Volume 73

Issue 1

JOURNAL OF THE COPYRIGHT SOCIETY
VOLUME 73(1) (Winter 2026)

TABLE OF CONTENTS

From the Desk of the Editor-in-Chief ……………………………v

PART I: ANNUAL LECTURES AND SPECIAL PANELS

2025 Donald C. Brace Memorial Lecture
Headaches in Perpetuity: Collisions Between Copyright Laws and Statutory Protections for Cultural Heritage
By Scott Martin……………………………………………………….……….1

2025 Christopher Meyer Memorial Lecture
The Copyright Act Never Goes Out of Fashion
By David Nimmer…………….………………………………………………53

Special Mid-Winter Panel for
the 50th Anniversary of the 1976 Copyright Act, Part 1
A Brief History of Copyright Revision
By Justin Hughes, Eric J. Schwartz, and Molly Shaffer Van Houweling, ………….………………………………………………..77

PART II: ARTICLES

Featured Article: Authorship Nonsense
By Jessica Litman ………………………………………………………….101

Reflections On The Use And Misuse Of Economic
Analysis In Copyright
By Glynn S. Lunney, Jr. ……………………………………………………175

How Long Does It Take For Copyright Law To
Catch Up With Technology? Some Data Points
From The Music Industry
By Bill Rosenblatt and Howie Singer………………………………………204

Training On Trial: Insights From Bartz And Kadrey
By Barbara Bruni…………………………………………………………..253

The Uneasy New (Artificial Intelligence) Relationships:
Tech, Publishers, And Authors In Academic Publishing
By Agnes Beatrice Gambill West………………………………………… 291

PART III: NEWS AND UPDATES

What We’re Watching…………………………………..…………………353
By Eric Dolente

Administrative Updates…………………………………..…………….…365

Editor's Note

The year 2026 finds us at the 50th Anniversary of the 1976 Copyright Act, and all year, we are celebrating, reflecting, and creating. And this issue kicks that off. Part I includes our two annual lectures, the Brace and Meyer Memorial Lectures. The Brace lecture was given by Scott Martin, who recently retired from Paramount Studios after 33 years. His lecture, Headaches in Perpetuity: Collisions Between Copyright Laws and Statutory Protections for Cultural Heritage, explores the intersection of cultural heritage laws and copyright with real-world examples. The Christopher Meyer Lecture was given by David Nimmer, titled The Copyright Act Never Goes Out of Fashion, and suggests that the amendments to the 1976 Copyright Act–successful and failed–could be categorized as “two decades of decline” and the “depths of stealth amendments.” And we requested one of the mid-winter panels to allow us to publish the session, as it goes with our theme for the year, The Copyright Revision Process, organized and moderated by Eric Schwartz, with Molly Shaffer Van Houwling, and Justin Hughes. It’s really fun, and we’ve added a bunch of sources to it as well.

Part II turns to the articles for the issue, which all assess in some way the state of copyright under the 1976 Copyright Act. We start with Authorship Nonsense by Jessica Litman, who examines how copyright law handles authorship disputes, and suggests that courts feel “uncomfortable with severally-authored works,” which she sees as “nonsense, neither well-reasoned nor probative, and obfuscate the identity of the author and owner of a copyrighted work. We then turn to Glynn Lunney, Jr.’s article, Reflections on the Use and Misuse of Economic Analysis in Copyright, which I asked if he would write for the 50th anniversary of the 1976 Copyright Act. He takes a look at Study No. 2 by William Blaisell, and assesses the economic soundness of his approach, concluding that Blaisell’s argument that copyright creates national wealth or jobs or a favorable balance of trade is without merit. The third article, How Long Does It Take For Copyright Law to Catch Up with Technology? Some Data Points from the Music Industry, by Bill Rosenblatt and Howie Singer, explores the development of six technologies as they development and their intersection with the law, suggesting that it takes laws at least eight years to catch up. The fourth article, Training on Trial: Insights from Bartz and Kadrey by Barbara Bruni looks at the recent AI and fair use cases. The fifth article, The Uneasy New (Artificial Intelligence) Relationship: Tech, Publishers, and Authors in Academic Publishing by Agnes Gambill West looks at the challenging ethical norms of using AI in academic publishing, and reviews five publishers’ policies.

Part III takes a brief look at recent news as a listicle, written by Eric Dolente, one of our Copyright Society Fellows and a law student at Drexel University. It’s been a busy time. We briefly summarize the Vetter case, Sony v. Cox, and so much more.

And so, 2026 begins with a full issue. We celebrate the 1976 Copyright Act, we engage with the issues of the day, and we continue to be a place for cutting-edge scholarship.

Elizabeth Townsend Gard
Editor-in-Chief, Journal of the Copyright Society
John E. Koerner Endowed Professor of Law
Tulane University Law School
eic@copyrightsociety.org