Modernizing Copyright Law for the Digital Age: Constitutional Foundations for Reform
by Randolph J. May and Seth L. Cooper
The book is now available from Amazon here or from Carolina Academic Press here.
About the Book
In Modernizing Copyright Law for the Digital Age:
Constitutional Foundations for Reform, Randolph May and Seth Cooper connect
constitutional principles and historical insights to recommendations for
updating U.S. copyright law to meet the challenges of the Digital Age.
Copyright owners and copyright-intensive industries are vital engines of
prosperity in our Digital Age economy. But current U.S. copyright law fails to
protect adequately copyrighted works from infringement enabled by modern-day
digitization and Internet connectivity. The law needs updating to curb the
billions in economic losses caused annually by bad actors in America and
abroad.
In reforms grounded in constitutional principles, Modernizing Copyright Law
for the Digital Age addresses areas such as international trade, public
contracts, private contracts, compulsory licensing and rate regulation,
antitrust, and so-called moral rights. This timely book details steps that
Congress should consider for updating copyright policy in hot-topic areas,
including music royalties, Copyright Office reform, civil enforcement, criminal
enforcement, and international protections.
The book is now available from Amazon here or from Carolina Academic Press here.
A Reader on Net Neutrality and Restoring Internet Freedom
by Randolph J. May and Seth L. Cooper
The book is available on Amazon here. And on Kindle here.
An Ebook version is available from various digital bookstores. Click here.
#NetNeutralityReader
About the Book
In December 2017, the Federal Communications Commission adopted its landmark Restoring Internet Freedom Order that repealed the public utility-like regulations which were applied to broadband Internet service providers by the Obama Administration’s FCC. The Restoring Internet Freedom Order’s return to a light-touch broadband Internet policy fosters free market competition and helps to secure the Internet’s future. The FCC’s action enhances consumer welfare and encourages economic investment and technological innovation by all the participants in the Internet ecosystem. Importantly, the FCC’s decision also establishes a regulatory framework that ensures consumers are protected from anticompetitive conduct as well as from unfair and deceptive trade practices.
In the context of offering a convincing defense of the FCC’s Restoring Internet Freedom Order,this volume provides a wealth of information and key insights into the long-running debate surrounding “net neutrality” regulation. The selected writings in this Reader explore both legal and policy rationales that support the FCC’s December 2017 action. They explain why the FCC’s pro-consumer, pro-investment, pro-innovation approach to regulation of broadband Internet services that was adopted in the Restoring Internet Freedom Order should be preserved.
The book is available on Amazon here. And on Kindle here.
An Ebook version is available from various digital bookstores. Click here. #NetNeutralityReader
#CommActUpdate – A Communications Law Fit for the Digital Age
by Randolph J. May and Seth L. Cooper
The book is available on Amazon. Click here.
An Ebook version is available from various digital bookstores. Click here.
About the Book
America needs a new communications law fit for the Digital Age. More than twenty years have passed since the last major revision to the Communications Act. Since then, the communications marketplace has been dramatically reshaped by increasing competition and technological convergence centered around Internet-based voice, video, and data services. Yet innovation and investment in high-speed broadband networks are constrained by regulatory restrictions that often date back to the 1930s, or even earlier.
The need for a modernized law is all the more pronounced given the Federal Communications Commission’s historical reluctance to remove outdated regulatory restrictions. In the past, the FCC often has sought to regulate new digital communications services in competitive markets without clear statutory justification or sufficient economic analysis. Delay in adopting a modernized Communications Act runs an increasing risk of chilling innovation and investment, impeding market competition, and harming consumer welfare.
A vibrant future for digital communications services and the Internet requires reform that is pro-innovation, pro-free market, pro-consumer, and consistent with the rule of law. Based on those guiding principles, #CommActUpdate – A Communications Law Fit for the Digital Age offers a roadmap for a comprehensive update of federal communications law. The book is comprised of six scholarly responses submitted by the Free State Foundation to an earlier congressional process considering an overhaul of the Communications Act, along with a Preface and lengthy up-to-date Introduction providing a wealth of background information and context. The book prescribes specific reforms for areas such as broadband policy and Internet oversight, competition policy, network interconnection, spectrum management, universal service, and video services regulation.
