Copyright Comic Relief

Molly Shaffer Van Houweling, a law professor at the University of California, is my frontrunner for tortured academic writer of the year for her jargon-laden pudding of a paper entitled "Author Autonomy and Atomism in Copyright Law." You can read the abstract (and get the opportunity to download your own copy!) at http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/cf_dev/AbsByAuth.cfm?per_id=449531#show1422016.

From the abstract:

"The power and ubiquity of personal computing and the Internet have enabled individuals - even impecunious amateurs - to create and communicate in ways that were previously possible only for well-funded corporate publishers.... In this project I aim to place contemporary copyright atomism in historical and doctrinal context by documenting copyright law’s previous encounters with proliferated, distributed, and fragmented copyright ownership. Along the way I examine how copyright law has encouraged and discouraged atomism and managed its consequences. This history demonstrates the enduring relevance of my concerns within copyright policy, highlights countervailing interests, and provides a framework for thinking about how to alleviate the unfortunate consequences of atomism - and how not to."