Copyright And Creativity

A fresh, innovative, thought provoking look at the development of copyright law as it pertains to creativity and one that will give even the most experienced reader fresh insight into this tangled area of law. The author s language ability (German, English, French) and interdisciplinary background (law and music) combine to enable him to add significant analytical depth to the subject. A must read in a time when our creative industries are being called upon to help re-build our shattered economy. Charlotte Waelde, University of Exeter, UK Professor Rahmatian is perhaps uniquely placed to offer a complete rethinking of the nature and function of copyright. Working with original materials in original languages, he spans the continental and common law traditions in a breathtaking synthesis of the varied justifications and uses (or misuses) of the concept of creativity as property. Paul J. Heald, University of Georgia, US Copyright and Creativity discusses the making of property out of creative works through the legal mechanism of copyright. It shows the manner in which the law translates a great variety of expressions of the human mind into its normative system and transforms them into the property right of copyright or droit d auteur. This timely book examines the proprietary features of copyright, the inherent limitations of its powers, and its justification and relationship to the non-proprietary realm of the public domain. The final parts of the book deal with the propertisation/commodification of human authors themselves through their works as alienable objects of property, the well-known Romantic author critique as a sophisticated justification of that commodification, and at an international level, neo-feudal and neo-colonial developments as a result of this process. This detailed study will appeal to undergraduate and postgraduate students, legal sociologists, and specialists in copyright, property theory, or legal theory and political philosophy with particular interest in property theory. Practitioners within bodies involved in legal policy, organisations concerned with law reform, European institutions, and international organisations will also find much to interest them in this book.

These collected chapters and interviews explore the current issues and debates about how copyright will or should adapt to meet the practices of 21st-century creators and internet users. The book begins with an overview of copyright law basics. It is organized by parts that correspond to creative genres: Literary Works, Visual Arts, Fine Art, Music, Video Games and Virtual Worlds, Fashion, and Technology. The chapters and interviews address issues such as copyright ownership in work created by Artificial Intelligence (AI), the musical remix market, whether appropriation is ever a fair use of a copyrighted work or if it is always theft, and whether internet- based platforms should do more to deter piracy of creators’ works. Each part ends with an essay explaining the significance of one or two landmark or trendsetting cases to help the reader understand the practical implications of the law. Written to be accessible to both lay and legal audiences, this unique collection addresses contemporary legal issues that all creators need to understand and will be essential reading for artists, designers, and musicians as well as the lawyers who represent them.

The Supreme Court of the United States in Feist v. Rural (1991) required that databases must have a minimal degree of creativity for copyright. The judgment was highly significant and the subsequent period is understood as the post-Feist era. It has been globally influential. However, the decision is extremely complex and remains unsatisfactorily interpreted. In particular, it has been impossible to illuminate the creativity requirement. The book gives an account of the decision’s conceptual structure, focusing on its full delineation of the opposite to creativity. In a radical and unprecedented innovation, it is correlated with an automatic computational process. Creativity itself is understood as non-computational or directly human activity concerned with meaning. Determining the presence of creativity is reduced to a four-stage test. This work then has acute practical current relevance to property in data in the digital age; it will also be of theoretical interest to, and is aimed at, researchers in, practitioners, and students of intellectual property worldwide.

Inspired by Strunk & White's The Elements of Style, this elegant, short reference is the perfect guide for screenwriters and creative artists looking to succeed as industry professionals. Readers will quickly understand the laws that govern creativity, idea-making, and selling, and learn how to protect themselves and their works from the legal quagmires they may encounter. Written by an unrivaled pair of experts, John L. Geiger and Howard Suber, who use real-life case studies to cover topics such as clearance, contracts, collaboration, and infringement, Creativity and Copyright is poised to become an indispensable resource for beginners and experts alike.

What is the relationship between creativity, cultural heritage institutions and copyright? Who owns culture and cultural heritage? The digital age has expanded the horizon of creative possibilities for artists and cultural institutions - what is the impact on legal regimes that were constructed for an analogue world? What are the tensions between the safeguarding of cultural heritage and the dissemination of knowledge about culture? Inspired by a three year research project involving leading European universities, this book explores the relationship between copyright and intellectual property, creativity and innovation, and cultural heritage institutions. Its contributors are scholars from both the humanities and the social sciences - from cultural studies to law - as well as cultural practitioners and representatives from cultural heritage institutions. They all share an interest in the contribution of intellectual property to the role of cultural institutions in making culture accessible and encouraging new creativity.

Reconciling Copyright with Cumulative Creativity: The Third Paradigm examines the long history of creativity, from cave art to digital remix, in order to demonstrate a consistent disparity between the traditional cumulative mechanics of creativity and modern copyright policies. Giancarlo Frosio calls for the return of creativity to an inclusive process, so that the first (pre-modern imitative and collaborative model) and second (post-Romantic copyright model) creative paradigms can be reconciled into an emerging third paradigm which would be seen as a networked peer and user-based collaborative model.

In this text, the author tracks the history of American copyright law through the 20th century, from Mark Twain's exhortations for 'thick' copyright protection, to recent lawsuits regarding sampling in rap music and the 'digital moment', exemplified by the rise of Napster and MP3 technology.

Copyright, Creativity, Big Media & Cultural Value: Incorporating the Author explains why copyright is much more than a creator's private property right or a mechanism through which corporations control cultural production and influence mass consumption choices.