Copyright as Tort
-
Avihay Dorfman
In these pages we seek to integrate two claims. First, we argue that, taken to their logical conclusions, the considerations that support a strict form of protection for tangible property rights do not call for a similar form of protection when applied to the case of copyright. More dramatically, these considerations demand, on pain of glaring inconsistency, a substantially weaker protection for copyright. In pursuing this claim, we show that the form of protecting property rights (including rights in tangibles) is, to an important extent, a feature of certain normal, though contingent, facts about the human world. Second, the normative question concerning the selection of a desirable protection for creative works is most naturally pursued from a tort law perspective, in part because the normative structure of copyright law simply is that of tort law.
©2011 Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Article
- Introduction
- Copyright and Truth
- Copyrights as Incentives: Did We Just Imagine That?
- Copyright as Tort
- What Is a Copyright Work?
- Copyright and Social Movements in Late Nineteenth-Century America
- The "Extraordinary Multiplicity" of Intellectual Property Laws in the British Colonies in the Nineteenth Century
- Hebrew Authors and English Copyright Law in Mandate Palestine
- Is Copyright Property? -- The Debate in Jewish Law
- Bollywood/Hollywood
- Tailoring Copyright to Social Production
- Global Intellectual Property Governance (Under Construction)
- An Old-Fashioned View of the Nature of Law
Articles in the same Issue
- Article
- Introduction
- Copyright and Truth
- Copyrights as Incentives: Did We Just Imagine That?
- Copyright as Tort
- What Is a Copyright Work?
- Copyright and Social Movements in Late Nineteenth-Century America
- The "Extraordinary Multiplicity" of Intellectual Property Laws in the British Colonies in the Nineteenth Century
- Hebrew Authors and English Copyright Law in Mandate Palestine
- Is Copyright Property? -- The Debate in Jewish Law
- Bollywood/Hollywood
- Tailoring Copyright to Social Production
- Global Intellectual Property Governance (Under Construction)
- An Old-Fashioned View of the Nature of Law
