Selective Enforcement

• Pages: 1165-1222
• Date: 01 May 2025
• Published date: 01 May 2025
• Author: Kristelia García
• Subject Matter: Derecho Civil

Selective Enforcement

KRISTELIA G´

ARCIA*

Private rights holders frequently engage in selective enforcement that is,

they elect to enforce against some wrongdoers, but not against others, under

different, or even similar, circumstances. The conventional wisdom assumes

that when we observe enforcement, there has been an economic loss, whereas

when we observe nonenforcement, there either hasn’t been an economic loss,

or the rights holder lacks suff‌icient resources to pursue a claim. Utilizing copy-

right law as a case study, this Article challenges these assumptions by showing

that some rights holders elect to enforce even when they haven’t suffered an

economic loss, just as some rights holders elect not to enforce even though

they have both experienced a tangible loss and possess adequate resources to

pursue a claim. Examination of these atypical enforcement decisions highlights

the heterogeneity of rights holders and improves our understanding of the

work that a legal regime is and isn’t doing in the relevant market.

—

Through analysis of a broad-ranging set of enforcement decisions made by

a particularly mercurial group of rights holders—copyright owners—this

Article explores the implications of selectivity in private enforcement, both

for private rights holders and the public, and updates our conventional

understanding of private enforcement as serving solely a compensatory,

deterrent, or eff‌iciency function. In doing so, it demonstrates that selective

enforcement shares some of the potential downsides observed in other forms

of private ordering—including, among others, anticompetitive behavior, bias,

and lack of transparency. In lieu of mandating enforcement—a “solution”

that brings its own problems—this Article proposes several temporal and re-

medial limitations intended to mitigate the most signif‌icant concerns.

Ultimately, this Article suggests that selectivity plays three additional and

underappreciated roles in private law: First, it highlights and emphasizes the

heterogeneity of rights holders as a class and identif‌ies the inherent conf‌lict

that arises with one-size-f‌its-all legislation. Second, it recognizes dignitary

harm and reinforces rights-holder autonomy, without regard to economic

loss. Third, it reveals valuable private information that can help lawmakers

improve statutory rights and remedies. These insights are applicable across

* Leo George Professor of Communications, Entertainment, and New Media, Georgetown Law. © 2025,

Kristelia Garcı

´a. This Article benef‌ited from generous and generative conversations with and feedback from:

Shyamkrishna Balganesh, Christopher Buccafusco, Julie Cohen, Tonja Jacobi, Sharon Jacobs, Yvette Joy

Liebesman, Mark McKenna, Manisha Padi, Margot Kaminski, Blake Reid, Matthew Sag, and Benjamin

Zipursky, as well as the participants at the 2023 Intellectual Property Scholars Conference, the Ninth

Copyright Scholars Roundtable, and faculty workshops at the University of North Carolina School of Law,

the Ohio State University Moritz College of Law, the University of Pittsburgh’s Future of Law in

Technology and Governance Seminar Series, and Emory University School of Law. Finally, a special thank

you to the students in my Spring 2024 Technology Law & Policy Colloquium at Georgetown Law, and to

Gina Maeng and Maddy Virga for excellent research assistance. All errors are my own.

