Professor Tom W. Bell publishes “Copyright Porn Trolls, Wasting Taxi Medallions, and the Propriety of ‘Property’”
October 6, 2015
Chapman University Dale E. Fowler School of Law Professor Tom W. Bell’s article, “
Copyright Porn Trolls, Wasting Taxi Medallions, and the Propriety of ‘Property’
,” was recently published in Fowler School of Law’s
Chapman Law Review
(Volume 18, Number 3).
From the abstract:
What happens when the government creates privileges that have powers rivaling those that the common law accords to property? Recent events in two seemingly unrelated areas suggest a troubling answer to that question. First, in copyright, porn trolls have sued thousands of John Does for allegedly participating in illegal file sharing. These suits evidently seek not judicial vindication but merely the defendants’ identities, which the plaintiffs then use to reap settlement payments from guilty and innocent alike. Second, taxi drivers in cities across the world have launched legal, political, and physical attacks against Uber and other networked transportation services, accusing their new competitors of stealing customers and destroying the value of taxi medallions. Both conflicts arise from the same basic problem: copyrights and taxi medallions more resemble privileges than property. They not only lack property’s natural, customary, and common law roots; they also suffer from fuzzy and ill-defended boundaries. These deficiencies make it economically inefficient to protect copyrights and taxi medallions with remedies equal to or greater than those that protect property. Liability for damages should suffice. These and other insights follow when we analyze copyrights and taxi medallions as statutory privileges and reserve “property” for other, more deserving subjects.
Professor Tom W. Bell
specializes in high-tech legal issues and has written widely on intellectual property and internet law. His latest book,
Intellectual Privilege: Copyright, Common Law, and the Common Good
, was published in 2014. Professor Bell received his JD from the University of Chicago Law School, where he served both as a member of the
University of Chicago Law Review
and as Articles Editor and cofounder of the
University of Chicago Legal Roundtable
. Prior to joining Fowler School of Law, among other positions, Professor Bell was an attorney with the Silicon Valley law firm of Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati and served as Director of Telecommunications and Technology Studies at the Cato Institute in Washington, D.C. In addition to writing a steady stream of scholarly works, Professor Bell has appeared on or been quoted in
The
Wall Street Journal
, CNN,
Los Angeles Times
and many other news sources. He teaches Intellectual Property, an Advanced Seminar on Copyright Law, Property Law and Contract Law, among other courses. Other recent works include “
What Can Corporations Teach Governments About Democratic Equality?
”
Social Philosophy and Policy
(2015), and “
Entrepreneur’s Survival Guide to Trademarks, Patents & More
,” an online video course presented by Udemy.