Computers and Robots Can Copy Your Work, and Get Away With It

So Long as Computers Don’t Understand the Copied Content, Copyright Law Will Stay Focused on People

Copyright has a weird relationship with computers. Sometimes it completely freaks out about them; sometimes it pretends it can’t see them at all. The contrast tells us a lot about copyright—and even more about how we relate to new technologies.

Start with the freak-out. One thing that computers are good for is making copies—lots of copies. Drag your music folder from your hard drive to your backup Dropbox and congratulations, you’ve just duplicated thousands of copyrighted songs. If you look up the section of the Copyright Act that sets out what …

By James Grimmelmann | August 30, 2016

Money, the Media, and Mexico

Lawrence Lessig on Remixes and Election Corruption, and Andrew Selee on How the Press Depicts Our Southern Neighbor

Hosted by Anne-Marie Slaughter | October 25, 2013

Harvard Law School’s Lawrence Lessig, author of Republic, Lost: How Money Corrupts Congress—and a Plan to Stop It and Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy, talks …

UCLA School of Law’s Kal Raustiala

Duck Fat Ice Cream Tastes Better Than It Sounds

November 16, 2012

Kal Raustiala is a professor at the UCLA School of Law, director of the UCLA Burkle Center for International Relations, and coauthor of The Knockoff Economy: How Imitation Sparks Innovation. …

Real Startups, Fake Stuff, and Pirated Property

New Books on Silicon Valley, Synthetic Biology, and Digital Copyright Law

October 3, 2012

In The Six-Point Inspection, Zócalo takes a quick look at new books that are changing the way we see our world.

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