Innovation Law and Policy Workshop
presents
Professor Abraham Drassinower
University of Toronto Faculty of Law
What’s Wrong with Copying?
Friday, February 5, 2010
12:30 – 2:00
Solarium (room FA2), Falconer Hall
84 Queen’s Park
This paper develops three related propositions. The first is that, once the concept of “user rights” in copyright law is taken seriously, unauthorized reproduction of works of authorship can no longer be characterized as the act that copyright law most basically prohibits. That is, there is nothing wrong with copying per se. The second proposition is that unauthorized publication is the act that copyright law most basically prohibits. That is, copyright is an exclusive right of public presentation. The third is that the justification of copyright as an exclusive right of public presentation is autonomy-based. The wrongfulness of unauthorized publication is a wrong to the author’s autonomy as a speaking being. Unauthorized publication is wrongful because it is compelled speech. The paper develops all three propositions through analyses of copyright doctrine or concepts; in particular, the requirement of originality, the defence of independent creation, the right of first publication, fair dealing, and the distinction between works subject to copyright protection and inventions subject to patent protection. Throughout, the paper emphasizes the import of the autonomy-based justification of copyright law for the understanding of copyright subject matter, of copyright exceptions, of the expansion of the public domain, and of the encounter between copyright and digital technology.
Abraham Drassinower is Associate Professor at the University of Toronto Faculty of Law and Chair in the Legal, Ethical and Cultural Implications of Technological Innovation. He joined the Faculty of Law in 1999, and served as the Director of the Centre for Innovation Law and Policy from 2006 to 2009. He previously held a Postdoctoral Fellowship in the Department of Political Science at the University of Toronto (1993-1995), and lectured principally on political philosophy at York University (1993-1995) and at the University of Toronto (1995-1998). He served as a Law Clerk to Mr. Justice John C. Major of the Supreme Court of Canada (1998-1999). Professor Drassinower's interests include property, intellectual property, legal and political philosophy, critical theory, and psychoanalysis. He has spoken widely and internationally on copyright law, and published in the areas of charitable trusts, unjust enrichment, intellectual property, and psychoanalysis and political theory. He is currently working on a book on the public domain in copyright law.
A light lunch will be served.
Sponsored by the Microsoft Law and Information Society Project
For more workshop information, please contact Nadia Gulezko at n.gulezko@utoronto.ca.
