Course Section | Columbia Law School

Section Description Provided by Instructor

The seminar on Current Issues in Copyright will address the often controversial issues that confront copyright law and policy today, e.g., secondary liability, peer-to-peer file
sharing, technological protection measures, orphan works, liability for "making available" copyrighted works, the scope of fair use, international law issues, and the role of the public domain.

We will meet weekly from 4:20-6:10 on Tuesdays. We will have speakers for most sessions during the term, usually two speakers each week to provide contrasting views of the subject(s) at hand. In many cases we have arranged for the speakers give lunchtime talks to the CLS community. Seminar participants are required to attend the lunchtime talks, which provide a valuable introduction to our seminar discussions later in the day. Because the students in the seminar will be attending several hours of lunchtime talks, the
seminar will actually meet 11 times during the term. Students will write four short papers over the term, corresponding to substantive class sessions of their choice. The papers will be due by noon the day before the seminar meeting to which they relate, and posted to the website for the benefit of other students in the seminar. The papers should reflect the students' analysis and views of the readings assigned.

Grades will be based on the papers and on participation in seminar discussions.

L6341, Copyright law (or, for LLMs, the equivalent in their home countries) is a prerequisite.