The Columbia Journal of Law & the Arts

Cover and Front Matter

Columbia Journal of Law & the Arts — 2026-03-31

Vol. 49 No. 3 (2026)

Columbia Journal of Law & the Arts — 2026-03-31

The Sooner the Better? How to Optimize Bargaining Power When Serving Notice of Copyright Termination

Rachel R. Altemose — 2026-03-31

Cancelling Copyrights

Barbara Lauriat — 2026-03-31

In the United States, registering a claim of copyright in a work of authorship is easy. Cancelling an existing copyright registration is not. This is a problem that requires attention. This Article makes those three important points and suggests what should be done.

U.S. copyright registration confers important benefits and legal protections on copyright owners. In any intellectual property regime with registered rights, mechanisms for correcting the record and removing rights granted in error are integral components of a functional system. While courts have the power to cancel invalid trademark registrations and patents, they do not have the power to cancel invalid copyright registrations, and the Copyright Office has no process that would allow third parties to challenge existing registrations. Copyright registrations may only be cancelled at the discretion of the Register of Copyrights. Consequently, few registrations are ever cancelled.

In this Article, we show that the lack of procedures for cancelling copyright registrations has contributed to an improperly high level of inaccuracy and error on the registry. This situation compromises a fundamental purpose of the registration system and has the potential to cause real harm. Using specific case examples and an empirical study of cancellation data from the Copyright Office, we demonstrate how and why the current mechanisms for correcting the registration record at the Copyright Office are inadequate. Finally, we recommend a series of legal and practical changes that would enable registration and recordation to serve their principal aims of providing accurate information and clearing title to support markets in works of authorship.

It’s Not “Personal”: Health Information Disclosure and the Physical- Mental Distinction

Yaron Covo — 2026-03-31

For almost eight decades, U.S. sports leagues have disclosed information about athletes’ health with the stated goal of protecting the integrity of sports from bettingrelated manipulations. The leagues’ treatment of such information, however, has been inconsistent: When professional athletes miss games due to physical injuries, leagues usually disclose such injuries in great specificity. By contrast, when players miss a game due to mental health issues, their absence is simply attributed to “personal reasons.”

This Article documents this disparity and situates it within existing regulatory frameworks in the areas of privacy law, disability law, and sports betting regulation. The Article’s main argument is that this practice cannot be justified on either factual or normative grounds. On the factual side, we review medical research showing that a stark dichotomy between “physical” and “mental” health is incompatible with the modern recognition that the body and the mind are interrelated systems. On the normative side, we argue that treating mental health issues as “personal reasons” may exacerbate the preexisting stigma surrounding mental health, may imply that mental health issues are not “real,” and may obscure the sports leagues’ responsibility for such issues.

To address these problems, this Article proposes several alternative methods of disclosing health status, taking into account the importance of preserving athletes’ autonomy in regard to their mental health reporting. We conclude by discussing how the implications of this analysis may extend beyond the sports arena.

The Platformization of Music

Ramsay Eyre — 2026-03-31

The story of the twenty-first century music industry has been one of platformization. While musical records were formerly sold as discrete physical units, or alternatively heard on the radio, listeners’ primary mode of engagement with recorded music has become almost completely replaced by online streaming platforms, which offer access to entire catalogs of recorded music for a subscription fee or for free with advertisements.

This Article argues that recorded music is now a platform industry. This transformation has had significant consequences. Long-standing problems in the music industry have been magnified, including determining fair compensation through the copyright system and the consolidation of copyright ownership in both recording and publishing. They have also been supplemented by new problems stemming from the platform model of distribution: discriminatory, opaque, and declining compensation for musicians; user surveillance; the discriminatory treatment of musicians through platform placement; and new implications for the heterogeneity of musical culture.

Addressing the challenges of the music industry’s platformization will require adapting and applying tools from the law of networks, platforms, and utilities (“NPU”), including rate regulation, nondiscrimination rules, and structural separations. These policies, some of which already govern parts of the music industry but are limited in scope, could help counter the harmful effects of platform power in music. Public options and cooperative governance also provide promising avenues and may be preferable to the regulation of private streaming platforms alone. Viewing music streaming as a platform industry suggests well-established legal and policy tools that advocates can use to build a healthier and fairer system of commerce to support musical culture.