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CONTENTS I. THE PHILOSOPHICAL PROBLEM II. HOW THE COPYRIGHT WORK EVOLVED III. WHAT IS THE COPYRIGHT WORK? IV. WHAT CONSTRAINS THE INFRINGEMENT FUNCTION THAT DEFINES THE COPYRIGHT WORK? V. GENERATIVE [...], The "work of authorship" lies at the heart of the Copyright Act of 1976. It is what copyright protects. Central though the concept is, the Act never defines what a work of authorship might be. According to the Act, it can be perceived in tangible ^fixations, but is distinct^ from the fixations. The Act also provides examples: writings, drawings, computer programs, but never describes how these might be distinguished from their fixations. Unlike the Patent Act, where "metes and bounds" of a patentable invention are defined by a patent's claims, the Copyright Act provides no guidance as to what the "metes and bounds" of a copyright work of authorship might be. Most copyright practitioners and commentators are so inured to the concept that they never pause to consider what the "work of authorship" is, and what it means to say that it exists independently of its fixations. This paper addresses these questions. It will consider when and how the copyright concept of an incorporeal "work of authorship" (which for brevity I will call the copyright Work) arose in federal US law. The paper will compare the concept to Platonic forms, outline the forces that supported its creation, and conclude that the concept is a manifestation of cultural and technological developments in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries that required the range of copyright infringement to expand. The paper will then address the question of how the copyright Work might be defined, concluding that it is not distinct from its fixations, but is instead a set of fixations, defined by the rules of copyright infringement. Building on this definition, the paper then considers whether cultural and technological developments in the current Century, including social media, streaming, open-source licensing, and, most recently, generative artificial intelligence, will shrink the range of copyright infringement, and as a result, diminish the size of the set comprising the copyright Work. Finally, the paper will extrapolate from these copyright developments to suggest some more general conclusions about the nature of law as something that cannot be separated from a particular culture, technology, and time.

CONTENTS I. INTRODUCTION II. BACKGROUND: COPYRIGHT LAW III. USING NFTS TO CERTIFY "OWNERSHIP" IV. COPYRIGHT, "OWNERSHIP," AND NFTS V. DOES COPYRIGHT GRANT THE EXCLUSIVE RIGHT TO "MINT" AN NFT? A. [...], The concept of using non-fungible tokens (NFTs) to facilitate and authenticate sales of digital art dates back to 2014; but it took several years before the concept really captured public attention. Since copyright law governs the reproduction of works of art, including digital images, the connection to NFTs seems obvious. Yet, copyright law is only tangentially related to NFTs, for two reasons. First, buying an NFT does not, by itself, convey any rights to reproduce or display the work associated with that token. Instead, those rights are governed entirely by the contract that accompanies the sale. Second, minting and selling an NFT, by itself, likely does not violate any of the exclusive rights provided by copyright. As a result, although copyright may provide a useful tool for artists seeking to monetize their art, it is probable that its usefulness will be limited in lawsuits concerning NFTs. Ultimately, other legal tools (such as trademark law) may provide better relief when litigation concerning NFTs becomes necessary.

INTRODUCTION In 1948, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights ("UDHR") set out for the first time a number of "fundamental human rights" that are to be protected by the countries [...]

I INTRODUCTION I had the privilege of working under Professor Tony Smith's leadership of the Victoria University of Wellington Faculty of Law for some five years. Like many of my [...], Some university intellectual property policies claim the right to use some of the copyright-protected material that has been authored by academics. While the clauses in these policy instruments can vary in detail, the claim to use this material can extend to both traditional scholarly work, such as books and articles, together with teaching materials. This article considers whether the legal foundations for the claim are sound and whether the claim aligns with the characteristics of universities set out in the Education and Training Act 2020.

I. HUMAN SEX TRAFFICKING 479 A. CRIMES & DEFENSES RELATED TO HUMAN SEX TRAFFICKING. 480 B. FEDERAL REGULATION OF HUMAN SEX TRAFFICKING 482 II. NON-CONSENSUAL PORNOGRAPHY. 486 A. REGULATION OF [...]

INTRODUCTION 1270 I. CONCEPTUAL APPROACH 1275 A. Commonsense Ontology 1275 B. Categorization 1277 C. Conceptual Metaphor Theory 1279 II. REALITY METAPHORS 1281 A. Reality-is-Original; Representation-is-Copy 1281 1. Reality-is-Commons 1284 2. [...]

INTRODUCTION I. COPYRIGHT AND UTILITY PATENT BOUNDARIES: MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE OR OVERLAPPING? A. Baker v. Selden and the Birth of the Categorical Exclusivity Approach B. Commentary Endorsing Overlaps in Copyright and [...]

A computer program can be many things. As source code, it is unequivocally text and it is unpatentable written material. As text, it has syntactical structure, which allows a computer [...]

There we sat, incoming 1Ls, our last day of orientation, wide-eyed and attentive as the next speaker stepped to the podium. He embodied our vision of who we aspired to [...]

TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION I. GENRE THEORIES--METHODOLOGICAL NOTES II. THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE DETECTIVE STORY: A CASE STUDY III. THE BASIS FOR THE IDEA OF GENRE: STATIC APPROACHES OF CLASSIFICATION [...], One of copyright law's primary goals is the promotion of progress and development in arts and the enrichment of the world of expressions. Economic analysis is the predominant theory used to justify current copyright doctrines and to analyze the possible ways to accomplish copyright law's goals. However, economic analysis, as well as other theories, sometimes fail to account for existing copyright doctrines and to justify new ones due to a lack of empirical data. In the field of literary theory, we find theories that deal with genre and seek to explain, among other things, how art develops and how meaningful artistic products are created. This article offers a genre theory of copyright and examines if and to what extent the legal norm of copyright law, which governs the world of creativity, fits genre theories. It reviews several main copyright doctrines such as the idea/expression dichotomy, the scenes a faire doctrine, fair use, and the right to make derivative works. This article shows that while many copyright doctrines could be explained and justified under genre theories, the right to make derivative work does not fit this normative source and should be adapted.