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Writing Rights: Copyright’S Visual Bias And African American Music, Olufunmilayo B. Arewa
Writing Rights: Copyright’S Visual Bias And African American Music, Olufunmilayo B. Arewa
Olufunmilayo B. Arewa
Copyright was first applied to words and was initially visual in orientation. Since the earliest copyright laws, copyright subject matter has progressively expanded from granting rights to protect written expression to other artistic arenas. Copyright law has, however, consistently undervalued the art of performance while favoring the written expression of music, which has had a profound impact on African American based musical forms, now a dominant basis for popular music. This paper examines the privilege of sight in copyright and the numerous ways in which copyright law systematically disfavors performance and suggests two possible explanations. First, copyright law seems to …
Youtube, Ugc, And Digital Music: Competing Business And Cultural Models In The Internet Age, Olufunmilayo B. Arewa
Youtube, Ugc, And Digital Music: Competing Business And Cultural Models In The Internet Age, Olufunmilayo B. Arewa
Olufunmilayo B. Arewa
YouTube, Facebook, MySpace, and other websites that contain user-generated content (UGC) have become key reference points in broader debates about copyright in the digital era. UGC websites and other digital era players have created much destruction of cultural industry business models. The rise of Web 2.0 thus poses significant challenges to pre-digital era cultural industry business models, particularly because UGC may contain copyright protected content. The challenges of YouTube and other websites containing UGC and video content follow experiences in the music arena. The music industry was the first of the cultural industries to con- front the digital era, and …
Is Apple Playing Fair? Navigating The Ipod Fairplay Drm Controversy, Nicola F. Sharpe, Olufunmilayo B. Arewa
Is Apple Playing Fair? Navigating The Ipod Fairplay Drm Controversy, Nicola F. Sharpe, Olufunmilayo B. Arewa
Olufunmilayo B. Arewa
On April 2, 2007, Apple Inc. and EMI Music held a joint press conference in London that may be the harbinger of significant changes in the digital music arena. This press conference, whose attendees included EMI Group CEO Eric Nicoli and Apple CEO Steve Jobs, unfolded in an environment of significant technological and commercial changes in the music industry. The shift to the digital era has been a turbulent one for many players in the music industry, particularly as a result of the widespread distribution of unauthorized digital music files and the concurrent significant decline in record industry sales. The …
Open Access In A Closed Universe: Lexis, Westlaw, Law Schools And The Legal Information Market, Olufunmilayo Arewa
Open Access In A Closed Universe: Lexis, Westlaw, Law Schools And The Legal Information Market, Olufunmilayo Arewa
Olufunmilayo B. Arewa
This Article considers issues of open access from the context of the broader legal information industry as a whole. The structure and contours of the legal information industry have shaped the availability of legal scholarship and other legal information. The competitive duopoly of Lexis and Westlaw is a particularly important factor in considerations of open access. Also significant is the relationship between Lexis and Westlaw and law schools, which form an important market segment for both Lexis and Westlaw. This Article begins by considering the important role information plays in the law. It then notes the increasing industry concentration that …
From J.C. Bach To Hip Hop: Musical Borrowing, Copyright And Cultural Context, Olufunmilayo B. Arewa
From J.C. Bach To Hip Hop: Musical Borrowing, Copyright And Cultural Context, Olufunmilayo B. Arewa
Olufunmilayo B. Arewa
Musical borrowing is a pervasive aspect of musical creation in all genres and all periods. Copyright doctrine does not adequately reflect the reality of such borrowing. Instead, copyright doctrine incorporates notions of Romantic authorship that assume independent and autonomous authorship and even genius in the creation of original musical works. This individualistic and autonomous vision of musical authorship, which is central to copyright law, has deemphasized the importance and continuity of musical borrowing practices generally. The tension between conceptions of musical production and actual music practice is particularly highlighted in the case of hip hop music, which is now the …