MIT 6.912 Lec 1: Intro to Copyright Law & Legal Research

[00:00:00]okay and open course was taping this class if you don't want to be on camera you have a right not to be on camera we'll get to why you do later okay in about two slides and just you should let Tom know that's Tom and Alicia from OpenCourseWare okay so in this class we can talking about copyright and about the law because sometimes people talk about copyright in isolation especially people who are really just interested in copyright and in my opinion that's a mistake because copyright is not really special Congress passes lots of laws that they're like about corn subsidies or international trade or guns or you know all sorts of things and copyright is really not special so to understand copyright you would have to understand the law or at least the basics of the law so today we're going to talk a bit about copyright and then we're going to talk about American law in general and some of you that might be kind of boring but I I think it's thrilling okay so part one is about copyright who can tell me what this is from it should it be black who can tell me what that's from the Constitution of what the United States now is this what they wrote down when they created the United States no what when did they write this like what year yeah 1789 so they'd already tried a little bit with the United States and it didn't work out they had this other Constitution what was that called the Articles of Confederation and then what did they do in 1789 did they like amend the Articles of Confederation to change them because it wasn't working they did have a convention and they decided on this new constitution and then what how did what did they do to the Articles of Confederation they did what room out was that like a legal thing to do was that okay No so they shouldn't they had a sort of Revolution in 1789 a bloodless revolution and they're like we don't like that old higher law we're just gonna adopt a new higher law did that happen today highly unlikely in the u.s. why but I mean they had won in Ukraine right just recently they had a bloodless revolution so it seems like the more that the rule of law gets established the more difficult it is to just be like let's try something different so anyway so in 1789 they're like we're gonna have a new covenant for governing this nation and this is going to be part of it so what is this what part of the Constitution is this from okay what's article 1 about the Congress very good okay and and and you can sit up there if you want has ever we gotten a little sheet ok can you sign the seat and then pass it back okay so we have a Congress can the Congress what's the Congress of Massachusetts what's that called the state legislature and ours is called the General Court of Massachusetts and are there like limits on its power yeah yeah so we have a Massachusetts Constitution right it's older than the US Constitution and it basically says this the general Court can can do whatever it wants subject to certain limitations so if they want to stop you from you know crossing the street on Mondays they can do that is the US Congress the same kind of thing can the US Congress legislate however wants to subject to certain limitations no what why not is Trisha Katrina yeah there's committees and subcommittees and stuff so that does that's sort of a bureaucratic impediment to them doing whatever they want but is there a more structural impediment can-can the US Congress stop you from crossing the street on Mondays does anybody know it cannot price [Music] I don't think that's true I don't think there's a is there a personal rights Clause of the US Constitution is there an amendment that protects your ability to cross the street on Mondays yeah so when the state set up this bloodless revolution in in 1789 they were very concerned about centralized power they had not too long ago been under a king who was horrible to them and they wrote the Declaration of Independence they were very concerned about centralized power and the states were very proud there were states like what's a real proud state let's try again Virginia was a very proud state Massachusetts was a very proud state New York they're probably all proud and and they did not want to just cede arbitrary Authority to the central national government so they didn't do that they established a federal government of enumerated powers that's very important that the federal government can only do what's set out in the Constitution Congress can only do what's listed in article 1 so they have what's an examples of the article 1 powers of Congress to declare war yeah when's the last time they did that World War two yeah what's another enumerated power of Congress the levy taxes yep post offices okay they've got a few enumerated powers but there's there's a lot of that they can only do what fits under than those are numerated powers can congress stop you from growing pot in your backyard and then smoking it okay that was a trick question the answer is yes and that's very controversial that's part of what people argue about on the Supreme Court there's a one of the things Congress can do is regulate commerce among the states that's called the interstate commerce clause and under that purportedly under that power Congress is regulated marijuana and and other you know drugs and so they say you can't grow marijuana in your backyard even if all you do is smoke it even if you don't give it to anybody you certainly don't give it to any within another state Congress has said no marijuana and some of the states disagree you know California wants people to be able to smoke marijuana for medicinal purposes and there's other places too and they went to the Supreme Court and they said look federal government you know California is over here at the federal government's over here they said you have no business regulating people's marijuana in their backyards that's our state we regulate it and we never see to that authority at the federal government and just because you have the power to regulate commerce between the states among the states that you can't stop me from growing pot in my backyard and what did the Supreme Court say like last year it said yeah right Kalyn it said no the federal government does have that power that's within the interstate commerce power because if people were allowed to grow pot in their backyards that would touch on Interstate Commerce it would affect it eventually so the meanings of these clauses not always obvious and there's people you know primarily more conservative people who think that that the the powers of the federal government have gotten way out of hand and things like the Department of Education which gives money to schools and and regulating marijuana that these things are just not within the enumerated powers of Congress so these are active debates so here's one of the enumerated powers of Congress and this is called some people call it the intellectual property clause but does somebody want to read it I'll read it the Congress shall have power to promote the progress of science and useful arts by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries so if there were no Clause like this could Congress set up copyrights possibly that's true it's true we don't really know could Congress set up a law that says if you invent something new you can charge people for it forever for a limited time so it has limited times does any other country now the u.s. is not the only country with copyright law right does any other country have a constitutional limited times provision no no some countries give perpetual rights like in France they have something called moral rights and those lasts forever that somebody wanted to write people know the Hunchback of Notre Dame there was a Disney movie and so somebody wanted to write a sequel to that book by Victor Hugo and they're like The Hunchback - revenge of the Hunchback and this is hundreds of years later and Victor Hugo's heirs sued under the moral rights provision they said no this impugns our moral rights so not in fact I think no other country has a limited-time provision in its constitution were the only one and that's again because the founders were very concerned about granting monopolies Thomas Jefferson wrote who was Thomas Jefferson was maybe one of the most anti-copyright of the founders and he wrote about how you know an idea is ephemeral you know I can take an idea and it doesn't take it away from you so you know we don't need we don't need these strict controls and there were other founders who had had different views we thought we need much more strict regulation but I'd like to strictly regulate this anyway but we're the only country with a limited time provision have there been any lawsuits recently about the limited times provision that anybody knows about yeah yeah so what was in that what happened there Eldred was I believe what did Congress do so come Congress extended the length of the Copyright Act or the length of copyrights okay so when we say lookit I'm sorry when we say limited times how long is it these days how limited is it if you write something today how long does it stay copyrighted yes so you die and then it stays in copyright for what you say 70 years for individuals it was it always this way no a shorter before so it used to be just 50 years after you died and in 1998 Congress went and they retro actively extended the length of copyright there are things that were written in the 20s that we're about to no longer be copyrighted because it has to be for limited times and Congress says we're gonna go back and we're gonna retro actively extend the life of those copyrights so the heirs of what's the book was written in the 20s the great gatsby the heirs of F scott Fitzgerald probably like what probably like MC Fitzgerald some some air you know they're still getting royalties from the publication of the great gatsby and that you know the grandchild probably wants the copyright to continue so those dudes went to Congress and they said we think that F scott Fitzgerald own a