1165

the private law spectrum, and suggest that private enforcement is a subject

ripe for further study.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1167

I. PRIVATE ENFORCEMENT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1171

A. STRUCTURE & OPERATION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1172

B. FUNCTION & DECISIONMAKING . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1173

II. THE COPYRIGHT CASE STUDY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1175

A. A PRIVATE LAW WITH A PUBLIC ORIENTATION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1175

B. RIGHTS CONSOLIDATION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1178

C. INTANGIBILITY & STATUTORY FENCING . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1178

D. ENFORCEMENT DECISIONS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1179

E. THE “WRONG OF COPYING”................................. 1183

1. Wrongs & Losses................................... 1183

2. Lossless and Benef‌icial Wrongdoing .................. 1184

III. SELECTIVE ENFORCEMENT IN COPYRIGHT: A TAXONOMY . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1186

A. STRATEGIC ENFORCEMENT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1188

1. Manipulative Enforcement........................... 1188

2. Delayed Enforcement ............................... 1190

3. Algorithmic Enforcement............................ 1193

B. DIGNITARY ENFORCEMENT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1196

C. BENEFICIAL NONENFORCEMENT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1199

1. Remedial Nonenforcement........................... 1199

2. Promotional Nonenforcement ........................ 1200

IV. AGAINST MANDATORY ENFORCEMENT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1202

A. POTENTIAL CONCERNS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1202

1. Anticompetitive Behavior ........................... 1202

2. Bias .............................................. 1204

1166 THE GEORGETOWN LAW JOURNAL [Vol. 113:1165

3. Transparency & Accountability....................... 1206

4. Confusion & Contra-Statutory Norm Setting ........... 1209

5. Public–Private Interest Divergence.................... 1210

B. PROSPECTIVE INTERVENTIONS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1211

1. Temporal Limits.................................... 1211

2. Remedies.......................................... 1215

V. THE ROLE OF SELECTIVITY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1216

A. RIGHTS HOLDER HETEROGENEITY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1216

B. RECOGNITION OF DIGNITARY HARM & RIGHTS HOLDER AUTONOMY . . 1217

C. INFORMATION PRODUCTION & PRIVATE POLICYMAKING . . . . . . . . . . . 1219

CONCLUSION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1221

INTRODUCTION

In 1977, the classic rock band Fleetwood Mac topped the charts with its hit

song “Dreams.”

1

See Keith Caulf‌ield, Chart Rewind: In 1977, Fleetwood Mac Hit No. 1 with ‘Dreams’, BILLBOARD

(June 18, 2015), https://www.billboard.com/pro/f‌leetwood-mac-dreams-anniversary (“Fleetwood Mac’s

smash single ‘Dreams,’ from the ‘Rumours’ album, topped the Billboard Hot 100 on June 18, 1977.”).

Forty-three years later, on September 25th, 2020—and in the

days immediately following—“Dreams” was streamed over twenty-f‌ive million

times on the popular social media platform TikTok.

2

Dylan Smith, Fleetwood Mac Wholeheartedly Embraces a Viral TikTok Video—Finds Millions of

New Fans in the Process, DIGIT. MUSIC NEWS (Oct. 6, 2020), https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/

2020/10/06/f‌leetwood-mac-tiktok-success [https://perma.cc/N5M2-A853].

This unexpected resurgence

of interest in the classic song owed to a user-uploaded video posted by

“@420doggface208,” since identif‌ied as Nathan Apodaca from Idaho Falls.

3

Doggface Gives the World a Smile with Juice, a Skateboard, and All the Vibes, TIKTOK:

NEWSROOM (Oct. 14, 2020), https://newsroom.tiktok.com/en-us/doggface-gives-the-world-a-smile-

with-juice-a-skateboard-and-all-the-vibes [https://perma.cc/5QAR-NUCL].

In

the video, Apodaca f‌ilms himself singing along to “Dreams” while he rides his

skateboard and drinks from a jug of Ocean Spray

TM

Cran-Raspberry juice.

4

Nathan Apodaca (@420doggface208), TIKTOK (Sept. 25, 2020), https://www.tiktok.com/@

420doggface208/video/6876424179084709126 [https://perma.cc/LU5P-YF2G].

At

the time the video was posted, neither TikTok nor Apodaca had negotiated a

license to use Fleetwood Mac’s song, such that all of the millions of resulting

streams arguably infringed the song’s copyright.

5

However, instead of bringing a

1.

2.

3.

4.

5. I say “arguably” because although fair use could be argued, it is unlikely to succeed in this case

where the use is neither transformative nor “competes” directly in the market for licensing. See, e.g.,

Andy Warhol Found. for the Visual Arts, Inc. v. Goldsmith, 598 U.S. 508, 532–33 (2023) (“In sum, the

f‌irst fair use factor considers whether the use of a copyrighted work has a further purpose or different

character, which is a matter of degree, and the degree of difference must be balanced against the

2025] SELECTIVE ENFORCEMENT 1167