Legal Commentary

Overtly cutesy article titles annoy me. It?s a particularly severe problem with student notes. Yes, it may have been Bluebooked top-to-bottom and back-to-front. But why didn?t anyone ever pull the author aside and say, ?Kid, about that title ? ?? I keep a file of terrible article titles, a file full of bad puns, out-of-context song lyrics, and failed jokes. Lately, I?ve noticed a worrying trend of ill-considered titles for articles about the YouTube copyright litigation. That YouTube?s defenses are in part based on the Section 512 ?safe harbor? from copyright liability has inspired not just the usual bad names, but some truly regrettable nautical puns:

• Jason C. Breen, YouTube or YouLose: Can YouTube Survive a Copyright Infringement Lawsuit?, 16 Tex. Intell. Prop. L.J. 151 (2007)
• Amy R. Mellow, ? And the Ruling on the Field is Fair: A Fair Use Analysis of Uploading NFL Videos onto YouTube and Why the NFL Should License Its Material to the Website, 17 S. Cal. Interdis. L.J. 173 (2007)
• Michael Driscoll, Will YouTube Sail into the DMCA?s Safe Harbor or Sink for Internet Piracy?, 6 J. Marshall Rev. Intell. Prop. L. 550 (2007)
• Lauren Brittain Patten, From Safe Harbor to Choppy Waters: YouTube, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, and a Much Needed Change of Course, 10 Vand. J. Ent. & Tech. L. 179 (2007)
• Kurt Hunt, Copyright and YouTube: Pirate?s Playground or Fair Use Forum?, 14 Mich. Telecomm. Tech. L. Rev. 197 (2007)
• Jonathan J. Darrow & Gerald R. Ferrera, Social Networking Web Sites and the DMCA: A Safe-Harbor from Copyright Infringement Liability or the Perfect Storm?, 6 Nw. J. Tech. & Intell. Prop. 1 (2007) (Messrs. Darrow and Ferrera are actually professors, and ought therefore to know better.)
• Trevor Cloak, Note: The Digital Titanic: The Sinking of YouTube.com in the DMCA?s Safe Harbor., 60 Vand. L. Rev. 1559 (2007) (?At its current heading, YouTube, The Digital Titanic, is drifting towards an iceberg and will soon be leaving the placid safe harbor of the DMCA and entering the rocky seas of copyright liability.?)

Titles like these do authors no favors. Even when the article itself is solid scholarship, using such a silly title is like starting off a lecture by hitting yourself in the face with a cream pie. It?s hard to take what follows seriously.