• Protects the ownership rights of creative works, including books, articles and lyrics
• With creative work classified as property, creative people have a legal right to derive income from their works by charging for their use

• creative works

• Digitizes 15 million English-language books for online idex access by Google
• the goal of the project was to create a single online index system with worldwide free access
• publishers sued and claimed that their intellectual property interests would be jeopardized through free online access to copyright-protected works not yet in the public domain
• Google and the Association of American Publishers reached a settlement in 2009

• grant of rights for a second party to use copyright-protected work

• 1798 laws with penalties for free expression
• these laws were for national security at a time of paranoia about a French invasion
• people were jailed and fined for crtiticizing govt leaders and policies
• people did not pay much attention to the first amendment until 1919 when the US supreme court decided a case on first amendment grounds

• prohibiting expression in advance
• In Near v. Minnesota (1931) the supreme court banned prior restraint which prevented the government in most situations from silencing someone before an utterance

• case in which the government attempted prior restraint against the New York times
• Supreme court overruled the govt 
• court argued that the people's right to know about govt defense policy was more important than the govt's claim that the NY Time's was jeopardizing national security

• John Brinkley: radio quack who challenged government regulation of radio
• Brinkley had a radio station, KFKB, where he promoted his goat-gland surgery
• Brinkley's only credentials were two mail-order medical degrees
• in 1930 KFKB's broadcast license was up for renewal by Federal Radio Commission
• American Medical Association wanted the license revoked
• Brinkley argued that the first amendment allowed him to speak freely on his medical views 
• Brinkley noted that congress had specifically forbidden FRC to censor
• FRC denied renewal
• Brinkley challenged the denial in federal court where the appeals court sided with the FRC, declaring that broadcast licenses should be awarded for serving "public interest, convenience and necessity."

• New York Times v. Sullivan: libel case that largely barred public figures from the right to sue for libel
• Libel: a written defamation

• pornography: sexually explicit depictions that are protected from government bans
• obscenity is material that can be restricted by the government but only if the answer is yes to the following questions concerning the content

- Would a typical person applying local standards see the material as appealing mainly for its sexually arousing effect?

-is the material devoid of serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value?

-is sexual activity depcited offensively, in a way that violates state law that explicitly defines offensiveness?