Skip to content

Frank Pasquale

Amazon’s Pawns

I sometimes speculate at the end of my copyright class that, years hence, we’ll stop using a statutory supplement and just refer to the Amazon, YouTube, Facebook, etc. service agreements to find sources of legal authority. The cultural power of Google & Facebook gets a lot of media attention, and now Amazon is under renewed scrutiny. Wired highlights the business acumen of Jeff Bezos; Mac McClelland has told the story of the sweat it’s based on. Now The Nation is featuring an intriguing series on the company, with pieces by Robert Darnton, Michael Naumann, and Steve Wasserman (along with the slide show on 10 reasons to avoid Amazon). A few reflections on the series below:

1) Wasserman compiles an array of stats: according to the revised 2012 edition of Merchants of Culture, “in 2011 e-book sales for most publishers were “between 18 and 22 percent.” “Two decades ago, there were about 4,000 independent bookstores in the United States; only about 1,900 remain.” Publishers stand to be disintermediated, since too many have been “complacent, allergic to new ideas, even incompetent.” Amazon stands triumphant:

[By 2011], it had $48 billion in revenue, more than all six of the major American publishing conglomerates combined, with a cash reserve of $5 billion. The company is valued at nearly $100 billion and employs more than 65,000 workers (all nonunion); Bezos, according to Forbes, is the thirtieth wealthiest man in America

The aggregator has triumphed over the aggregated, and its own workers. As exposes revealed, “in one of Amazon’s main fulfillment warehouses in Allentown, Pennsylvania . . . employees risked stroke and heat exhaustion while running themselves ragged [and] [a]mbulances were routinely stationed in the facility’s giant parking lot to rush stricken workers to nearby hospitals.”

Read More »Amazon’s Pawns

The Problem of IP Overenforcement: Jason Mazzone’s Copyfraud

In my Boston Review piece on SOPA, I mentioned a sad story about a drawn-out copyright lawsuit’s effect on an entrepreneur. I should have also brought up a whole book on the problem of IP overenforcement, Jason Mazzone’s Copyfraud. Important on the day it was published, it’s particularly salient now that Congress is considering expanding the powers of copyright and trademark owners.

Mazzone argues that overenforcement of copyright is rampant:

False copyright notices appear on modern reprints of Shakespeare’s plays, Beethoven’s piano scores, greeting card versions of Monet’s Water Lilies, and even the U.S. Constitution. Archives claim blanket copyright in everything in their collections. Vendors of microfilmed versions of historical newspapers assert copyright ownership. These false copyright claims, which are often accompanied by threatened litigation for reproducing a work without the “owner’s” permission, result in users seeking licenses and paying fees to reproduce works that are free for everyone to use.

Mazzone’s book highlights an underappreciated problem of rights fabrication that threatens to become a form of private legislation. If the intellectual property system is to genuinely promote innovation and creativity, it will need to address the issues he describes. It should certainly do so before adopting the types of intrusive remedies proposed under SOPA/PIPA. Mazzone’s policy recommendations are wise and often original, both recognizing and building on a large law review literature on IP reform. As Mazzone has argued:

Read More »The Problem of IP Overenforcement: Jason Mazzone’s Copyfraud