Copyright and Content Management Syllabus (Spring 2021)

COPYRIGHT AND CONTENT MANAGEMENT: 2021 SYLLABUS

Professor Ira Steven Nathenson

St. Thomas University School of Law

Spring 2021, Law 965B, 3 credits (skills)

Email:	inathenson@stu.edu
Phone:	305-474-2454
Homepage:	https://www.nathenson.org/
Course website:	https://nathenson.org/courses/copyright/
Assignments	https://www.nathenson.org/courses/copyright/assignments
Class time:	Mon. & Wed. 10:45 a-12:15 p Online. See STU email for Zoom login info.
Office hours:	I hang around after each class when feasible. I am also available by phone, text, or Zoom meeting. I do not post the Zoom link or phone # here, look to your STU email for that contact info.

ABOUT COPYRIGHT & CONTENT MANAGEMENT

This course qualifies for skills credits.

Copyright law stands at the forefront of law of the digital era, fostering and sometimes frustrating the creation and dissemination of human culture. By providing exclusive—but limited—rights to “original works of authorship,” copyright protects not just traditional media such as books, songs, and movies, but also electronic works found in YouTube videos, streaming media, and computer code. Because copyright issues are so prevalent in modern society, a modern lawyer should have a solid grounding in copyright law. This course covers major topics in domestic copyright law, such as originality, authorship, ownership, duration, the exclusive rights, infringement, fair use, and enforcement. It also pays close attention to the interplay of technology and law. This course counts towards the St. Thomas Law Intellectual Property Law certificate program.

REQUIRED BOOKS

These are the required books. Only one of the items below will cost you money. The others are available for free.

1. Course Website: Site at https://nathenson.org/courses/copyright/. This website is your source for assignments, project information, and other materials. Details on the course website are provided below.
2. Jeanne C. Fromer & Christopher Jon Sprigman, Copyright Law: Cases and Materials, v2.0 (2020), available for free download at http://www.copyrightbook.org/. For the first week of class, you can print out the materials. After the first week, you must have a hard copy of the casebook, available for a mere $15 on Amazon, at https://www.amazon.com/Copyright-Law-Cases-Materials-v2-0/dp/B08BWFWXQR/. Make sure to purchase v.2.0 (2020).
3. I’ll provide access to statutes and other materials (such as the first day’s assignment) for free online.

COURSE WEBSITE; ASSIGNMENTS

Assignments and course-related materials will be posted to the course website at https://www.nathenson.org/courses/copyright.  In addition, selected course-related announcements and materials may be sent to your official St. Thomas Law email account. You are responsible for regularly checking your STU email.

GRADING

There is no final examination. As a skills course, your grade will be based on experiential projects (likely 75% of grade) and class participation (the remainder, i.e., 25% of grade).

For projects, the weight of each project will vary. Generally, early projects are formative and carry less weight, whereas later projects build on your skill level and carry greater weight.

For class participation, your score will be based on:

• Attendance (1/4 of participation). This generally means attending the entire class.
• Timeliness (1/4 of participation). This means being in your seat and ready for discussion once class begins.
• Discussant (1/4 of participation). This refers to your preparation, participation, and professionalism as a member of the class.
• Leader (1/4 of participation). This refers to your preparation, performance, and professionalism as a leader, moderator, or panelist.

LEARNING METHODOLOGY: SKILLS+

This is a skills course, but the real goal is to treat it as much more than a skills course.  It is intended to be one that integrates your learning—and I mean learning and not teaching—of copyright and content doctrine, theory, practice skills, and professional values.  I am a strong believer in the integrated approach, one that uses skills to teach law and doctrine, and that uses professional values to tie them all together.  So instead of learning doctrine in one class, ethics in another class, and skills in yet another class, I want to use them all, together, to better learn the law and to become a better lawyer.

LEARNING OUTCOMES, METHODOLOGIES, AND ASSESSMENT

Learning outcomes refers to skills, concepts, and other matters I want you to learn in our course.  Learning methodologies are the techniques we will use to learn these matters.  Assessment refers to the ways you will receive feedback to help you determine your level of success and to course-correct for improvement. As a skills course with multiple projects, assessment is primarily formative, i.e., feedback that occurs while the topic is still being studied.  This contrasts heavily with traditional doctrinal courses where assessment is primarily summative, i.e., feedback that occurs at the end of a course. St. Thomas Law lists our institutional learning outcomes here.

Learning Outcomes (the goal)	Learning Methodologies (the means)
Copyright law and theory (STU outcomes # 1-3): Examples include authorship, originality, ownership, registration, assignment and licensing, infringement, fair use and other defenses, and issues arising under digital copyright.  See assignments for more examples.	Reading, briefing, marking up, and discussing copyright cases and statutes, and using the Harkness method of group discussion.  Copyright doctrine will also be learned through practice-oriented skills projects such as drafting registration certificates, cease-and-desist letters, and more.
Integrating law and theory with practice skills and professional values (STU outcomes # 1-7): Developing basic practitioner proficiency in tasks common to copyright lawyers and tying professional values into copyright practice.	The copyright skills projects are designed to integrate the teaching of the four components of lawyering: doctrine, theory, practice skills and professional values.  For information on the MacCrate Report’s recommendation for integrated teaching of these components, see here.

CLASSROOM POLICIES

Class preparation: be prepared.