copyright term extension Act in 1998 and it retroactively the extended the terms of those copyrights and what did mr. Eldredge say you said that was unconstitutional yeah why because I'm not sure what yeah the supreme coat wasn't really sure either but I mean mostly because it says Congress has to do it for limited times and they if they can keep going back and retroactively extending it Eldred argued it's not limited because it can go forever and furthermore what was the other thing it said up there yeah I know I need it but Congress shall have the power to what sorry for the to the pop quiz here but Congress will have the power to promote science and useful arts right and and how does extending a cabaret promote science and useful arts it doesn't well okay okay well let's let's get back to this later but let's I just want to emphasize that there's you know that the provisions of the Constitution are important in America and people can argue about just a few words like what is it what does interstate commerce mean what does limited times really mean and we'll come back to that later but there's some other countries where the Constitution the literal text of the Constitution is not as important like has anybody here from from the Soviet Union so in that have you read the Soviet Constitution it's a it's a majestic document and it says things like all you know all the Soviet Union will have a right to free speech and the ability to criticize the government and the ability to practice any religion that they want you know that was in the Soviet Constitution but was that reality in the USSR I mean if the if you wanted to be baptised in the USSR and the authorities came to you and said you know yet could you sue the government for the right to be baptized so so I mean we have you know we have sort of a it's it's not the universal practice that when a constitution has has appeals to high truths like promote the progress of science and the useful arts that that necessarily individual citizens can can claim the the protections of those words and even in our Constitution that's not always the case and Eldred went to the went to the Supreme Court and he says look it doesn't promote the progress of science and useful arts to give f scott fitzgerald's grandchildren more money because the book has already been written and the Supreme Court said well Congress isn't you know it's not for us to decide if Congress is promoting the progress of science and useful arts so anyway the point here is that the provisions of the Constitution matter but you know you really have to it's really not obvious just from looking at them what they really mean this document is like 230 years old people argue about it there's all sorts of things written about it so it's not you can't just pontificate about it and expect to have the Supreme Court agree with you okay so what all these have in common it's all intellectual property has everybody heard of every one of these things not the last three okay but when people talk about intellectual property this is intellectual property what's what's normal property like your house let's see what normal property is has anybody taken like economics like 1401 what's what's property the full rates to use like you can use this classroom is this classroom your property but or like the fundamental theorem of calculus like you can use that but it's not your property anything you can sell that's closer something that can be involved in the transaction I mean you can have a divorce right and and grant custody to one of children to one parent or another but the children are not really property are they and horizons benefit from oh that's good use deny the use where'd you get that from in France see my French I learned like who said that yeah he was French - okay so property is one theft or - these things that's the French views who agrees with number one not even the Russia guy I guess okay yeah I mean I like used an item [Music] you can use it in the night somebody else take back okay here's Black's Law Dictionary it says property that which is peculiar or proper to any person that which belongs exclusively to one in the strict legal sense an aggregate of Rights which are guaranteed and protected by the government so Black's legal dictionary Black's Law Dictionary says property property has to do with what the government will protect so I but mr. black doesn't really seem to agree with pudong so we're more going to talk about this notion of property in class so do people agree with that that property is the set of Rights that the government will protect yeah because on one hand it would be granted that he could be protected on the other well he could listen this right because it could be the agent interview it was great that property rights should not be predicted by this government because it's a natural part it's a natural right so are they in today in France protected by the government I'm gonna fight trespass on your land the government will come and arrest me right even in France okay so but we also talked about how property rights are limited like you talked about taxes what about if I owned if I owned a house in Boston can an airplane fly over my land do they have the right to pay to do I have the right to demand payment from them can I let's say a burglar goes on my land can I threaten to shoot them if they don't leave even if they don't leave can I shoot them in the south let's let's let's yeah let's say the answer is yes I have the right to exclude a burglar from my property but an airplane flying over a head can I exclude the airplane for my property yeah well sure it does if somebody wants to string a telephone wire above my property or an electrical wire a limited height where where would you find a limited height like in your in your deed like if you own real property you know you go to the county register and you want to buy a house you you get a deed and it says we give you this parcel of land it's not yours and it's recorded doesn't have a height limit [Music] in there I don't know yeah so so what notion here is that even if you own property and it's as good as gold like your house that profit that that ownership is subject to limitations it can be taxed by the government they can come and say we've decided your house is worth a million dollars so we're gonna tax you ten thousand dollars a year and if you don't pay your property taxes you're out so it's limited in that sense by taxation if you Brad what's your name it's Shirley brought up it's limited in that you can't stop an airplane from flying over now when airplanes first started the property owner said look if you want to fly over the route that's above my house we need compensation so here's another example let's say the government's building a new highway and it wants to go through my land can they just build the highway through my land they can use eminent domain so that's another way in which my property right is limited the government can take my land can they just take it and be like like the Empire will compensate you for your time so what is eminent domain they can take your property for public use and do they just have do they have to do anything to come to you yeah they have to compensate you but this is another sense unless your property is limited and they and the air rights when airplanes first started the property owners went to the courts and they said look if they want to build an air highway above my house that's just like building a highway or a telephone line or an electrical line I need at the minimum compensation and oh and the courts I think even the Supreme Court said no we don't think that's part of your property right but that was a case of you know the Supreme Court had never seen that before so sometimes it's not even obvious what your property right is there isn't but this definition here is a it's a pretty main line definition but people get very passionate about that's my property so you can't do anything I mean property is limited all the time and let's just briefly it's okay so these are these are the kinds of property that we could call intellectual property what distinguishes this from sort of normal property it's not physical okay can you can you take somebody's you know right of publicity so they don't let's can you take somebody's copyright so that they don't have there if I copy your book is it to take the book away from you is there any limit on the number of copies of the book and if you have some sheep and I take your sheep that means you don't have them anymore but if I copy your book do you still have the book that's true ok so how do we send we head this book so how do we classify these how do we how do we talk about the different kinds of property rights so anybody taken economics what about like national defense you have a you know you the government protects you whether you want them to or not what kind of you know what kind of good is that what a public good you get to the page here okay and why is it a public good there's this classification of goods what's something like a sheep that you own how would we classify that it's private okay and [Applause] why is it private I can't hear you you're the only one that benefits from it and what else people heard of rivalry no is there a rivalry for the let's say we have a cow and it produces a certain amount of milk per day is there a you know it produces a gallon of milk per day or how much milk does a cow produce how much 40 gallons a day okay so if I saw somebody 20 gallons can I sell somebody else 30 gallons no no there's a limit so there's what's called a rivalry to the resource because there's a if somebody wants 30 gallons then the only amount somebody else could have is 10 gallons and what else about a cow is there any way for me to stop you from milking my cow yeah is it is it possible yeah you can fence it off you can hire farmhands so I can enforce my right to the milk from the cow so the cow has exclusivity so rivalry means there is contention between different people who want the good exclusivity means it's possible to