Document Type

Article Review

Publication Date

3-25-2015

Language

en-US

Abstract

The law of intermediary liability in intellectual property reflects a constant struggle for balance. On the one hand, rights owners frustrated by the game of whack-a-mole have good reason to look for more efficient ways to stanch the flow of infringement. While this concern is not a new one, the global reach and decentralization of the Internet have exacerbated it. On the flipside, consumers, technology developers, and others fret about the impact of broad liability: it can impede speech, limit competition, and impose a drag on economic sectors with only a peripheral relationship to infringement. As the Supreme Court put it thirty years ago in the seminal Sony case, the law must seek a “balance between a [rights] holder’s legitimate demand for effective – not merely symbolic – protection of the statutory monopoly, and the rights of others freely to engage in substantially unrelated areas of commerce.”

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