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4 - ©ensored

How Copyright’s First Amendment Exemption Enables the Powerful to Silence the Powerless

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 August 2025

John Tehranian
Affiliation:
Southwestern School of Law (Los Angeles)
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Summary

Chapter 4 identifies one of the most troubling developments in copyright law over the past generation: the surprising and remarkable story of how its exemption from First Amendment scrutiny has enabled powerful interests to cynically weaponize copyright as a forceful, state-backed vehicle of censorship to silence critics and suppress dissent. Thus, copyright has a growing free speech problem – one that threatens to undermine both the vitality of our regime governing the use of creative works and our most basic free speech rights. After surveying the growing use of copyright law to stifle legitimate discourse on issues of racism, religious discrimination, reproductive rights, gay rights, corruption, torture, and police brutality, the chapter examines the conditions empowering such lawfare and considers how we might better ensure that copyright law stops serving as a transparent censorial proxy enabling the powerful to silence the powerless and, instead, returns its focus to vindicating the appropriate economic interests of rightsholders.

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Chapter
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The Secret Life of Copyright
Intellectual Property and Inequality in the Age of AI
, pp. 140 - 170
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2025

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  • ©ensored
  • John Tehranian, Southwestern School of Law (Los Angeles)
  • Book: The Secret Life of Copyright
  • Online publication: 08 August 2025
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009347044.005
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  • ©ensored
  • John Tehranian, Southwestern School of Law (Los Angeles)
  • Book: The Secret Life of Copyright
  • Online publication: 08 August 2025
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009347044.005
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • ©ensored
  • John Tehranian, Southwestern School of Law (Los Angeles)
  • Book: The Secret Life of Copyright
  • Online publication: 08 August 2025
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009347044.005
Available formats
×