LawMeme LawMeme Yale Law School  
LawMeme
Search LawMeme [ Advanced Search ]
 
 
 
 
Report on Columbia's Conference, ''The New Gatekeepers''
Posted by Steven Wu on Tuesday, November 26 @ 14:48:08 EST Free Expression
The New York Times has a report on Columbia University's recent conference on free expression and the arts in a high-tech culture, "The New Gatekeepers." Of particular interest is the notion that we have moved from the culture wars of the early 20th century (as epitomized by government bans on books, music, and other media) to the legal wars of the early 21st century (as epitomized by cease-and-desist orders from corporations claiming that artists are violating copyright laws). Now the corporations, and not the government, are the censors. (Recall the Brief for Petitioners [PDF] filed in Eldred v. Ashcroft, which argued in part that the 1998 Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act violated the First Amendment's free-speech guarantees.)

The NYTimes article, with plenty of other details from the conference, is here.

 
Login
Nickname

Password

Don't have an account yet? You can create one. As registered user you have some advantages like theme manager, comments configuration and post comments with your name.
Related Links
· More about Free Expression
· News by Steven Wu


Most read story about Free Expression:
The Future of Virtual Kiddie Pr0n and Other Notes on Ashcroft v. Free Speech

Article Rating
Average Score: 0
Votes: 0

Please take a second and vote for this article:

Bad
Regular
Good
Very Good
Excellent


Options

Printer Friendly Page  Printer Friendly Page

Send to a Friend  Send to a Friend
"User's Login" | Login/Create an Account | 1 comment
Threshold
  
The comments are owned by the poster. We aren't responsible for their content.
Re: Report on Columbia's Conference, ''The New Gatekeepers'' (Score: 0)
by Anonymous (Name Withheld on Advice of Counsel) on Tuesday, November 26 @ 15:56:36 EST
While the First Amendment argument in Eldred derives in part from the (corporate) speech that copyright term extension will produce and the (alternative) speech it will suppress, it remains rooted in the claim that Congress itself had abrogated its first amendment duty. In particular, the petitioners asserted that the government failed in its duty to demonstrate an "important government interest" in extending the copyright term. At some level, then, in this instance the government remains the gatekeeper.


[ Reply to This ]


Leges humanae nascuntur, vivunt, moriuntur
Human laws are born, live, and die


All stories, comments and submissions copyright their respective posters.
Everything Else Copyright (c) 2002 by the Information Society Project.
This material may be distributed only subject to the terms and conditions set forth in the Open Publication License, v1.0 or later (the latest version is presently available at http://www.opencontent.org/openpub/).

You can syndicate our news using the file backend.php