theorywatch

Interesting moment in today’s otherwise routine faculty meeting in which the topic of teaching about copyright in 5033 came up. Realized that I am somewhat uneasy about this, as the issues have become so much more complicated than when I worked with Stuart Sutton on his course at Syracuse years ago. (Though I suspect Stu didn’t think of them as especially simple back then, knowing so much more than I!)

Lawrence Solum has just posted an entry about a paper by Edward Lee on his Legal Theory blog that gets to the heart of why I’m particularly concerned about how best to convey a useful framework for thinking about all this, since (because of what I teach besides 5033), I’m possibly a little more attuned to user-generated content issues and their implications (“warming” rather than “chilling” effects, for instance) than some of my colleagues who may take a more traditional approach to “copyright and the library.” Right now, the issues involving fanfiction seem more significant than those that pertain to Feist, for example.