The Constitutional Foundations of Intellectual Property
A Natural Rights Perspective
by Randolph J. May and Seth L. Cooper
About the Book
Protection of intellectual property (IP) rights is indispensable to maintaining a vibrant economy, especially in the digital age as creativity and innovation increasingly take intangible forms. Long before the digital age, however, the U.S. Constitution secured the IP rights of authors and inventors to the fruits of their labors. The essays in this book explore the foundational underpinnings of intellectual property that informed the Constitution of 1787, and it explains how these concepts informed the further development of IP rights from the First Congress through Reconstruction. The essays address the contributions of important figures such as John Locke, George Washington, James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, Noah Webster, Joseph Story, Daniel Webster, and Abraham Lincoln to the development of IP rights within the context of American constitutionalism.
Claims that copyrights and patents are not property at all are in fashion in some quarters. This book’s essays challenge those dubious claims. Unlike other works that offer a strictly pragmatic or utilitarian defense of IP rights, this book seeks to recover the Constitution’s understanding of IP rights as ultimately grounded in the natural rights of authors and inventors.
What Others Are Saying About the Book!
“A fascinating, illuminating and insightful exploration of the roots of intellectual property law in America. Essential for students, teachers and practitioners in the field. Intellectually sound and highly readable.” — Theodore Olson, Solicitor General of the United States, 2001-2004
“The current proposals for copyright and patent reform are often stated in an impatient manner, as if there were only one side to a difficult problem. It is therefore refreshing to have this book by Randolph May and Seth Cooper that offers a careful and instructive exploration of the larger natural law foundations of modern intellectual property law and shows how the traditional concerns of the natural lawyers lend added weight to the soundness of the current IP system.” — Richard Epstein, Laurence A. Tisch Professor of Law and Director, Classical Liberal Institute, New York University School of Law
“Given the importance of the protection of intellectual property rights to our nation’s economy and to innovation and investment, this book addressing the constitutional foundations and philosophical underpinnings of IP rights provides a valuable antidote to the all too prevalent and damaging populist view that ‘information wants to be free.’” — Robert Atkinson, President, Information Technology & Innovation Foundation
“I loved the book, and I hope it finds a large audience. Over the years, I’ve had many people tell me my interpretation of the Constitution’s Intellectual Property Clause was wrong. Hopefully, this new book by Randolph May and Seth Cooper, with its scholarly yet highly readable treatment, will refocus the debate about IP rights on first principles and our Founders’ intentions.” Marybeth Peters, Register of Copyrights of the United States, 1994-2011.
“This is an essential volume for anyone who cares about the Constitution and intellectual property. The Framers thought intellectual property was important enough to provide for its protection expressly in the Constitution. This book provides invaluable insights into the Framers’ decision and should inform contemporary debates about the nature of that protection.” Paul Clement, Solicitor General of the United States, 2005-2008
“Randolph May and Seth Cooper have authored a welcome addition to the literature on intellectual property rights. Well-researched and clearly written, this book provides an invaluable historical perspective that will contribute significantly to the ongoing debates about the conceptual underpinnings of copyright and patent law.” — Cary Sherman, Chairman and CEO of RIAA
“Finally, two talented authors add intellectual heft to the ongoing debate about the true nature of copyright—as an exclusive private property right, or as a limited right to be doled out stingily, riddled with exceptions and limitations, to be given away free-of-charge. It has become fashionable in some academic circles to treat copyright exclusivity as a quaint but outmoded notion, and its advocates as hopeless naïfs. But Mr. May and Mr. Cooper, by going back to first principles and natural rights, show us that an exclusive property right is at the heart of copyright protection. Their learned analysis should be widely read, especially by Members of Congress and judges, to help them understand the true nature of the debate and the deep roots of the copyright pedigree as a natural private property right—historically unique, socially revolutionary, and worth fighting for. Three cheers for Messrs. May and Cooper!” — Ralph Oman, Register of Copyrights of the United States, 1985-1993
Book Events
Federalist Society Teleforum, October 22, 2015.
Video of FSF Book Seminar at the National Press Club, October 26, 2015.
Articles and Commentaries About the Book
Why Intellectual Property Rights Matter – The Founders Believed Ownership of One’s Labor Is a Natural Right, by Randolph J. May and Seth L. Cooper in The Washington Times, September 3, 2015.
