Article: The truth about contracts

Kevin Smith has written a very good article entitled "The truth about contracts", which touches on contracts, licenses and copyright law.  In it, Smith wrote:

Another reason librarians might think that contracts are formal and serious is because they hear so often that contracts “trump” copyright law. Since copyright law is a very important federal law, contracts must be an even more serious matter to trump it. But, actually, we allow contracts to supersede copyright law not because they are so “big” but because they are small. U.S. Copyright law binds every person who is subject to its jurisdiction, but a contract binds only the parties who agree to it. A contract is a “private law” arrangement by which two parties (or sometimes more) rearrange their own relationship.

The entire post addresses misapprehensions in the academic world about contracts and is definitely worth reading.