enforce exclusivity it's not a good definition at all there's exclusion I can exclude people from using it try that okay what's the right that has a good that has exclusion but but and rivalry this one right like the cow what's the one that has no rivalry but it does have exclusion crossing a bridge that's good so like a toll so they can stop you from crossing the bridge if you don't pay the toll but there's really not no contention for the bridge at least not you know it's a it's a pretty far off contention or like cable TV like they can stop you from getting HBO but there's no limit on the number of people they can give HBO to so these things are called private Goods so it no or sorry yes and no okay so here's an example of something that's with the exclusion but not rivalry is like it's called a public good like cable TV what's something that has no exclusion but it does have rivalry yeah like a river or a highway something where it can get congested like a free highway there you know with note if they don't have a toll booth they can't stop you from accessing the highway but if too many people access the highway we've got problems so that's called a common access resource and what's this last category where there's no rivalry and there's no exclusion well how about what clean air is a good one if the air is clean you know I can read the clean air you can read the clean air and there's no way to exclude you know if we if we if the government is paying to clean up the air whether I pay those taxes or not I still benefit from it there's if people read Atlas Shrugged is anybody here a an Objectivist so I ran was this author and she wrote this book Atlas Shrugged about a very sort of free-market view of how the world should work and only people who want the services of the police should have to pay for the police protection and the same for ambulances and fire departments and and national defense but in practice it would be tricky to have an an army that only protected the people who were paying for its services right like if an army protects Cambridge Massachusetts it can't only protect the people who are paying for the army right either it's going to ward off the attackers or it isn't so a sort of national defense is another one yeah [Music] let's say either I mean cuz the you know if the government is willing to enforce an exclusive right I mean they do it physically they've got FBI and guns and so that's you know the legal mechanism of eventually becomes a physical one I mean the bullet might be the first time there's an actual physical thing but if they eventually it's eventually physical okay so so these species of intellectual property what kinds of goods do they do they protect like a copyright like when you get Microsoft Windows that's copyrighted right somebody else is like hey can you give me a copy of Windows can you can you do pit for him or the Britney Spears bye-bye Britney Spears CD and somebody's like hey can you give me a copy of that what what kind of good is they it first of all is that illegal yes I mean yes let's say yes so what kind of good is a Britney Spears CD the music on the Britney Spears CD well public good publicly because there's no rivalry to the music you if I put the Britney Spears mp3 in my home directory you know anybody can get it it's not like doesn't take it away from me so one reason that these kinds of property rights are intellectual property rights is because what they protect are public goods now what's a what's a pure public good in the area of copyrighted stuff yeah so free software so like Linux somebody puts you know Linux is a operating system kernel if somebody puts that on the internet says take it do whatever you want with it then not only is there no rivalry but there's also no exclusion because anybody can take it but but most most music and software is just not it's not a so this is called a pure public good so Linux which is you know is pure but most copyrighted materials are just public goods and that's why we say that these rights are intellectual property rights because what they protect there's no rivalry if I copy the Britney Spears CD it doesn't take the Britney Spears city away from you is that that makes sense okay but there's no one thing called intellectual property there's a lot of different laws so what can somebody explain in one sentence what's a copyright two sentences this is like that game similar to my number two does deny the use okay but but just somebody like what's a you know what's a copyright what does that protect it's really more specific copyright is it about an expression like a book some sort of right you know some sort of writing or a movie and it says you can't copy it you can't copy a movie without permission from the owner of that property right you can't copy a book it's basically what copyright is about but if we see what's a good move like Jurassic Park and and then I want to make my own movie about dinosaurs is that can the who owns the copyright on Jurassic Park some company yeah Universal so can Universal stop me from making another movie about dinosaurs well but no they don't own the idea of dinosaur movie they own this expression the movie Jurassic Park and you can't copy that that's a copyright okay what's a patent sorry your clothes keep it there say it again it's for an invention so if you invent something like if you make the first dinosaur movie if you make them or if you invent a drug penicillin it stops somebody else from from selling the same invention right or from even making the same invention so could you patent a dinosaur movie just the idea of a dinosaur movie you can pan a lot of things that's true so but so there's a difference between copyrights and patents copiers protect things that are like written down or like a movie and stop you from copying them the patents protect inventions and they stop you from making them or using them or selling them we're not going to talk about patents anymore in this class but they're different from copyrights but they're also sort of intellectual property what's a trade secret like coca-cola yeah is that patented like if I discover the formula for coca-cola can coke sue me and say that's our invention no cuz it's not it's not patented it's just it's a secret and if I went to Coke and I said I want to make coca-cola I'll give you a trillion dollars to let me make coca-cola could they sell me the right to do that sure but it's their secret and a pat sorry yeah well one of the differences is that a patent is sort of a deal you have to just you have to publish your invention to get a patent and then it only lasts 20 years a trade secret you keep secret you don't publish and it lasts forever but if somebody ever finds out about it or comes up invents it on their own then they can do whatever they want a patent even if they do it on their own they're still screwed okay what's a trademark yeah yeah like if you steal a trade secret the government can can prevent you from telling anybody else about it no wait no you don't but you need if you want the courts to enforce it you need to show evidence that you had some agreement to keep it secret okay what's the trademark okay we can write this little so anyway what's the trademark like a brand like Disney or what's another example of the trademark coca-cola how about rated pg-13 that's a trademark like if I want to put out a movie that's guy like people's limbs coming off and all sorts of nude people and everything and I say rated G is that okay can I do that no why not right so there's an organization called the Motion Picture Association and they own a trademark on rated G so you can't pretend that they that they endorsed your movie with rated G if they didn't okay so copyright if we had to sum up in just a few words copyright is a right to prevent people from copying patents is a right to prevent people from making or using or selling an invention trade secret just it's a secret it's about how you get and you can you have a right to keep it secret as long as somebody doesn't find out about it legitimately a trademark is a right to prevent confusion in a consumer so if I if I make a movie called The Little Mermaid sucks and Disney is a horrible company that Disney has a trademark on Disney right can they sue me and win yes yeah I mean basically unless my product would create a likelihood of confusion they can't win that's what a trademark is if I say Disney endorses my product and they don't that's trademark infringement but if I say Disney sucks it's probably not trademark infringement who here has heard the song barbie girl by who wrote it aqua yeah people know that song do people think that Mattel was happy with the song what does it say about Barbie it's derogatory told Marie if she's sort of a loose woman as depicted in the song she's sort of a loose woman and and Barbie Mattel the company that owns the trademark on Barbies sued aqua and its record label saying this CD is trademark infringement because customers will believe that it comes from us and that's what that's what you have to assert to to win a case for trademark infringement you have to serve a likelihood of confusion and that it was a very long case it's fun to read maybe Willis I I want to anyway it's a fun case you can pull it up and how are we doing on time okay and and the court had to go through and they surveyed people in shopping malls and they said here's Barbie here's this song do you think the song comes from the same company that made the doll and they interview people and certain percentage say yes and some percentage say no and the court has to decide whether there's a likelihood of confusion and in this case the court you know because Mattel Road for instance that Barbie they had worked hard to cultivate Barbies image which was wholesomeness and that this song destroyed that you know made it look like Mattel was coming out with a new image for Barbie and anyway the court didn't buy it and it went to the appeals court and the appeals court didn't buy it but the point is that's what you need for a trademark you need to have