Law Commons^™

Hip Hop And The Law : Presented By Intellectual Property Law Association 03/31/2022, Roger Williams University School Of Law

School of Law Conferences, Lectures & Events

No abstract provided.

The Ballad Of Hicks Carmichael: Law, Music, And Popular Justice In Urban Appalachia, William Davenport Mercer

Scholarly Works

This article examines a rare folk ballad to revisit an 1888 Tennessee trial that newspapers referred to as the fastest in the country in which the death penalty was involved. If we look at this event using court records and newspapers, it tells a regrettably common story of a court under pressure from the populace skirting the protections of law. However, if we consider the trial as a performative endeavor, we can rightly consider other performative events, like folk songs, not as reflective of official events but as equivalents that help provide insight into the larger motives behind the court’s …

What Is Cultural Misappropriation And Why Does It Matter? 03-31-2021, Roger Williams University School Of Law

School of Law Conferences, Lectures & Events

No abstract provided.

Indecency Regulation Of The Fcc And Censorship Law In Republic Korea: Comparison And Contrasts, Min-Soo "Minee" Roh

Upper Level Writing Requirement Research Papers

Regulating music on radio or television is not a straightforward process, as the music is comprised of lyrics of words. On top of the lyrics, any music performance has an additional layer of choreography and dress code. If any individual elements or combined elements is obscene or indecent, the government attempts to regulate broadcasting both music and performance. This leads to regulating general speech on communications and it requires this paper to look into regulation of broadcasting in general and specific examples of music broadcasting regulation on radio and television, particularly, in the United States (“States”) and in Republic of …

A ‘Bad Rap’: R. V. Skeete And The Admissibility Of Rap Lyric Evidence, Ngozi Okidegbe

Faculty Scholarship

The use of accused-authored rap lyric evidence is no longer rare in Canadian criminal proceedings. Adduced by Crown prosecutors, rap lyrics written or co-written by an accused are increasingly used in criminal trials as evidence of the accused’s intent, knowledge, motive, identity, or confession to the commission of the specific offence charged. The practice is not without controversy.¹ The introduction of an accused’s artistic work in the form of rap lyrics at trial engages trial fairness concerns. Without a keen awareness of the social and cultural context that produces rap music, trial actors risk inflating their probative value and …

A Riff On Billy The Kid, Richard H. Underwood

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

In this essay the author discusses Billy Joel’s recording of Billy the Kid and that song's history.

Patented Electric Guitar Pickups And The Creation Of Modern Music Genres, Sean M. O'Connor

Articles

This Essay provides an overview of how patents played a core role in developing world-changing musical genres. This may be surprising, as normally copyright law is associated with incentivizing advances in the creative arts. But as this Conference’s theme [The IP Platform: Supporting Invention and Inspiration] and presentations emphasize, the whole range of intellectual property (“IP”), especially when viewed as a platform, supports innovation across the spectrum of human ingenuity and creativity.

This Essay is also intended to be read in conjunction with a viewing of the live-music demonstration of how pickups transformed popular music, delivered at the Conference and …

No Bitin’ Allowed: A Hip-Hop Copying Paradigm For All Of Us, Horace E. Anderson Jr.

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

It is long past time to reform the Copyright Act. The law of copyright in the United States is at one of its periodic inflection points. In the past, major technological change and major shifts in the way copyrightable works were used have rightly led to major changes in the law. The invention of the printing press prompted the first codification of copyright. The popularity of the player piano contributed to a reevaluation of how musical works should be protected. The dawn of the computer age led to an explicit expansion of copyrightable subject matter to include computer programs. These …

The Future Of Music: Reconfiguring Public Performance Rights, Gary Myers, George Howard

Faculty Publications

This article focuses on two concrete measures to improve the music industry prognosis. Public performance rights have long been an important piece of the economic pie that helps support the music business. This article suggests that the scope of public performance rights should be fundamentally reassessed and expanded. This expansion involves two specific and complementary reconfigurations.

Expanding Preferential Treatment Under The Record Rental Amendment Beyond The Music Industry, Ryan G. Vacca

Law Faculty Scholarship

In January 2007, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals decided Brilliance Audio, Inc. v. Haights Cross Communications, Inc. and answered a lingering question concerning the Copyright Act that had persisted for over twenty years. The court decided whether the protections offered to the music industry under the poorly drafted Record Rental Amendment of 1984 also extended to audiobooks and other non-musical works. This Act deprives owners of items such as tapes and compact discs from renting those items to others without the consent of the copyright owners of the recorded song and the written lyrics and music - a right …

The Struggle For Music Copyright, Michael W. Carroll

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

Inspired by passionate contemporary debates about music copyright, this Article investigates how, when, and why music first came within copyright's domain. Ironically, although music publishers and recording companies are among the most aggressive advocates for strong copyright in music today, music publishers in eighteenth-century England resisted extending copyright to music. This Article sheds light on a series of early legal disputes concerning printed music that yield important insights into original understandings of copyright law and music's role in society. By focusing attention on this understudied episode, this Article demonstrates that the concept of copyright was originally far more circumscribed than …

Whose Music Is It Anyway? How We Came To View Musical Expression As A Form Of Property, Michael W. Carroll

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

Many participants in the music industry consider unauthorized transmissions of music files over the Internet to be theft of their property. Many Internet users who exchange music files reject this characterization. Prompted by the dispute over unauthorized music distribution, this Article explores how those who create and distribute music first came to look upon music as their property and when in Western history the law first supported this view. By analyzing the economic and legal structures governing music making in Western Europe from the classical period in Greece through the Renaissance, the Article shows that the law first granted some …

A Primer On U.S. Intellectual Property Rights Applicable To Music Information Retrieval Systems, Michael W. Carroll

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

Digital technology has had a significant impact on the ways in which music information can be stored, transmitted, and used. Within the information sciences, music information retrieval has become an increasingly important and complex field. This brief article is addressed primarily to those involved in the design and implementation of systems for storing and retrieving digital files containing musical notation, recorded music, and relevant metadata – hereinafter referred to as a Music Information Retrieval System (“MIRS”). In particular, this group includes information specialists, software engineers, and the attorneys who advise them. Although peer-to-peer computer applications, such as Napster’s MusicShare or …

Introduction: From Sheet Music To Mp3 Files—A Brief Perspective On Napster, Harold R. Weinberg

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

The Napster case is the current cause celebre of the digital age. The story has color. It involves music-sharing technology invented by an eighteen-year-old college dropout whose high school classmates nicknamed him "The Napster" on account of his perpetually kinky hair. The story has drama. Depending on your perspective, it pits rapacious big music companies against poor and hardworking students who just want to enjoy some tunes; or it pits creative and industrious music companies seeking a fair return on their invested effort, time, and money against greedy and irreverent music thieves. And the case has importance. Music maybe intellectual …