COPYCENSE

We presume Twitter is devoid of any seriousness, but we realized we unintentionally opened a can of thorny theoretical and doctrinal questions last week when we posted the following rhetorical question (or, rather, something quite similar) to our account:

Is copyright an exception to the public domain, or is the public domain is an exception to copyright?

Granted, we’re currently engaged in a project that has us pondering this sort of question in the first place. But we think your answer to this question says a lot about your normative view of the copyright regime. While we have some thoughts about how we may approach answering this question, we do not have an opinion as to which answer (or underlying rationale) is “correct,” if any answer is “correct” at all.

Ultimately, though, since copyright officially touches so many aspects of contemporary, everyday life (for example, see John Tehranian’s interesting analysis of this issue), we think this is a question that people affected by copyright should consider and answer.

Copycense™: Incisive IP.™