Abstract
For more than a decade small businesses and individual artists have sought to create an alternate forum in which to enforce copyright claims of modest economic value. The need to address this so called ‘small copyright claims problem’ was first articulated in a submission by the visual arts community to the US Copyright Office (‘Copyright Office’) in an unrelated proceeding in 2005. Copyright law is governed by federal law and, by statute, copyright claims can only be brought in federal district courts. The cost and complexity of doing so is often daunting to individuals and small businesses who have suffered infringements of their work. Frequently, individuals and small businesses are seeking relatively modest damages, which are dwarfed by the expense of hiring an attorney and pursuing a claim in federal court. As a result these claims go unaddressed – which leads to the dual misperceptions that creative works are free for the taking on the internet, and that the copyright system serves only large corporate copyright owners …
Aistars, Sandra, Ensuring Only Good Claims Come in Small Packages: A Response to Scholarly Concerns About a Proposed Small Copyright Claims Tribunal (February 23, 2018). George Mason Legal Studies Research Paper No LS 18-02.
First posted 2018-02-26 06:58:21
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