A thoughtful exploration of how copyright law intersects with the First Amendment.
Could exposing a plot twist land you in court? Spurred by the uproar surrounding HBO’s Lanterns, the hosts examine the friction between copyright protection and free expression. They travel from Gerald Ford’s memoirs to the 2 Live Crew parody of “Pretty Woman” to illustrate how courts draw a line between protected creative work and mere facts or ideas—and when fair use allows borrowing from another creator. Along the way, they probe why retelling an ending differs from sharing a clip, how leaks of unpublished material complicate the analysis, and at what point a spoiler moves from bad manners to potential legal responsibility.
Also explore our previous episodes:
- Process as Penalty: ABC v. FCC with Stuart Benjamin
- Could AI Libel You? The Robby Starbuck Case
- Shrexting: Free Expression or Criminal Harassment?
- The First Amendment and Privacy Interests
- Defamacast and Beyond: How American Defamation Law Works
- Speech, Not Conduct: The Supreme Court’s View on Conversion Therapy
- Equal Time, Stephen Colbert, and the Trajectory of Political Broadcasting
- Student Expression, Threats, and the First Amendment
- Are Journalists Liable for Protesting? The Don Lemon Dilemma
- 2025: A Year in Free Speech Developments
- Does the First Amendment Shield So-Called “Addictive” Algorithms?
- Defamation Law in the AI Era with Lyrissa Lidsky
- Free Speech and the Future of Legal Education
- From Brandenburg to Britain: Reconsidering Free Speech in the Digital Age with Eric Heinze
- Kimmel, the FCC, and the State’s Power Over Broadcast Speech
- A Talk with Greg Lukianoff of FIRE
- A Burning First Amendment Issue: President Trump’s Flag Desecration Executive Order
- Free Speech and Doxing
- The Supreme Court’s Ruling on Protecting Children from Sexually Themed Online Speech
- Free Speech, Public School Students, and “There Are Only Two Genders”
- Can AI Companies Be Sued for What AI Says?
- Harvard v. Trump: Free Speech and Government Grants
- Trump’s War on Big Law
- Can Non-C citizens Be Deported for Their Speech?
- Freedom of the Press, with Floyd Abrams
- Free Speech, Private Power, and Private Employees
- Court Upholds TikTok Divestiture Law
- Free Speech in European (and Other) Democracies, with Prof. Jacob Mchangama
- Protests, Public Pressure Campaigns, Tort Law, and the First Amendment
- Misinformation: Past, Present, and Future
- I Know It When I See It: Free Speech and Obscenity Laws
- Speech and Violence
- Emergency Episode: The Supreme Court’s Social Media Cases
- Internet Policy and Free Speech: A Conversation with Rep. Ro Khanna
- Free Speech, TikTok (and Bills of Attainder!), with Prof. Alan Rozenshtein
- The First Amendment on Campus with Berkeley Law Dean Erwin Chemerinsky
- Free Speech on Campus
- AI and Free Speech
- Free Speech, Government Persuasion, and Government Coercion
- Deplatformed: The Supreme Court Hears Social Media Oral Arguments
- Book Bans—or Are They?