likelihood of confusion but when you see those infomercials and they say this vacuum works great and you know the Bissell vacuum sucks and the doesn't suck and the the Oreck vacuum also is really bad is it okay to use those companies names and that sort of comparative advertising yes it is okay so trademark is not an exclusive right to use the name Disney it's a right to prevent likelihood of confusion generally about the origin of products okay what's a right of publicity you all just signed this away so would be good to know about it sorry okay well you didn't sign it away right a reticle this is a right to protect your identity from being used generally in advertising in commercial speech so if somebody's filming like I'm it's maybe broader than that but if somebody's filming a movie like Steven Spielberg's filming a movie outside and they accidentally get you in the shot they generally would not want to publish the movie without having you sign a waiver now what if the Channel 7 News is filming at something outside a nightclub let's say a nightclub of ill repute and they catch you in the shot would they be infringing your right of publicity to publish that photograph yeah well they wouldn't because the right of publicity only protects your identity in sort of commercial publications so the news is excluded sort of factual material is excluded but so that you know that if you take a picture out on the street just of random people and put it on your webpage that's okay but if you take a picture out on the street and you know Nikon wants to use that picture in their advertising for the camera that's totally not okay they have to get what are called model waivers from all those people so that's the right of publicity and it's quite broad actually in in California this company Samsung which makes televisions made an advertisement about in the future Samsung televisions will still be running and they showed some of the things that would be on your Samsung television in the year 3000 and they had a robot wearing like a blonde wig turning over some letters you know I was like like in wheel of fortune but it was a robot you know they're like in the future you know a robot will turn over the blond letters turn over the letters and they were sued by what's-her-name Vanna White the woman who in real life turns over the letters on wheel of fortune and I said no by having this robot in a blonde wig your your company is profiting from my identity you know with my and anyway and she won she went like four hundred thousand dollars so the the right of publicity is very broad at least in some part of the country and it's a right to have your identity not be exploited commercially but from the news you don't have any protection okay there's another kind of intellectual property right called an the orphan drug protection that we have in America where if you're a drug company and you make a drug for a rare disease even if it's the drug doesn't have any novel inventions in it you don't have a patent still you're the only company that's allowed to sell the drug for I think seven years so it's another sort of limited property right and finally what's the designation of origin you should know so in Europe they're very serious about this thing called designation of origin and if you want to have like champagne sparkling wine or what's a cheese example so you know the idea is that only those towns the plates champagne and France are bald or those places would be able to call their wines or their cheese's by those names and that's a designation of origin that would be owned by those localities and in America we've really resisted I don't think we have protections for designation of origins so you can get champagne that's actually from California or cheddar cheese it's from Wisconsin but in Europe they don't like that stuff so that's an example of an intellectual property right that exists in some countries but not in America and there's other ones too like those moral rights we were talking about don't really exist in the US so when people start talking about intellectual properties it's important to realize that those words reflect a broad set of Rights I imposed by different government agencies that are different in different states in different countries and they're they can be very particular and that doesn't mean that they're not property because as we learn all sorts of property can be hemmed in and the airplanes and the the burrowing and taxes and all that but these rights too can be very particular and they often different intellectual property rights have nothing to do with each other now you know are these rights property you know I mean like if you want to have sheep there's no really limit on the time that you can own the sheep but copyrights and patents there are limited times some people argue that they're not property you can see here in the law Congress actually said you know patents are personal property ditto for copyright and some scholars disagree that copyrights are really property here's what 46 law professors wrote in 2001 somebody want to read that out loud as he could easily done what precisely should promote the progress of science and useful arts this granny corporation enforces a specific vision of the sorts of exclusive rights they were permitted rights limited not only in duration see US Constitution in article 1 section 8 Clause 8 but also let's go these rights are not property rights again terminology which the framers knew well and could easily have chosen and which is powerful natural law antecedents eliminated among novelists to be prescribed by statute okay so what does that mean limited monopolies to be prescribed by statute how is that different from property yeah okay to benefit society in fact it's only because between ability cue from certain amount and that you will have me incentive to make discoveries or to publish okay so so these rights are to give you an incentive to publish new books because if I publish this book I know I'll be able to benefit from it for at least the next 70 years nobody will rip me off and and that's not like property let me do we buy that who thinks that that's true that this argument is persuasive copyright is not a property right does anybody agree with the 46 law professors look at that it was a lawsuit but the issue here was is copyright a property right no the 46 law professors including Jonathan Zittrain at Harvard not at Harvard anymore at Oxford now said no it's not a property right but does anybody agree with them [Music] this is more or less like it is definitely so you disagree with the 46 law this I would be a little I mean I'm not a law professor so I would normally defer to what these guys say I took copyright from Jonathan's insurance so normally I would want to defer to him but really nobody agrees with those guys and women I mean they're okay anyway well I don't even really know what they meant because as we've learned property rights are limited and they are often prescribed by statute like if there's a statute that says that your air rights only extend up so far so to say that it's a limited monopoly to be prescribed by statute that couldn't be property and as we read here in Black's Law Dictionary property in the strict legal sense an aggregate of Rights which are guaranteed and protected by the government this term is said to extend to every species of valuable right and interest so I don't really know what they meant later I was in his Jonathan's citrons professor Citron's class and he was talking about property and I was like but you said copyright is not property at all it's a limited monopoly to be prescribed by statute and he was like anyway do you think the law professors side of this case won by the way Corley no they didn't win good wow we're really uh she says good so we really don't like prude on this class the law professors are kind of more like this well okay but okay anyway but I think this is thought-provoking because we have to you know the question is what is Congress doing why are they doing it so do people do you believe Katrina that copyright does create an incentive that does promote progress of science and useful arts Society works that's not really yeah do we think Jurassic Park would have been made without copyright all those people had to work for so long on building the sets and that dinosaur robot and the masks and drawing the sketches and the storyboards and the key know all those people had to work for years and years and years to make the movie do we think that that movie could have been made without copyright but how would they pay for the sets people would pay to see it so she says if it's good enough people would pay to see it but why would they pay you to see it why don't they pay some other dude i'muh why wouldn't they pay whoever could show it to you for the cheapest has anybody ever been to New York City have you seen the bootleggers those guys are so efficient at getting movies to you it's amazing they're out there you know like the day after the movie is out but even before the movie is out those guys are out there on Times Square hey man do you want some movies and they they've got like a any movie you could want and it's like a buck each those guys are very efficient so if Jurassic Park came out and you really wanted to see it you could buy it from those dudes you wouldn't have to pay the set painters and the dinosaur robot makers so I'm not sure if I really buy that yeah do you think that retro actively extending the copyright on the great gatsby in 1998 saying the great gatsby was going to continue being copyright for the new twenty more years did that promote the progress of science and useful arts so there's sort of balance to be had here some argue like if the great gatsby were protected for too long we would not be promoting the progress of science and florists is that what we think it's Gerald only knew that you would get copyright for 50 years after his death and the extra 20 years was not insensitive to right okay that's so that's sort of a contract theory that he wrote