Lincoln, Labor and Intellectual Property Rights, by Free State Foundation President Randolph J. May and Senior Fellow Seth L. Cooper, in The Washington Examiner, September 7, 2015.
Appreciating Intellectual Property Rights on Constitution Day, by Free State Foundation President Randolph J. May and FSF Senior Fellow Seth L. Cooper, in The Hill, September 17, 2015.
The Constitutional Foundations of Intellectual Property, by Free State Foundation President Randolph J. May and FSF Senior Fellow Seth L. Cooper, in The Washington Examiner, October 5, 2015.
NOTE: The book is available for purchase on Amazon. Click here.
The book is also available for purchase from Carolina Academic Press. Click here.
Communications Law and Policy in the Digital Age: The Next Five Years
by Randolph J. May
The book is available on Amazon. Click here.
An Ebook version is available from various digital bookstores. Click here.
About the Book
The marketplace and technological changes that have occurred since the last major revision of the Communications Act in 1996 have rendered existing law and policy woefully outdated, if not obsolete. In the past fifteen years there has been a switch from analog to digital services, from narrowband to broadband networks, and, most importantly, from a mostly monopolistic to a generally competitive environment. In Communications Law and Policy in the Digital Age: The Next Five Years, some of the nation’s most eminent scholars explain why communications law and policy should be changed in response to these profound marketplace transitions. And, as importantly, the contributors explain how law and policy should be changed.
There are many specific reform proposals offered in this collection of essays. Given the competition that has developed across most communications markets, the recommendations generally call for less government regulation and more marketplace freedom. With its forward-looking proposals, the book should be particularly valuable not only for academics and students, but for policymakers and law practitioners as well. Topics covered in the chapters include broadband and Internet policy, net neutrality regulation, spectrum policy and spectrum auctions, wireless regulation, universal service reform, public media reform, a new Digital Age Communications Act, and the political economy of communications reform.
The contributors, each of whom is a recognized expert on the subjects they address, are: Representative Marsha Blackburn, Michelle Connolly, Seth Cooper, Ellen Goodman, Daniel Lyons, Randolph May, Bruce Owen, James Speta, and Christopher Yoo.
A Call for a Radical New Communications Policy: Proposals for Free Market Reform
by Randolph J. May
The book is available on Amazon. Click here.
About the Book
Randolph May is one of the nation’s most oft-quoted, widely recognized authorities concerning communications law and policy. In this book, May brings his decades of experience to bear in proposing a radical new communications policy paradigm. The essays in this book demonstrate that the current regulatory regime, especially as administered by an overzealous FCC, is hopelessly outdated. Witness the FCC’s recent adoption of “net neutrality” mandates to assert regulatory control over Internet providers. Still based on legacy analog-era techno-functional constructs that establish different regulations for “telephone,” “cable,” “satellite,” “broadcasting,” and “wireless” companies, the existing policies no longer makes sense in a digital world in which convergence and competition characterize the marketplace. Consumers are ill-served. And important constitutional values, especially free speech rights, are compromised. In A Call for a Radical New Communications Policy, May offers bold proposals for reforming our nation’s communications policies in accordance with free market and constitutionalist principles – in other words, he offers a clear roadmap for a new free-speech friendly Digital Age Communications Act.
New Directions in Communications Policy
by Randolph J. May
The book is available on Amazon. Click here.
New Directions in Communications Policy is a collection of original essays by some of the nation’s most prominent law and economics scholars. The essays address the most topical, controversial, and important communications law and policy topics. In the midst of remarkable technological, marketplace, and regulatory changes, the authors discuss Internet regulation and net neutrality, mass media and broadband policy, the First Amendment and the Fairness Doctrine, universal service subsidies, institutional reform of the FCC, and continuing problems with the implementation of the landmark Telecommunications Act of 1996. In addition to providing the context necessary to understand the topics discussed, every essay contains specific reform recommendations. These forward-looking recommendations comprise a practical guide for policymakers as they struggle to update communications policies to conform to the realities of the digital age. And the essays comprise a rich literature for students exploring the ins-and-outs of communications policy. The contributors, each of whom is nationally recognized as a leading expert on the subject of their essays, are: Gerald Brock; Diane Disney; Richard Epstein; Randolph May; John Mayo; Bruce Owen; Glen Robinson; James Speta; Dennis Weisman; Steven Wildman; and Christopher Yoo.