Week 2

This week, we begin a three-week section on copyright and patent issues, with a discussion of Napster and peer-to-peer technologies on Monday. On Thursday, we'll review some basic background in intellectual property law and take a closer look at a major copyright case, Sony v. Universal City Studios.

All reading assignments should be done before coming to class.

By this point, you should have already registered for the writing rotisserie so you can do this week's writing assignment.

Monday Class at Harvard: Too Much Music (Zittrain)

Napster started a revolution. A couple of guys, a cool idea, and a simple technology awakened the lazy, sleeping giants of the music publishing business and made them very, very afraid. The legal battle was joined, and some of America's most famous lawyers fought it out in court. Some of the richest venture capitalists lost their shirts, and a business deal closed out the story - at least for now.

Our starting point in class will be what Napster's story - and the Peer-to-Peer (P2P) movement in general - means for the law related to the Internet. The notion of file sharing persists, in many formats and many business models. Some of the thorny intellectual property issues raised in the Napster case (and in the Sony case before it) remain unresolved.

We will treat Napster as a case study, and try to predict what will happen next. We will reflect on last week's exploration of pressure points, considering what the various parties with stakes in the future, including consumers, can do to affect the outcome?

Do the following readings:

• A.M. Records et al. v. Napster
• Sony Corporation of America v. Universal City Studios (Required reading: only pp. 1 - 12)
• CNET, Napster Reaches Settlement with Publishers
• CNET, Suit Hits Popular Post-Napster Network (FastTrack)
• Fred von Lohmann, Peer-to-Peer Copyright and File Sharing After Napster 
• Salon.com, Courtney Love does the Math
• Salon.com, Why Can't Johnny Respect Copyrights?
• Chuck D, Rapstation, Digital Affairs

Be prepared for the first writing assignment to be issued in today's class.

Thursday class at MIT: Background in intellectual property law (Abelson, Weitzner)

Slides from class (PDF)

Before class, read the following:

• Read the Supreme Court case Baker v. Selden, 101 U.S. 99 (1879), in which the Court ruled that describing a system of accounting in a textbook did not confer copyright protection on the system itself. This is a major precedent in copyright law concerning the idea/expression doctrine.
• Read the complete ruling in Sony Corporation of America v. Universal City Studios, which you partially read for Monday's class. Be prepared to brief both this case and Baker v. Selden today.
• Read chapters 1, 8, and 11 of Lessig's book The future of ideas.