antitrust law, or a copyright or patent owner under intellectual property law - should be subject only to a liability rule of compulsory licensing, no more and no less. While the...

I show that copyright law is intimately connected to price discrimination. First, price discrimination is common in markets for copyrighted works. Second, many features of copyright law affect resale or personal arbitrage and so influence the profitability of price discrimination. For example,...

The paper discusses the reform of the legal framework in the light of the EU proposal directive on collecting societies. The focus will be specifically devoted to the Italian situation, where, like in Austria, there is a legal monopoly. The basis of this monopoly has been recently discussed and...

This paper examines the application of the essential facilities doctrine (EFD) to copyrighted works. It attempts to address three contemporary issues. First, it offers reasons why copyright has become subject to competition law regulation under the essential facilities doctrine. Second, it makes...