Copyright as a Rule of Law Challenge
By Viktoria Kraetzig. The copyright/free speech conflict is inherent in copyright law: copyright grants its owners a limited monopoly on a work, which is also a communication content. If third parties copy the work, they might infringe copyright while invoking their fundamental right of free speech. The conflict arises because free speech doctrine does not distinguish whether someone speaks with own or other people’s words, whether something has been said for the first, second or hundredth time: speaking is speaking. And so is copying.