it with the understanding that he would get copyright for 50 years after his death and that's the deal okay okay so and he already wrote it the book so the fact that we're later giving him a sweeter deal you know can't possibly bear on whether he's gonna write the book in the first place because he already wrote it in fact he's already dead okay so that's one argument so in that view would Congress have been promoting the progress of science and useful arts would Congress have constitutionally been able to retroactively Lee extend the copyright yeah tomorrow extend that so it actually create more incentive for people to her song okay frankly yeah I don't feel that incentivized about the wealth of my great-great grandchildren I get I mean I guess maybe that's kind of cruel to those as yet non-existing it was great right to sense they have forever okay so in that view the 20 years of patent becomes a critical question you at ten years might be too short at fifty years it might be too long maybe twenty years is too short or too long before you say I actually don't I don't want to get too much into patents because it's not really my field but so copyright it seems like we're sort of do people think there needs to be limited times for copyright what if it were just forever would that be okay it's true so I mean it's basically you could say it's basically forever now and we're not doing too bad in fact this the the representative who who proposed the Sonny Bono copyright term extension act as anybody know who that was who was Sonny Bono yeah Sonny and Cher he was some sort of singer anyway his wife Mary Bona I guess his wife was not share or anyway his wife Mary she's not cher Bono Mary bono the representative in Congress I think Sonny Bono was in Congress and then he died and mrs. Bowen took over her seat and she proposed the Sonny Bono copyright term extension Act and she says I think copyright should last forever but apparently for some reason we can't do that so we're gonna make it last forever - a day is what she said so they made it seventy years after death but it doesn't seem like the world would fall if it were forever right and so the Supreme Court heard this argument that retroactive extending copyrights on works that have already been written where the authors are already dead does not promote the progress of science and useful arts that was the argument from Eldred and the counter-argument from the movie studios was look there's these old movies they're out of copyright now and so we don't have any incentive to restore them but if we if they were brought back in the copy writer kept in copyright then we in 2000 in 1998 we would now have an incentive to restore those old movies and so that it does promote the progress of science and useful arts to rich or active the extent were the copywriter and works already created because it gives us an incentive in the present day to restore these old works that was the argument and it carried the day and so the Supreme Court says we don't think retroactive extending the copyrights is unconstitutional okay but it you know it's important to keep in your mind like what is the overarching goal of this whole scheme okay so let's talk about what Cabret actually is copyright is a bundle of Rights the law professors say I hope not just those 46 law professors lots of law professors covered is a bundle of Rights what does that mean I mean a zoning is owning your house a bundle of Rights I mean yes you can exclude people from the house you can you can build on that land you can charge money okay so but copyright also is a bundle of Rights and in in the copyright law which Congress has written and we'll get to the different kinds of laws later Congress has written exactly what that bundle of Rights are does somebody want to read this somebody other than hungee Darrin okay just start at number oh okay start here exclusive rights that means nobody else can do these things only me to do as with authorize okay so me and the people I authorize okay one to reproduce the copyrighted work in copies or phonorecords photo record so one only I can copy the thing to to prepare to Rivet of works based upon the copyrighted work okay what's the derivative work like a sequel ok sequel is a good example what's another kind of a derivative work that's go ahead a song you use the same melody like what was that one under pressure became Ice Ice Baby okay what's another what's a more traditional derivative work how about translations like when I write you know who dong wrote in French but it's been translated into English so that's a derivative work and authors are you know control their translation rights what's another kind of derivative well what about have people seen clueless of what work of literature is that based on Emma by who Jane Austen okay so is clueless a derivative work of Emma who is not seen clueless okay our Bridget Jones diary if people seen that movie okay okay so so but clueless it's this movie about Alicia Silverstone and she's in Beverly Hills and it's really funny but it's based on this book Emma by Jane Austen so somebody who's seen a movie and read emma is clueless the derivative work of Emma our West Side Story is that a derivative work of Romeo and Juliet by Shakespeare you wouldn't say so okay it's the same plot that's true and he did right right like that's a very specific okay but it's we're not really sure so I already we're on number two and we don't really know what it means to prepare derivative works in fact there's this book Gone with the Wind which is written from the perspective people actually read the book yeah is it a first person book or a third person book it's written basically for the perspective of Scarlett O'Hara right let's say yes so somebody else wrote a book called it this is just a few years ago called the wind done gone which was written which was written from the perspective of one of the slaves in the book and it was this sort of creative retelling and was that a derivative work well they went to court on that one and there's another case with Lolita where somebody wrote a version of Lolita that was written from the perspective of Lolita and was that a Kirino who knows so that's already sensitive what it means to prepare to go to work and the courts are written voluminous material about this who here is written a computer program and what operating system did you write the program on okay let's try something else how about you what did you write it on sure okay Linux okay and did you print anything in your program and what did you use to print so did what like function did you use you've probably used something that uses this right printf or something like that what was it in Java or okay so then you use something called like println or something system.out.println something like that okay so println calls this thing printf in who wrote this thing called printf i think it was this guy named ulrich who also wrote the Coke machine in my laboratory the computerized Coke machine will Rick dreper let's let's say yes so this is part of something called the ghanoush see library and it's this other program written by some other guy and it's really complicated and it's not easy to write printf I don't know if you've tried not easy so it was Liz's program a derivative work of printf and a program by Ulrich go to Ulrich drebber be like Liz you ripped me off he prepared a derivative work of my program I mean let's let's say he released it like you released you know gone with the wind yeah what have you used this program printf hello let's say we're on Windows and I say printf hello so that calls a different version of printf written by say it written by Bill Gates can I release you no can i we give this program away or is it a derivative work of printf by Bill Gates so you say it's a derivative work does anybody disagree do you think I can't release this program without Bill Gates has permission because Bill Gates has the exclusive right to authorize the preparation of a derivative work of his printf yeah yeah little bit anyway the kid nobody knows the answer to these questions the generally the safe answer is yes if you link you know if you link with a library you are preparing a derivative work so anyway I just want to emphasize the derivative works can arise in all sorts of unusual contexts let's say you um you have a webpage Keith's home page keith rules i have this webpage and i use frames and i tell the browser and the top put my text and then the bottom put you know google's search page have I prepared a derivative work sort or have you prepared a derivative work by loading this page maybe you're the guilty one so we just don't know right this was a litigated issue that one is gonna be litigated at some point in the future but you know these are hard questions so just wanna just in this is the how how long is the copyright law it's like 300 pages of the so just want and anyway we're at the very beginning of it and I already want emphasize there's very very difficult subtleties okay let's go on three stupid copies of the book so if I'm like here's my Black's Law Dictionary and you're like can I borrow it I'm like sure here you go borrow my Black's letting straight you know have we broken the law right now I'm lending it to you who I mean mr. black is the exclusive what's it say in there LexisNexis or something mr. Nexus has the exclusive right to authorize lending that book and I just lend it to you without his permission did I break the law yes well the answer is No because later in the copyright law there's an exception and in fact this is true for everything in the copyright law there's exceptions to everything so anyway go on musical choreographic worse what's a choreographic work it's like a dance that's written down to perform the copper and it worked publicly so when you go to LSC and they show a movie is that performing a copyrighted work publicly yeah okay how about when you watch TV in your dorm room and you're like hey come on in and watch this movie with me is that performing a copyrighted work publicly depends