Author: Jacqui Lipton

Thinking About Plagiarism

Posted on by Jacqui Lipton

cross posted from The Faculty Lounge …

 

plagiarisI’m probably late to the party in noticing Richard Posner’s book on plagiarism that was originally published in 2007, but it was an interesting read. I do have a bone to pick with calling it a “book” or even a “little book” as it’s not much longer than a law review article and you can read it in an hour or two, but it was a fun hour or two on my part.  Posner doesn’t answer many of the questions he raises about the nature of plagiarism, why it is considered a wrong, when it might not be a wrong, what are the appropriate sanctions etc. However, he raises great issues worth musing about, and it’s a great survey of the different contexts in which we see conduct that may be described as plagiarism – including academia, judicial opinion writing, commercial fiction, historical literature, and art. While he talks about the significance of digital technology both in enabling plagiarism and in identifying instances of plagiarism, he doesn’t come to any meaningful conclusions about whether plagiarism is qualitatively “different” in the digital world. However, he does look at how different economic models of literary production over the years impact on concepts of the wrongfulness of plagiarism over time. So if anyone is interested in thinking about the broad strokes of plagiarsm, the contexts in which it arises and how it differs from copyright infringement and fraud – and sometimes doesn’t differ that much in practice – this is an interesting read.

Apple Loses E-Book Antitrust Litigation

Posted on by Jacqui Lipton

The District Court for the Southern District of New York today handed down its decision in the ongoing Apple e-book antitrust litigation holding that Apple violated antitrust law in its participation in (one might say orchestration of) a scheme to raise retail prices of e-books in 2009-2010 when it launched its iBookstore with the iPad. Story and judgment available here. And for anyone interested in the structure of the e-book industry, the recitation of the facts re how the industry works and how Apple sought to change the original model dominated by Amazon is very instructive and reads not unlike a Greek drama. It’s probably the most detailed account I’ve read explaining the distribution and price determination models within the industry.

AALS Defamation and Privacy Section: Call for Papers

Posted on by Jacqui Lipton

For the 2014 AALS Annual Meeting, New York …

 

The AALS Section on Defamation and Privacy invites papers for its program on “Children’s Privacy Rights Against their Parents” for the Annual Meeting, to be held on January 2-5, 2014 in New York.

 

Topic Description: Electronic surveillance technology and social media have significantly changed childhood in the Twenty-First Century. The digitization and electronic monitoring of children have altered the parent-child relationship and have significant ramifications for children’s privacy. At the same time, privacy scholars’ discussion of children’s privacy has focused mainly on the privacy of children from third parties, such as companies that collect personal information on the Internet. Similarly, family law scholars have paid little attention to children’s privacy, limiting the discussion to medical decision-making, and particularly abortion decisions. Yet, few have explored whether children have a general right to privacy against their parents.

 

The panel will explore areas of tension involving privacy rights of children against their parents. Panelists will address, among other issues, the impact of parental electronic surveillance online and offline, such as GPS monitoring and use of software to monitor online surfing. It will also explore potential parental privacy threatening activities online, such as posting information on children on Facebook or intervening in the creation of a child online persona.

 

This program is co-sponsored by the Section on Juvenile and Family Law and the Section on Children and the Law.

 

Eligibility: Full-time faculty members of AALS member law schools are eligible to submit papers. Pursuant to AALS rules, faculty at fee-paid law schools, foreign faculty, adjunct and visiting faculty (without a full-time position at an AALS member law school), graduate students, fellows, and non-law school faculty are not eligible to submit. Please note that all faculty members presenting at the program are responsible for paying their own annual meeting registration fee and travel expenses.

 

Submission: 1-2 papers will be selected from this call for papers. There is no formal requirement as to the form or length of proposals. Preference will be given to proposals that are substantially complete papers. However, shorter proposals will also be considered. Papers will be selected by the Section’s Program Committee. Please email submissions to Gaia Bernstein at: gaia.bernstein@shu.edu no later than August 15, 2013.

 

 

 

 

 

Digital Publishing and Copyright Infringement

Posted on by Jacqui Lipton 4

I don’t have any deep and meaningful thoughts on this myself, but I’ve been wondering for a while why we don’t hear more about copyright infringement and DMCA infringement in the digital publishing industry.  The music, movie and gaming industries seem to have led the charge in protecting their copyrights in the digital world and being extremely vocal about it in the process. But not so the publishing industry. I’ve heard a couple of different explanations for this none of which I find completely satisfying. One is that publishers have different relationships with their customers than other industries – perhaps less adversarial in some senses, and publishers are thus more concerned than some industries about alienating customers by threatening copyright infringement suits. Another explanation has been that the publishing industry has somehow been better at using technological protection measures to protect its content. Again, I don’t know how much truth there is to that. I did correspond with one self-published author who told me that she sends out DMCA notices all the time to folks who illegally copy her work and that when she works with publishers, they also end up sending a lot of DMCA notices on her behalf. This author also mentioned to me that copyright infringement in the book industry is potentially more damaging to content creators (and distributors) because people tend to only read a book once while they go back to other digital copyrighted works – music, movies, games – multiple times and may ultimately decide it’s easier to just get a legal copy at the end of the day.  I’m not sure that makes sense either. If people download games, music and movies illegally, I can’t imagine that their ongoing enjoyment of that content would lead them to want to make legal purchases down the track unless there are other incentives.

I’d be interested in whether others have thoughts on these issues. I’ve been trying to puzzle them out for a while.