Copyright for Literate Robots

Type Report Author James Grimmelmann URL https://papers.ssrn.com/abstract=2606731 Place Rochester, NY Date 2015/05/15 Accessed 2016-11-23 03:18:26 Institution Social Science Research Network Report Type SSRN Scholarly Paper Library Catalog papers.ssrn.com Abstract Almost by accident, copyright has concluded that copyright law is for humans only: reading performed by computers doesn't count as infringement. Conceptually, this makes sense: copyright's ideal of romantic readership involves humans writing for other humans. But in an age when more and more manipulation of copyrighted works is carried out by automated processes, this split between human reading (infringement) and robotic reading (exempt) has odd consequences and creates its own tendencies toward a copyright system in which humans occupy a surprisingly peripheral place. This essay describes the shifts in fair use law that brought us here and reflects on the role of robots in copyright's cosmology. Report Number ID 2606731