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In May, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit vacated a preliminary injunction barring Google Inc. from displaying thumbnail versions of photographs found on an adult-oriented Web site, reasoning that the Web site owner was unlikely to overcome Google's fair use defense. Perfect 10 Inc. v. Amazon.com Inc., 487 F.3d 701 (9th Cir. 2007).

Jeffrey P. Cunard, of Debevoise & Plimpton, Washington, D.C., > termed secondary liability a “leaping mess,” which he > attributed to an effort on the part of the courts to erode the > Sony-Betamax > prescription for secondary liability, and not have > it apply in a digital era. > In Sony Corp. v. Universal Studios Inc., 464 U.S. 417 (1984), the U.S. Supreme Court held that if a technology is “capable of substantial noninfringing uses,” the manufacturer of that technology cannot be liable for the infringing acts of users.

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios > Inc. v. Grokster Ltd. > , 125 S.Ct. 2764, 33 Med.L.Rptr. 1865 (2005) >

You buy a CD but can't take it to the gym. The Audio Home Recording Act legalized our right to copy music for personal use -- for example, making a tape of a CD to use in a Walkman. But new copyright legislation makes it a crime to extract music from copy-protected CDs. You pay for cable but you aren't allowed to use your VCR. In the Betamax case, the Supreme Court ruled that making a copy of a TV show was a legal, non-infringing use of broadcast content. But new HDTV standards will make it illegal to copy a digital broadcast without the permission of the TV station. You buy a DVD but you can't watch it the way you want to. It seems obvious that users should have the ability to fast-forward and rewind movies as they see fit. But new copyright laws threaten that right: it is a crime to sell a DVD player that would allow a consumer to fast-forward through the ads at the beginning of a DVD! You own an electronic book, but you can't lend it to your son at college. Your right to lend a physical book is protected by the "first sale doctrine." This law states that purchasers of copyrighted works such as music or books have the right to dispose of the works in any way that they wish: they can sell them, loan them, rent them, or give them away. But new copyright laws criminalize all of those activities for digital content such as electronic books.

Enforcement mechanisms such as digital rights management endanger existing consumer rights like fair use, and can be used to further tie creators to the corporate entities that control this technology since even a use which may be legally considered fair use may be hampered or rendered impossible by the technological restrictions. "Trusted computing" platforms may refuse to play, display or execute content that is not properly "certified" by central authorities.

Article 8 of the Berne Convention may have a chilling effect on freedom of speech

without copyright, it would be possible to use DRM without limitations, and fair use and copyleft would be impossible.

access control technologies used by publishers and copyright holders to limit usage of digital media or devices

Advocates argue it is necessary for copyright holders to prevent unauthorized duplication of their work to ensure continued revenue streams.

Some observers claim that certain DRM technologies enable publishers to enforce access policies that not only prevent copyright violations, but also prevent legal fair use.

The term carries a bias that is not hard to see: it suggests thinking about copyright, patents and trademarks by analogy with property rights for physical objects. (This analogy is at odds with the legal philosophies of copyright law, of patent law, and of trademark law, but only specialists know that.) These laws are in fact not much like physical property law, but use of this term leads legislators to change them to be more so. Since that is the change desired by the companies that exercise copyright, patent and trademark powers, the bias of “intellectual property” suits them.

one issue relating to copyright law is whether music sharing should be allowed. Patent law has nothing to do with this. Patent law raises issues such as whether poor countries should be allowed to produce life-saving drugs and sell them cheaply to save lives. Copyright law has nothing to do with such matters.

If you want to think clearly about the issues raised by patents, or copyrights, or trademarks, the first step is to forget the idea of lumping them together, and treat them as separate topics.

some scholars question the legitimacy and philosophical basis of such laws

the particular form or manner in which ideas or information are expressed or manifested, and not in relation to the ideas or concepts themselves

The shift in terminology towards "intellectual property" has coincided with a more general shift away from thinking about things like copyright and patent law as specific legal instruments designed to promote the common good and towards a conception of ideas as inviolable property granted by natural law.[8] The terminological shift coincides with the usage of pejorative terms for copyright infringement such as "piracy" and "theft".

Student presentation and class discussion topics

Within a century, it will be possible to scan a human mind and reproduce it inside a machine. Regardless of whether our minds are just very sophisticated analog computers, or whether they have a quantum-mechanical element (as Roger Penrose proposes), we will nonetheless be able to duplicate them artificially.

Already, at the close of the second millennium, a transhumanist movement has begun; Christopher Dewdney is the principal Canadian spokesperson for it. This movement holds that uploading our consciousness into machines is desirable, since that will free us from biological aging and death. On the other hand (a decidedly biological metaphor), there is more to being human than just the networks of synapses in our brains; clearly, much of what we are is tied in intimately with our bodies. We may find that uploaded humans are not happy — indeed, are incapable of happiness or any emotion.

Just as laws today are moving toward recognizing a woman's right to control her body and any separate sentience that may be contained within it, so too will the laws of the future recognize the right of humans to upload their consciousness and then dispose of the original biological versions of themselves; such eliminations will not be seen as suicides or murders, but rather as a natural, perfectly legal step, eliminating a no-longer-needed biological container and preserving the uniqueness of the individual.