“Access Denied,” Kristelia García, Georgetown Law Center

The evolution of digital content and streaming has both exacerbated long-standing challenges associated with access to content, and has introduced new ones. This project first adopts the position that ensuring access to content is an essential goal of copyright law. Using a series of contemporary examples, it then breaks streaming access challenges into three broad categories: (i) self-preferencing; (ii) “copysquatting”; and (iii) “disappearing.” The project concludes by considering the pros and cons of a series of possible interventions, including antitrust and regulatory access arrangements.

Kristelia García is the Leo George Professor of Communications, Entertainment, and New Media at Georgetown Law. García's academic work focuses on intellectual property law through the lens of law and economics. Her scholarly agenda is motivated by a series of related questions: How well do law and policy balance competing interests of users and creators? How should legal institutions respond when policies have unintended and undesirable consequences? How can we explain, and what (if anything) should we do about, situations where private ordering norms diverge from law and policy?