Prof. Jane C. Ginsburg, Columbia University School of Law October 31, 2014 In Cambridge University Press v. Becker,1 three academic publishers sued Georgia State University for systematically infringing their copyrights by implementing a policy that permitted faculty members to make excerpts from the plaintiffs’ works as electronic course reserves through the university library’s website.  The [...]

Prof. Jane C. Ginsburg, Columbia University School of Law August 21, 2014 In ABC v. Aereo, a 6-to-3 majority (Breyer, joined by Roberts, Kennedy, Ginsburg, Sotomayor, and Kagan) held that Aereo was “performing” the broadcast programming when the service captured the programming through the users’ individually assigned antennas, then digitized, momentarily stored in individualized copies, [...]

Prof. Jane C. Ginsburg, Columbia University School of Law May 12, 2014 [Note: The following is drawn from an article forthcoming in the Berkeley Technology Law Journal, in a symposium issue devoted to “The Next Great Copyright Act.”] The Supreme Court in Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios, 464 U.S. 417 (1984), fended [...]

Prof. Jane C. Ginsburg*, Columbia University School of Law March 17, 2014 On February 13 of this year, the Court of Justice of the European Union rendered its decision in Nils Svensson, Sten Sjögren, Madelaine Sahlman, Pia Gadd v. Retreiver Sverige AB (Case C-466/12).  The case concerned a news-clipping service, Retriever Sverige AB, which linked [...]

Prof. Jane C. Ginsburg, Columbia University School of Law* February 18, 2014 This column will address the Aereo1 controversy currently pending before the Supreme Court from an international perspective, in light of the EU Commission’s condemnation of an Italian law authorizing “remote DVR” services, and the Court of Justice for the European Union’s rejection of [...]

Prof. Jane C. Ginsburg, Columbia University School of Law December 30, 2013 In a prior column, “Take Down/Stay Down: RIP in France?”, I commented on a July 2012 decision of the French Supreme Court rejecting the “takedown/stay down” remedy that some lower courts had imposed on service providers hosting infringing “user-generated” content.  The plaintiffs had [...]

Prof. Jane C. Ginsburg, Columbia University School of Law October 16, 2013 Review of Robert Levine, Free Ride: How Digital Parasites Are Destroying the Culture Business, and How the Culture Business Can Fight Back (Doubleday 2011) [Author’s note: Although Free Ride was published two years ago, the more recent Spanish edition, and a request to [...]

Prof. Jane C. Ginsburg, Columbia University School of Law August 13, 2013 It’s the summer opera festival season, and I’m writing this column from the Glimmerglass Festival (the other major attraction of Cooperstown, N.Y.), so I thought a contribution on opera and copyright would be fun and topical.  It turns out that operas set the [...]

Prof. Jane C. Ginsburg, Columbia University School of Law June 18, 2013 In an earlier column, I addressed a recent ruling of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) bearing on the place of “making available” protected content over the Internet.  The CJEU determined that, for purposes of personal jurisdiction over a foreign [...]

Prof. Jane C. Ginsburg, Columbia University School of Law April 23, 2013 In 2008, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit decided Cartoon Network LP, LLLP v. CSC Holdings, Inc., 536 F.3d 121 (2d Cir. 2008), a case involving a “remote DVR” service that enabled Cablevision’s customers to designate programs to store in [...]