Pursuant to ABA Standard 310, you should anticipate spending a minimum of at least two hours out of class preparing for each hour of in-class learning. That means, among other things, carefully reading and preparing cases, marking up and dissecting statutes, and fully preparing any experiential assignments so that you are “ready to go” once we assemble as a group. Assigned materials should always be printed and brought with you, as laptops are not permitted during normal class segments. Should you come to class without marked-up cases and statutes, I will presume that you are not well-prepared. Further, whether you are a discussant or a leader, each and every one of you will be treated as an apprentice lawyer, and I — as your mentor — expect you to act as such. See the “On Preparation and Participation” section above for more detailed guidance.

Attendance: be there.

Class attendance. Class attendance is mandatory. In accordance with St. Thomas Law’s absence policy, you may only miss 20% of the classes. However, I strongly recommend that you do not miss that many classes. In addition to assigned materials, anything I say or that we discuss in class is fair game for quizzes and exams. Attendance means being in the classroom (whether that is in person or via Zoom for online synchronous classes), on time, and for those online, with your camera on and face showing.

Sign-in sheet: be honest.

Sign-in sheet as verification of your presence. (See note at end.) Attendance is taken by roll sheet passed around in each class. It is each student’s responsibility to personally sign the sheet (i.e., to certify their timely presence) during class. I provide the Registrar with a roll sheet for each class, and this is the exclusive measure of your attendance for that day. Do not come to me later and tell me you forgot to sign the roll sheet, and do not offer to show me your notes as proof that you were in class. Further, be aware that it is a serious violation of the Academic Integrity policy to sign in other people or to have others sign you in. The reason goes to the paramount value of honesty, which is one of the most important qualities of an aspiring attorney. In fact, we will study FRCP 11(b) regarding honesty in certification later this academic year. Note: regardless of the policy noted immediately above, for now, rather than passing around a sheet for everyone to handle, I will take attendance myself.

Late policy: be on time.

Be on time if you want to be “present.” Regardless of your signature on the sign-in sheet, to count as “present” for the attendance policy, you must be in the room, in your seat, and ready to start when class begins. If you are late, you may still enter the room, join class, and even sign the sign-in sheet, but you are not “present.” Instead, you must indicate the word “LATE” next to your signature on the sign-in sheet, which will indicate you were in the classroom but not “present” for the attendance policy. (Yes, that means you gotta be on time to be considered “present,” regardless of your physical presence in the classroom at some point. It also means you have a duty to self-report, which is part of the reality of being an ethical lawyer.) Although you have my sympathy if traffic or other impediments slowed your arrival to class, please note that there is not such thing as an “excused” late. Also note: I keep track of late entrants. Thus, should you not be on time and you nevertheless sign the attendance sheet without indicating you were late, I will strike your name from the attendance sheet for that class, and may take additional measures. Again, cf. FRCP 11(b) and FRCP 12(f).

Leaving the room: be real.

Leaving the room during class. We take a break during each class, so barring a genuine emergency, you should not leave the room while class is ongoing. Doing so without legitimate cause is disruptive to your classmates and to me. In addition, if you leave class early without permission or without a genuine emergency, your name may be stricken from the sign-in sheet.

Consequences of excess absences: they are significant.

Excessive absences, administrative F. If you are deemed absent from class more than five times, you will be dropped from the course with a failing grade. Please do not hesitate to contact me to let me know that you are ill, that your car broke down, or that a loved one had surgery. However, there is no such thing as an “excused” absence—whether for the above-listed or any other reasons—and I have no discretion in this regard. So please do not ask me to excuse an absence. Although I will have the greatest of sympathy for personal circumstances, it is your responsibility to monitor your absences, and if you anticipate missing more than 20% of any class, you are strongly advised to contact Dean Hernandez regarding the possibility of withdrawal before it is too late to do so. Moreover, since this is a skills class, much of what you’ll learn takes place in the classroom, and there is no substitute for being there, so I would strongly encourage you to miss as few classes as possible.

Email policy: check it regularly.

As a professional, you are responsible for checking your official STU email account regularly. From time to time, course-related announcements (such as new online materials or assignment revisions) will be sent to your official St. Thomas Law email account.

Disclosure, Candor, and Attribution policy: i.e., non-plagiarism: I take this stuff seriously, so read carefully.

We will discuss matters regarding your individual projects in class, and you may discuss ideas and the law with your classmates. However, any work product you hand in must be your own work. In limited circumstances, I will allow you to work from and adapt forms and other pre-existing materials. I will let you know in writing when you may use pre-existing materials. Except in the limited circumstance when I permit you to use pre-existing materials, any work product you hand in must be written and created solely by you. Any violation of this policy will be dealt with harshly and may in addition constitute a violation of the St. Thomas Law Honor Code. All students will be required to complete, sign, and return the Certification of Originality and Attribution form as part of submitting any project. This Certification is an important document that reflects strongly on your professionalism, and we will discuss what it means at length during the semester.

Technology policy.

This semester laptops and tablets will be permitted. Use them smartly, don’t be a stenographer and don’t allow yourself to get distracted.

Accommodations.

If any students believe they need, or are entitled to receive, any accommodations due to a disability they should consult with the Assistant Dean for Student Affairs (John Hernandez) as early as possible. Further information on accommodations can be found at http://www.stu.edu/law/students/disability-accommodations.