For more than 100 years Hollywood has been the world’s epicenter of creative content and home to the film, television and music industries.  The law of copyright – the exclusive legal right of creators and owners of creative works to publish, perform, copy and distribute such works – enabled the ascent of these industries and protected them against theft of their works.  

Hundreds of miles to the north, Silicon Valley has become the world’s epicenter of technology, the densest concentration of technology companies and venture capital in the world.  Silicon Valley spawned a new kind of company, the Internet Service Provider (“ISP”), companies providing consumers with Internet access, caching, web hosting and search services.  read more

When I was a teenager I had a great collection of vinyl albums, including classics by bands such as The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Creedence Clearwater and Yes. One of my distinct pleasures was to peruse the album collections in used record stores in the hopes of finding a catch in good condition and at a good price.

The used record store could lawfully purchase and resell copies of albums originally bought as new under the “first sale” doctrine, whereby the owner of a “particular copy” of a copyrighted work that was lawfully purchased could “sell or otherwise dispose of the possession of that copy” without violating the copyright owner’s exclusive right to reproduce or distribute that work. read more