Assignment #4

I. Continuing Our Review of Basic Web, E-Mail, List Issues

I want to pick up with the agenda for this past week's CUSEEME class where we ran out of time and move the discussion to the Webboard. In addition, I want to discuss the infringement by linking suit described in my recent post and this news story.

II. Opening Up Some Perplexing Technical Questions Raised by the Net

Copyright law though in theory a uniform national regime may also, in effect, vary from circuit to circuit on important points, especially during periods of change, because there is no single point of appellate review short of the Supreme Court. For example, on the issue of whether a copy to RAM constitutes an infringing copy, far from all circuits have spoken. The Supreme Court's interventions in Copyright law, while significant, have been infrequent.

All of this puts additional weight on the procedural doctrines that determine where suits for infringement can or must be brought. With the Internet especially the question of "where" is particularly perplexing.

Add the possibility that the effective source of the arguably infringing material can with the Net just as easily be a computer located outside the U.S. and the stakes get higher still. (The suit noted in I above is being brought against U.S. sites and not against the site in Sweden actually holding the photos.)

The fresh legal issues we'll explore this week are the extraterritorial reach of U.S. Copyright law and the related issues of jurisdiction and venue.

The key statutory provisions are: 17 U.S.C. § 501 and 28 U.S.C. §§ 1338, 1400, 1404

II. Readings

• Playboy Enterprises, Inc. v. Chuckleberry Publishing, Inc., 939 F. Supp. 1032 (S.D.N.Y. 1996) LEXIS | WESTLAW
• COMPUSERVE, Inc. v. Patterson, 89 F.3d 1257 (6th Cir. 1996) LEXIS | WESTLAW
• Bensusan Restaurant Corp. v. King, 126 F.3d 25 (2d Cir. 1997) LEXIS | WESTLAW
• Digital Equipment Corp. v. Altavista Technology, Inc., 960 F. Supp. 456 (D. Mass. 1997) LEXIS | WESTLAW
• American Network, Inc. v. Access America, 975 F. Supp. 494 (S.D.N.Y. August 13, 1997) LEXIS | WESTLAW
• Electronic Realty Associates v. Paramount Pictures Corp., 935 F. Supp. 1172 (D. Kan. 1996) LEXIS | WESTLAW

III. How We'll Proceed

I'll begin discussion on the jurisdiction and venue issues in the Webboard conference on Thurs., Sept. 24. Discussion about the linking infringement case and related issues can I'll start at once.