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Full-Text Articles in Law
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 …
The Rise Of Nollywood: Creators, Entrepreneurs, And Pirates, Olufunmilayo B. Arewa
The Rise Of Nollywood: Creators, Entrepreneurs, And Pirates, Olufunmilayo B. Arewa
Olufunmilayo B. Arewa
The rise of Nollywood illustrates the revolutionary potential of digital technologies in Africa. Nollywood, or the Nigerian video film industry, reflects technology leapfrogging that is increasingly prominent in Africa today. Such leapfrogging, however, may raise significant issues with respect to legal and other institutions. Film production had largely ceased in Nigeria by the end of the 1980s. Despite this absence, in the early 1990s, Nigeria started on a path that has led it to become the top producer of digital video films in the world. Nigeria is, however, an unlikely locale for the development of a major film industry. In …
Creativity, Improvisation, And Risk: Copyright And Musical Innovation, Olufunmilayo B. Arewa
Creativity, Improvisation, And Risk: Copyright And Musical Innovation, Olufunmilayo B. Arewa
Olufunmilayo B. Arewa
The goals and beneficiaries of copyright frameworks have long been contested in varied contexts. Copyright is often treated as a policy tool that gives creators incentives to create new works. Incentive theories of copyright often emphasize appropriability, which enables copyright owners to ensure that they profit from their copyrighted works by exercising control over uses of, and access to, such works. Although copyright clearly imposes costs in the form of restrictions on access to copyright-protected works and inefficiencies in the form of deadweight loss, the benefits of copyright are thought by many to outweigh the costs. Copyright discussions may at …
Blues Lives: Promise And Perils Of Musical Copyright, Olufunmilayo B. Arewa
Blues Lives: Promise And Perils Of Musical Copyright, Olufunmilayo B. Arewa
Olufunmilayo B. Arewa
The application of copyright law to music has long been fraught with complexities and continuing problems. Problems in the application of copyright to blues music have come to pass, in part, as a result of the peculiar ways in which copyright has been applied to nonvisual technologies of musical creation and reproduction. In the nineteenth century, music creation and reproduction reflected a live performance tradition, within a commercial context in which sheet music was the dominant form of fixed musical reproduction. Although copyright has been an inexact fit for music generally, in a world in which sheet music was the …
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 …
Valuable Asset Or Vibrant Force? Intellectual Property And Conceptions Of Culture, Olufunmilayo B. Arewa
Valuable Asset Or Vibrant Force? Intellectual Property And Conceptions Of Culture, Olufunmilayo B. Arewa
Olufunmilayo B. Arewa
Discussions of intellectual property as property often implicitly rely upon conceptions of value that give primacy to economic and business value while dismissing or even ignoring questions of cultural value. Questions of cultural value are, however, fundamental to discussions of intellectual property today. Discussions of intellectual property often emphasize treating cultural material as valuable assets and highlight the role of intellectual property in protecting such assets. Valuable asset models of culture accentuate the business and economic utility of intellectual property assets. Valuable asset approaches, however, typically reflect an incomplete understanding of the roles of culture and the intersection of culture …
The Freedom To Copy: Copyright, Creation And Context, Olufunmilayo B. Arewa
The Freedom To Copy: Copyright, Creation And Context, Olufunmilayo B. Arewa
Olufunmilayo B. Arewa
Although much separates them musically, George Harrison and Michael Bolton share a common legal fate. Both have been held liable in copyright infringement cases in which a court articulated theories of liability based on subconscious infringement. This Article discusses how decisions in the Bolton, Harrison, and other copyright infringement cases reflect a common failing. Such decisions highlight the incomplete nature of the theories of creativity and creation processes in copyright doctrine. After discussing current approaches to questions of creation, this Article suggests ways in which copyright theory can better incorporate a contextualized understanding of creativity and creation processes. Creativity in …
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 …
Culture As Property: Intellectual Property, Local Norms And Global Rights, Olufunmilayo B. Arewa
Culture As Property: Intellectual Property, Local Norms And Global Rights, Olufunmilayo B. Arewa
Olufunmilayo B. Arewa
Intellectual property frameworks today reflect an increasing emphasis on framing knowledge and culture within a property rights paradigm. This tendency is evident in all sides of current debates about global intellectual property frameworks. Intellectual property frameworks have historically reflected accommodation and balance between local and global influences as well as private and public interests. An ethos of propertization strains both balances. The imbalance between the local and global and public and private is exemplified in current treatment of local knowledge under global intellectual property frameworks. This article examines the tensions between local and global norms, legal and otherwise, and private …
Copyright And Borrowing, Olufunmilayo B. Arewa
Copyright And Borrowing, Olufunmilayo B. Arewa
Olufunmilayo B. Arewa
Borrowing is a norm in much cultural production that should be better incorporated into copyright doctrine. Copyright doctrine governs both the creation and distribution of cultural works, such as literary texts and musical works. Consideration of borrowing and copyright largely relates to the creation side of copyright. A number of terms may be used to illustrate the ways in which new cultural texts relate to existing cultural texts. Further, a significant commentary exists in fields such as literary theory and musicology that discusses and analyzes the significance of such relationships. Terms such as borrowing, self-borrowing, transformative imitation, quotation, allusion, homage, …
Strategic Behaviors And Competition: Intangibles, Intellectual Property And Innovation, Olufunmilayo B. Arewa
Strategic Behaviors And Competition: Intangibles, Intellectual Property And Innovation, Olufunmilayo B. Arewa
Olufunmilayo B. Arewa
Intangibles such as intellectual property rights are an increasingly important source of value for businesses today. This increasing importance has significance for the uses of intangibles by companies and the mechanisms and behaviors by which companies extract value from intangibles. The manners in which holders of intellectual property rights wield such rights can play an important role in shaping the effective functioning of intellectual property frameworks. Although intellectual property rights may serve as important tools of innovation, empirical evidence shows that in many industries intellectual property protection is not a primary means by which innovation is protected. Moreover, increasingly pervasive …
Copyright On Catfish Row: Musical Borrowing, Porgy & Bess And Unfair Use, Olufunmilayo B. Arewa
Copyright On Catfish Row: Musical Borrowing, Porgy & Bess And Unfair Use, Olufunmilayo B. Arewa
Olufunmilayo B. Arewa
Treatment of musical borrowing under current copyright standards is far too often inequitable. This is evident in the works of George Gershwin, who, for a number of reasons, was able to borrow freely from existing traditions, works and artists, copyright the works he produced that reflected such borrowings, and then restrict future borrowings and reinterpretations of his works. The operation and the uses of copyright in the specific instance of George Gershwin’s musical practice reflect actual uses of copyright in the musical arena and demonstrates some ways in which current copyright frameworks may not adequately contemplate actual practices of music …
Trips And Traditional Knowledge: Local Communities, Local Knowledge, And Global Intellectual Property Frameworks (Trips Symposium), Olufunmilayo B. Arewa
Trips And Traditional Knowledge: Local Communities, Local Knowledge, And Global Intellectual Property Frameworks (Trips Symposium), Olufunmilayo B. Arewa
Olufunmilayo B. Arewa
Intellectual property treatment of traditional or local knowledge is a major issue of contention today, particularly since the implementation of the TRIPs Agreement, which establishes minimum levels of intellectual property protection for members of the World Trade Organization. Discourse surrounding local knowledge is highly charged with accusations of "piracy" from Western countries countered with allegations of "biopiracy" from Third World countries. Flowing beneath the surface of this dialogue are multiple levels of historical experience. Intellectual property frameworks were formed in the nineteenth century during a period when evolutionary views of the development of human societies were paramount. Local knowledge was …
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 …