Humor a greenhorn a moment

    I'm grading my first exam ever. Since we studied performance rights and sound recordings, I've probably asked the class 3 or 4 times "Why doesn't [a certain action] infringe X's performance right in his sound recording?"

    Because there are no performance rights in sound recordings!, I told them (though soon they started telling one another). By the end, I was feeling dorky for repeating it so often.

    The very third paper I'm grading: "KINF has made an unauthorized public performance violating the sec. 106(4) rights of the composers and sound recorders."

    OK, OK, I know you've seen much worse before . . . .

• Eugene Volokh, UCLA Law <volokh[_at_]law.ucla.edu>