Rehabilitating the Property Theory of Copyright's First Amendment Exemption

59 Pages Posted: 2 Jul 2013 Last revised: 28 Feb 2014

See all articles by Tun-Jen Chiang

Tun-Jen Chiang

George Mason University School of Law

Date Written: July 1, 2013

Abstract

A continuing controversy in copyright law is the exemption of copyright from First Amendment scrutiny. The Supreme Court has justified the exemption based on history and the intentions of the Framers, but this explanation is unpersuasive on the historical facts.

There is an alternative explanation: copyright is property, and private property is generally exempt from scrutiny under standard First Amendment doctrine. Many scholars have noted this theory, but they have been uniformly dismissive towards it. For example, Mark Lemley and Eugene Volokh view the property theory as so clearly wrong as to be a “non sequitur,” because it supposedly implies that Congress can declare anything to be property and thereby circumvent the First Amendment.

This Article aims to rehabilitate the property theory. Contrary to its critics, the property theory does not say that anything labeled “property” is exempt, but rather contains two internal limits. First, the government-created rules of the property system must be neutral towards speech, though the private enforcement of those rules can be viewpoint-motivated. Second, even within the context of private enforcement, there must still be some protection against excessive ownership power. Understanding the property theory, including its internal limits, then provides a powerful legal justification for the Court’s treatment of copyright law — one that is far better than what the Court has itself articulated.

Keywords: copyright, First Amendment, property theory

JEL Classification: K11, O34

Suggested Citation

Chiang, Tun-Jen, Rehabilitating the Property Theory of Copyright's First Amendment Exemption (July 1, 2013). Notre Dame Law Review, Vol. 89, No. 2, pp. 521-577, 2013, George Mason Law & Economics Research Paper No. 13-41, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2288133

Tun-Jen Chiang (Contact Author)

George Mason University School of Law ( email )

Do you have a job opening that you would like to promote on SSRN?

Paper statistics

Downloads
168
Abstract Views
2,073
Rank
342,106
PlumX Metrics