on who you're addressing good okay fine so no it's also very subtle issue number five what kind of work by the way is not literary Musical dramatic choreographic pantomime or motion picture what would be an example something that's not in one of those what if you make like a nature recording you know like those soothing like the massage CDs where it's like ocean waves crashing well you'd lose if you go out on the beach and record ocean waves crashing or birds chirping or something that's not literary Musical dramatic choreographic pantomime or motion picture so you can perform that publicly all you want okay so okay so the picture on the front of this DVD is a copyrighted picture right and I'm displaying it publicly am I breaking the law I think so yes I think there's an exception but tricky okay what's the last one okay whip so it's a sound recording it's like ocean waves or it's like the Britney Spears CD it turns out the musical work is like the sheet music to the Britney Spears song so people know the song baby one more time so who wrote that song who here has not heard the sign okay you've all heard the song baby one more time okay and who wrote it somebody other than Caleb yes written by a guy a swedish guy named martin Sandberg and who goes by the name max Martin he wrote a lot of popular songs many of them from Britney Spears so he wrote the song there sheet music you can buy it a baby one more time it's got the notes in the petal and all that stuff but then Britney Spears then sang the song and she recorded it that's a sound recording so and Britney Spears owns the copyright maybe do the recording but she doesn't own the copyright to the song baby one more time okay so in the case of sound recordings okay that sounds a lot like the other one go on the digital audio okay so the ocean waves you can perform publicly except by means of a digital audio transmission so what's an example of a digital audio transmission a CD like how are you what's the transmission like if you ship a CD in a moving van is that a digital audio transmission it's it's pretty arguable right the CDs digital contains audio sort of transmitting it I mean there's laws about way you can transmit through the mail you know you can't transmit cocaine through the mail so can you transmit digital audio through the mail like a radio what's a digital radio like who would be affected by this would like 98 10 you know 98.7 fm have to worry about that if they have an Internet station okay so it's music over the Internet and how about what else satellite okay those are digital and there's also satellites that are not digital right so it gets but like XM radio that's digital so Congress has allegedly legislated here very particularly they've said one set of rules applied to FM radio because it's analog and a different set of rules apply to things that are digital like XM radio so if you know when when the MIT radio station is then we hear work of the radio station when they might see radio station plays baby one more time over the radio do they have to get Britney Spears's permission no do they have to pay any money to Britney Spears it's analog so when people like whoa Britney your songs at the top of the charts you must be loaded is that true no because the she doesn't get any money from the radio plays and they don't have to get her permission does that seem fair from the radio station is selling advertisements there's a tuning soon Britney Spears is coming up but for now a special offer from the car company and then they play grease birds is that fair what okay so it's not as good a copy okay that sounds very hot I'm gonna go with a traditional fantasy like you know okay Digital do not have this rivalry property then everyone does because of the degrading nature so the analog you can't keep making copy of copy of copy of copy so eventually it runs out but digital you know like if you double tape for somebody then they dub it people ever do this dub tapes no yeah okay and if you keep dubbing a tape eventually it sounds pretty bad but that's not the case with burning a CD so okay I mean it doesn't totally seem fair to me and in fact in Europe it's not the case in Europe the record recording artist does get money from the radio but even the analog radio transmission of their song but in America it's not like that people want to guess about why that is did Congress say like we don't like recording artists so we're not gonna let them get money from radio airplay well it has to do with the historical development of copyright law and it has to do with the fact that radio broadcasters are very powerful in in Congress people have been following the size of mr. Abramoff mr. Abramoff or Abramoff Jack he was he was a lobbyist and these people are hired by various industries to persuade Congress to pass laws one way or another and the broadcaster's are very powerful in persuading Congress sorry Clear Channel that's Clear Channel is a company that owns many many radio stations and they're very good at persuading Congress to do one thing or another I so understand like WM BR has web guys yeah we'll get to that yeah they do paperwork well they should pay for the webcast I don't know if they actually do but they pay I believe they pay five hundred dollars a year flat rate because of another law okay so cap rate is this bundle of rights and everything else in the Copyright Act the other 300 pages stems from these six exclusive rights sort but they all have exceptions but when you think when somebody says you're violating my copyright what's the next question you should ask which exclusive right of my violating what am i doing because it this is what copper it is it's not something else is what I'm saying right now copyrighted oh that was a bad question we haven't gotten to that yet but anyway my point is copper it is very specific in what it allows and what it prohibits and it goes on for 300 pages about how specific it is notwithstanding that specificity even like line number two there has all sorts of ambiguities like about printf and about the frames and my other example so we should be careful and so it's for the homework which will be on the web tonight oh did we get the signup sheet by the way who has that has everybody signed the signup sheet everybody sign this okay so I'm gonna assign some reading tonight oh yes okay I'm gonna sign some reading tonight about some lawsuits that people had about copyright and then we can talk about them in the next class and so for the rest of today oh okay I'll skip this for now okay so yes my point was there's difficult questions in copyright like for instance if you stream something in real audio have people use real audio or mp3 streaming now it goes into the RAM of your computer right is that our reproduction yes so anybody want to say no okay so if you're streaming something via real audio or is it being transmitted or is it also being reproduced both okay maybe it turns out to be a very difficult question here's another one can you copyright a law people here are of course six right some people so people know about the National Electric Code is the National Electric Code a law do I have to obey the National Electric Code yeah or not even by reference they incorporate it so yeah I mean in Massachusetts so what's an example something the National Electric Code says like rules for electricians so one of the things that says like in a bathroom if you want to put in an outlet it has to have you know the little test and reset those sorts of rules and how you have to run wires and it's really really long about Electrical Safety and it's not written by legislatures it's written by this group of experts and they've put a lot of effort into it and they copyright it you can buy this book called the National Electric Code and they tell municipalities and you know cities and states they say adopt the National Electric Code it's easier than making your own laws about Electrical Safety and so many of them have and if somebody asks you know what's the law in that I have to obey and they say I'm gonna put it up on a website so people know the law does that violate the copyright of the owners of the National Electric Code does anybody want to say yes you say yes okay is anybody saying no I can put up the law you say no okay so that's another tricky question that one was litigated here's number three sometimes I write articles for the tech and then the tech contributes them to LexisNexis which is an online database is that legal can the tech send my article LexisNexis I haven't said anything on the subject I don't have a contract with attack I just said here Tech you can put this in the tech and then later they say we're gonna send everything in the tech to LexisNexis okay so the New York Times had this problem a newspaper of a lot more stature than the tech they had freelancers contributing articles to the New York Times and The New York Times was sending the New York Times to LexisNexis and the freelancers sued and the New York Times says look we have copyright on the whole New York Times of which your article is only a small part so we have the ability to send the New York Times to LexisNexis and the freelancer says no no no no you're not sending the New York Times the LexisNexis you're sending each article individually including mine and it went to the Supreme Court in I think 2001 the freelancers one did the tech changes so Michael is the managing editor of the tech it's a so this is the tech breaking the law Michael we don't particles anywhere well they end up in LexisNexis yeah on University wired you are in direct or articles right now okay well the tank is bringing a lot that's my position has in the past broken okay so when I buy a DVD like this alarms sneakers you know do I have the authority to play it on any DVD player I want no okay is that because it says something on the DVD okay so anyway these are hard questions three of them have have been litigated in court one of them at the Supreme Court the top one nobody knows the answer to so you know the point is there's difficult questions in