Joseph Liu (Law)

Promoted to associate professor with tenure

JD, Columbia University

Faculty member since 2001

Specialization: Intellectual property; the law and the Internet; contracts

Representative publication: “Copyright and Time: A Proposal” (Michigan Law Review, 2002)

“There’s uncertainty about whether the existing copyright law system is good enough to deal with the challenges of digital technology and the Internet or whether we’re going to have to replace it with something else. I’m taking a close look at how the Internet is changing the pattern of consumption of copyrighted works. In the same way that digital technology makes it easier for people to make copies cheaply and quickly, it also holds out the potential for empowering consumers to engage more actively with a copyrighted work: for example, remixing music, editing it in their own ways, adapting it for personal use. It’s an incredibly dynamic area of the law. Reading up on it got me interested initially, but things change so quickly that it’s hard to keep up. The Internet itself makes it easier: listservs, current awareness services. But it’s very much a moving target.”