The Emergence of Intellectual Property Norms and the Transformation of Stand-Up Comedy
OLIAR_SPRIGMAN_BOOK 11/10/2008 4:48 PM VIRGINIA LAW REVIEW VOLUME 94 DECEMBER 2008 NUMBER 8 ARTICLES THERE’S NO FREE LAUGH (ANYMORE): THE EMERGENCE OF INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY NORMS AND THE TRANSFORMATION OF STAND-UP COMEDY Dotan Oliar and Christopher Sprigman∗ INTRODUCTION................................................................................. 1789 I. THE LAW DOES NOT PROTECT STAND-UP COMEDIANS EFFECTIVELY.............................................................................. 1795 A. Practical Barriers to Copyright Enforcement ................... 1799 B. Doctrinal Barriers to Copyright Enforcement.................. 1801 1. Fixation........................................................................... 1801 ∗ Authors are Associate Professors, University of Virginia School of Law. Thanks to Oren Bar-Gill, Stefan Bechtold, Yochai Benkler, Lillian BeVier, Mario Biagioli, Thomas Cotter, Rochelle Dreyfuss, Brandon Garrett, James Gibson, Scott Hemphill, Jody Kraus, Mark Lemley, Paul Michael Levitt, Michael Madison, William McGev- eran, Paul Mahoney, John Monahan, Caleb Nelson, Dan Ortiz, Frank Pasquale, Kal Raustiala, Glen Robinson, Pam Samuelson, Suzanne Scotchmer, Steven Shavell, Lior Strahilevitz, Eric Von Hippel, Christopher Yoo, and participants at the 2008 annual meeting of the American Law and Economics Association, the 2008 Intellectual Property Scholars Conference, and workshops and colloquia at the University of Cali- fornia, Berkeley, the University of Minnesota, the University of Virginia, the Rad- cliffe Institute at Harvard, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zürich, Tel Aviv University and the Hebrew University, Israel for helpful comments and conversa- tions. Thanks also to Jonathan Ashley, Dave Brown, Ben Doherty, Tim Hagen, Travis Mock, Michelle Morris and Matthew Prince for research assistance, and to Dwight Bowers and Julia Garcia of the Smithsonian Institution for their assistance with archival materials. A special thanks to Brady Cox for his fine research assistance, especially regarding historical materials.
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