Journal of the Copyright Society, Volume 72(1)

We are delighted to present the 72nd year of the Journal of the Copyright Society.  We have two annual lectures. The Christopher A Meyer Memorial lecture was given by Robert Clarida, who presented on November 6, 2024 his take on direct copyright liability, and in particular the concept of 'the person who actually presses the button' in looking at volitional conduct.  Both pieces provide insight into our current copyright condition. This year the Donald C. Brace Lecture was given on November 20, 2024 by Professor Jennifer Rothman discussing 'Copyrighting People,' in light of deepfakes, current right of publicity federal legislation, multiple AI cases working their way through the courts, and the Copyright Office studies being conducted related to AI. We are also pleased to have a variety of articles for this issue.  We begin with Viva Moffet’s survey of the state of faculty copyright ownership within the university.  We then turn to David Fossum’s piece that looks at music reform in Turkey. Next, we have Alfred Steiner’s piece 'How Much is Enough,' which documents his art experiment of applying for registration of 10 works, ranging from a simple white square to increasing complexity to assess when creativity rises to a sufficient amount to gain registration.  We are thrilled that this piece is also being exhibited as part of the Just Wanna Copyright for Makers exhibit at the New England Quilt Museum. This is a pet project of mine, which goes along with our accompanying book, polished by C&T publishing, of the same title.  The exhibit, and the book, are meant to help artists, makers, and creators traverse the spaces of copyright, and Alfred’s work exemplifies this tremendously.  For more on the exhibit, see, https://www.neqm.org/just-wanna-copyright-for-makers-details, which ran from January 14 to March 29, 2025. We then have a response by Matt Blaszczyk, 'Copyright Doctrine before the Tribunal of Science' to Jessica Silby’s piece from Issue 70(3), 'A Matter of Facts: The Evolution of the Copyright Fact-Exclusion and Its Implications for Disinformation and Democracy.'  This is followed by David Metzger’s piece 'Fair Use of Software Necessary to Repair, Maintain, or Diagnose a Device or System.'  We then have a piece by Lokesh Vyas that takes a more theoretical turn on thinking about copyright, analyzes the relationship of copyright and new technology through a Foucaultian lens. Then, we have a short piece by Zvi Rosen, 'The Steamboat Wilily Smokescreen.' And finally, we conclude with a student piece, Lindsay Socie’s 'Welcome to the Museum of Lawsuits: An Imagined Tour of Art Caught in Legal Battles.' Lindsay was in my art and culture law seminar in Spring 2024 at Tulane Law School, and together we worked on a fuller version of the piece for publication in the Spring 2025, a wonderful opportunity for collaboration.