Written on the occasion of copyright's 300th anniversary, this book presents an analysis of the history and evolution of copyright law and its profound impact on the lives of ordinary individuals in the 21st century. Organized around the trope of the individual in five different copyright-related contexts—as an infringer, transformer, pure user, creator, and reformer—the book charts the changing contours of the United States copyright regime and assesses its vitality in the digital age. In the process, the book questions some of the most basic assumptions about copyright law by highlighting th ... More

Written on the occasion of copyright's 300th anniversary, this book presents an analysis of the history and evolution of copyright law and its profound impact on the lives of ordinary individuals in the 21st century. Organized around the trope of the individual in five different copyright-related contexts—as an infringer, transformer, pure user, creator, and reformer—the book charts the changing contours of the United States copyright regime and assesses its vitality in the digital age. In the process, the book questions some of the most basic assumptions about copyright law by highlighting the unseemly amount of infringement liability an average person rings up in a single day, the counterintuitive role of the fair use doctrine in radically expanding the copyright monopoly, the important expressive interests at play in even the unauthorized use of copyright works, the surprisingly low level of protection that American copyright law grants many creators, and the broader political import of copyright law on the exertion of social regulation and control. Drawing upon both theory and personal experiences representing clients in various high-profile copyright infringement suits, the book supports its arguments with a rich array of diverse examples crossing various subject matters—from the unusual origins of Nirvana's “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” the question of numeracy among Amazonian hunter-gatherers, the history of stand-offs at papal nunciatures, and the tradition of judicial plagiarism to contemplations on Slash's criminal record, Barbie's retroussé nose, the poisonous tomato, flag burning, music as a form of torture, the smell of rotting film, William Shakespeare as a man of the people, Charles Dickens as a lobbyist, Ashley Wilkes's sexual orientation, Captain Kirk's reincarnation, and Holden Caulfield's maturation.