Congress so how do we answer these questions how can we how can we learn about copyright study previous cases okay how do we find out about previous cases okay we're gonna have a brief introduction to the law right now so because this will help you with the homework so let's talk about the federal government we're gonna switch gears here what's the structure of the federal government okay there's three branches and what are they okay the legislative branch what's the MS an article 1 of the Constitution right what's the next one okay okay so what's the major thing in the legislative branch somebody other than hung-yi Congress and who's in Congress what does Congress mean like are we in Congress means coming together so Congress is all these people who are elected from all across our broad country who have come together to Washington and it particularly has come together in two groups what are the groups okay the House of Representatives and the Senate okay and then the Senate's got all these committees and the House has got all these committees and there's other organizations that are part of the legislative branch anybody name one yeah what else is in the legislative branch other than the House of Representatives in the Senate yeah this is just I'm with the federal government so there's like the Library of Congress the Government Accountability Office have people have been to the Library of Congress it's pretty majestic part of Congress okay so then there's the executive branch who's them what's the major thing in the executive branch the president okay [Applause] what's something else in the executive branch the Kappas are they the Cabinet you mean the departments all right so there's like the Department of what's the department that gets the most money yeah Social Security may be right but I don't actually know let's say defense and what's another one the one that literally gets the most money would be the Treasury and what are some other ones yeah agriculture I don't even know what they do okay so they have all these these departments whitson and if the president wants to like fire somebody in one of these departments can they do it generally yes these people basically work for the president what's something else that's in the executive branch oh by the way who in the executive branch is actually elected and who else the vice president and these are basically the only people who are elected in the whole executive branch and about how much money every year does the legislative branch get not a lot how much money does the executive branch get like how much two trillion yeah two two trillion yeah so this is by far the most like expensive branch okay what else is in the executive branch other than these departments yeah that's actually part of the Department of Justice the FBI is under them what was that no the military is part of the Department of Defense that's like the Pentagon there's these other government agencies that are sort of separate like the Federal Communications Commission and the Federal Election Commission and some other ones so these people are part of the federal government but they don't really work for the president there's sort of a point if there's the Securities and Exchange Commission there's these sort of people sometimes called this the fourth branch of government because they're there in the executive branch but they don't really work for the president please not mister as directly okay that's the executive branch so if you commit a crime who comes after you a federal crime to Department dress that's right and what are those people called yes the feds first the FBI comes after you those are the investigators and then you get indicted by a prosecutor all in their prime no justice okay and then do they just indict you and then like you're indicted you have to go to jail no okay and when they indict you by the way what gives them the authority to do that like they indict you for littering is there somewhere where it's written that that's against the law yes there's a law written by these guys so these guys write the law these guys enforce the law and who says you're guilty or something else the judicial branch which is in article 3 okay and what's the major dude in that major dudettes and dude the Supreme Court okay and what's below the Supreme Court there's appeals courts circuit courts of appeals which are divided around the country so the one that governs Massachusetts is called the First Circuit Court of Appeals and there's lot there's like eleventh circuit's and the West Coast there's the Ninth Circuit which is called the out-of-control circuit it's also the by far the biggest one and we're actually the smallest one in the First Circuit and then what's under the appeals so who's on the appeals card are they justices or just lawyers they're called circuit judges and the people on the Supreme Court served for life the people on the appeals court serve also for life and below the appeals court is what the district courts so we're here in the district of Massachusetts so if you got indicted for mail fraud you'd go for a judge in Boston at the place where the they had the ring premiere anybody was there at the federal court he'd go before a district judge he's appointed for life like judge young and you'd have a trial and at the end what will happen they issue a ruling right and how do you how do you find out about the ruling how does that anybody in the public find out do you have a right to go to the somebody else's court hearing yes you can almost always just walk in there and sit in on people's court hearings but if you're not if you don't happen to be there how would you find out about the decision the opinion is really so the judge Labor's for our actually has clerk Labor's for hours and hours sorry and at the end they write an opinion and how do you find out about the opinion it's in the court record do you have to actually go to the court to see it often yeah so officially when a when a court opinion is important the judge says this should be published and then they're there they're published in these books that are called reporters and the reporters are put in law libraries and also on LexisNexis which is an online database that we're going to use in this class so and the reporters I should bring one in but they come out with these books they're like a thousand pages and they come out like every week with all the new opinions and the one that they're that the federal district courts are publishing is called the federal supplement and it's abbreviated like this and every week there's a new book of the federal supplement and actually they've done so many federal supplements that they you know so the what you might get this week you might get you know federal supplement book number 229 that they write at the front and when they got up to a thousand they decided there's too many federal supplements we're gonna start the numbering over again so they created what's called the federal supplement second series and this format this is the SIA we talked about citations at the very beginning this is ultram unfortunately ultra important because the LexisNexis accepts only one format so the fact that you have to have a space in here for instance the lawyers or if you go to law school they'll be these kids who are like super prickly about this stuff and they were bowties and stuff like that and they edit the Law Review but also LexisNexis is prickly about it so that's why we're going to talk about citations briefly so it's in the so if you want to talk about a case the opinion was published in the federal supplement by the way is the federal supplement free no it's published by this company called West which is owned by a different company called Thompson they don't have a deal anybody can publish these but so West and LexisNexis are actually competitors but the way that people talk about the opinions is to talk about where they are in West's books so okay so if you want to talk about in opinion you'd say it was in book 229 of the federal supplement second series and then it's like a thousand-page book so what else might you want to add the page number exactly so you give the page number on which the thing starts so this is called a citation and often you might want to say like who is arguing so you put at the beginning Jones versus Smith and a comma but this is not the important part this is the important part and then at the end you put like the year in which it was decided it's also not really the important part but the part you really need if you want to find the case is this middle part and when we read opinions in this class they will be riddled with citations because judges never like to go out on a limb and as I said at the beginning the judge can't say well my law professor told me or Keith told me or snail told you know you you can't say that you have to sit give some authority some reason for the proposition that you're stating now is this true in science and science can you cite to Authority can you be like F equals MA because Newton says so be like three Newton seventeen does that work yeah but the ultimate authority in science is not like important people like the Supreme Court of science in science the important the you know reality is important and the ability to reproduce experiments that's not true in the law and the law authorities are important so this you know argument to Authority which is a fallacy in science is like the way things are done in the law the Supreme Court is the ultimate authority okay so you you have your opinion here and let's say you lost let's say your Smith and you lost and the judge wrote it and was published and what do you do you appeal now can you appeal and be like you know the witness said I was crossing the street but I wasn't is that a reason you can appeal no what sorts of things can you appeal legal legal questions so that the the district court except in extraordinary circumstances this lowest court is generally supreme on factual circumstances factual questions but on legal questions like did they do things the right