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INTRODUCTION
Copyright: Legal and Cultural Perspectives (INF 390N.2) examines copyright from a number of disciplinary points of view. These include legal studies, cultural history, information studies, political and social history, literary studies, anthropology, public policy, science and technology studies, and other disciplines. We will use these multiple disciplines and their literatures to investigate how copyright in the United States has evolved. The cultural commons, ideologies of property and protection, shared cultural production, considering natural rights "vs." social bargain/statutory arguments for copyright, and identifying and protecting the public interest in information will be major themes of the semester's work.
The course has no prerequisites and is available to graduate students from all departments and schools.
The course will closely examine long-standing as well as current controversies in the ownership of so-called "intellectual property," aiming to prepare students to be competent practitioners in their professions, to be informed citizens, and to be well read in the field. Students will also develop strategies for professional and personal political action.
The course, as its title indicates, weaves together the study of the law of copyright with the study of cultural categories such as the "author," "the work," "property," and "creation." More specifically, the course will:
+ Consider Enlightenment assumptions about creation, knowledge, and social life
+ Review important court cases in copyright
+ Investigate the history of the concepts of the personal author and the "unitary work"
+ Examine appropriate statutes and major international copyright conventions
+ Explore the replacement of public law (copyright) by private law (contract and licensing)
+ Examine the replacement of first sale and ownership by licensing and leasing
+ Consider how copyright, privacy, and free speech are related
+ Investigate how the international context for copyright figures into its evolution; organizations such as the World Intellectual Property Organization and the World Trade Organization are especially important here
+ Explore the implications of the European Union's moves to copyright databases of "facts"
+ Help students engage papers in law reviews, legal journals, and other sources
+ Theorize the public domain as a major source of creativity and (shared) cultural expression
+ Explore ideologies of property, especially "intellectual property"
+ Consider how identity, cultural creation, and property are intermingled in both the creation and use of copyrighted works
+ Give students practice in the application of the law to particular circumstances
+ Consider the strengths and weaknesses of various disciplinary perspectives on copyright, cultural production, and property
+ Demonstrate how law evolves and is different across jurisdictions
+ Explore the concept of vicarious liability.
Among our goals this semester will be to make it clear that well-informed people often disagree about copyright in a number of ways, e.g., what the public interest in copyrighted works may be, what reasonable behaviors related to copyright might be, how best to encourage the creation and distribution of creative works, what the breadth and character of the public domain are, and what reasonable interpretations of the law may be.
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