way or or let's say we agree on the facts I was crossing the street but you could say even if I did what you say I did it still didn't violate the law those kinds of questions you can appeal and you'd go to an appeals court we also have one in Boston it's actually the same courtroom the first Circuit Court of Appeals and there's only like six judges on it it's very small and you'd argue your case before the appeals the circuit judges now how long would like a trial last people watch the OJ trial is that to you so a trial could last weeks and weeks and weeks and weeks but an appeal lasts about an hour so things get really whittled down by the time you get to the appeal the judges say now we're gonna hear case this case and your lawyer argues for maybe half an hour and the other lawyer are used to be half an hour and they say thank you and then a few months later they issue their decision so the appeal is really better be important for you to bring it up in your appeal and you don't argue before the entire appeals court all six judges you argue just before three of them that's called a panel okay so they they finish up and they publish their opinion and whereas it's published also in a book by West called the federal reporter and that's abbreviated but they had so many of them that they started the numbers over so now we're on the federal reporter third series so something might be published in book one 12f third page number nine sixty-seven and you'd have the same thing Jones versus Smith and actually you're you know you're supposed to say not just the year but also what court decided it so this might be the district court for Massachusetts in 2001 by the time you appeal you're saying it's the First Circuit Court of Appeals in let's say 2002 okay so you're still pissed off you lost again you're Smith and you appeal to the Supreme Court now can you directly appeal to the Supreme Court no they have to pick you so you can't actually in almost all cases you cannot appeal the Supreme Court there's a very slim category where you can but normally you can't appeal the Supreme Court you just have to petition you say please take my case it's sort of like petitioning me the Committee on academic probation here at MIT you they're not have to grant your request your petition so you petition to the Supreme Court and let's say they grant it so now you're at the Supreme Court and you petition for what's called certiorari which means they hear your case so you're up there your lawyers up there so you have to fly to Washington DC and it's even more whittled down because they only take like one percent of the cases that are petitioned to them and you're in front of nine justices in Washington it's not just part of the court it's the whole court and your lawyer gets up there and he says mr. Chief Justice and may it please the court my client did not break the law because and you know he starts talking and then you know the justices will be like but isn't it true that you know they interrupt you and it's very aggressive anybody heard the Supreme Court or listen to the transcripts if you go to oh yeah org I think that or you can listen to the transcripts to the Supreme Court they're very aggressive you would never I would never make it through because they're like isn't it true so so you argue before the nine justices and they say okay the case is submitted you get an hour and they only want to hear the most important issues of the case and only the federal issues and then okay then nine months later the issue a decision and that's also published and the Supreme Court feels it's so important they don't want to leave it to West or some other company to publish those decisions they publish them themselves so they're published so this time if Smith was losing so that you'll see this so no one could tripped out by this if Smith was losing he's the petitioner now because he's the one that asked the Supreme Court to take the case so when the Supreme Court rules on it it'll be written like this Smith versus Jones so you'll see these names get flipped around don't don't let it fool you it just means that this is the guy that petitioned the Supreme Court probably because he's the one that lost and the lower stage and then it'll be something like 592 United States page number 112 now West also publishes its own reporter of Supreme Court cases that comes out much quicker this takes like two years to come out so when the tears after decision comes out you might see people refer to it instead by the West citation which looks like this they do SCT which is that's just their private publication it's the exact same text it's just this one comes out quicker so don't be confused by that and then at the end because they're so important you don't even have to put which court decided it because it's in u.s. they're so cool you just put two thousand three and you're like wow now why is it important to observe these distinctions it's because when you when you write something with citations the reader will understand what you're talking about if you say well I should be right you should believe me because of this case it was decided you cite something to FS up to D there'll be a hot just a district court who cares if you cite it to something in F they'll be like oh wow that's more important and especially if it's in the same circuit as where you're you you are then it has really important Authority and if you can cite to the Supreme Court and have you yes then you're like wow that's like the most powerful kind of authority at all so the citations have a communicative effect and that they tell you what court issued it when they issued it and and so you have to be able to understand the clues that are in there to be able to pull things up so I'm going to show very briefly how to pull something up on LexisNexis and then the homework will be to pull things up on LexisNexis and read them now I'll put that on the website and email you see do I have a netscape here so is everybody oh i'll show you in a second coming up there it is okay so mit has a subscription to this online database called LexisNexis which you know contains all of the text of the West reporters since you know the before the founding of America and all sorts of other interesting stuff so to get there you can't let I'll show you we go to libraries that MIT ID to you and vira II journals and databases lexis okay here we go LexisNexis academic so you click on that and if you're off campus you have to click over here on this go okay so that takes us here to web that LexisNexis that comes legend universe which you can just go to so let's say we want to look up a Supreme Court case so what's that site so we go to legal research and we can go to get a case and here you put in the citation so what should we look up let's look at Marbury vs. Madison people know that case ok so one way to do it you can type in here if you don't know the citation Marbury vs. Madison you say search and there it is or if you know the citation which you should because everybody will give it you type the citation and that also comes up with the same thing so let's look at a more recent case here was one about detaining Nazi spies there we go ok so this dude was a Nazi spy they locked him up he didn't get a trial is that ok this is in 1942 I went to the Supreme Court so and here's the case so at the beginning they have these little explanation let's see what they have I'm gonna talk more about this next time so the beginning they have a syllabus here which is always very helpful because they give you a little summary of the case the Supreme Court sometimes they'll also have a thing called summary to your stuff but the part that's important is the part that starts with opinion and then here you can see what the Supreme Court actually wrote these cases are brought here by bla bla bla bla bla and then in the middle they may have a citation so they'll be like see this case United States ex rel skin Mecca vs. husband and they'll give us this now what does this mean here it's an appeals court right because it's an F so we can plug that in to get it so if you want to learn what's what's going on there you can plug that in to get a case and you say search and there's the new case so it's sort of like hyperlinks except you have to copy and paste and in some parts of LexisNexis and in the commercial version of LexisNexis they turn these into hyperlinks and then when you click it they charge you five bucks and the commercial version because they they really want to anyway they want to make it easy for you to be lazy and also then they charge you money but anyway so I will I'm gonna put online a bunch of citations and the assignment will be to put them into LexisNexis and read the cases and be able to talk about them in the next class okay did anybody have any quick questions yeah federal government yeah you can't challenge the law without the state arrested for it you just challenged a lot of no-one's can you challenge the law even if you haven't yet been prosecuted the answer is yes for instance there was a law that was passed in 1996 that said you can't put pornography on the internet now is pornography protected by the First Amendment yes pornography is protected most pornography is protected by the First Amendment and Congress says you can't put porn porn on the internet and so a bunch of organizations sued the government before they'd even been prosecuted and they said we're not saying we did put porn on the internet and we're not saying we didn't put porn on the internet but what we are saying is that this is chilling our speech and this law is over broad and it's unconstitutional so that and so they filed our lawsuit and actually won and the case was called Reno versus ACLU does that mean that Reno whose Reno Janet Reno the Attorney General does it mean that she sued the ACLU right it meant that she lost at the lower court so she was now petitioning the Supreme Court to take the case so yes so you can see without having to actually be prosecuted sometimes anything else okay oh your forms give them to Alicia