In response to one of the biggest issues facing Hollywood and the entire arts and entertainment industry — the far-reaching implications of new digital technologies for the future of creativity — leaders from entertainment, government and the legal profession convened March, 31, 2001, at USC’s Annenberg School for a summit to consider the issues and solutions to the conflicts between creators and distributors of artistic content.
The conference was sponsored by The Norman Lear Center, The Artists Rights Foundation, USC School of Law, USC Center for Communications Law and Policy, and USC School of Fine Arts, with a generous gift from Alan Sieroty.
Read the press release :|: Read about the book :|: Purchase the book & CD-Rom
Conference Overview
Panel Participants:
Marilyn Bergman, American Society of Composers, Authors, & Publishers (ASCAP) President & Chairman
Erwin Chemerinsky, USC Law School
Edward Damich, US Federal Claims Court Judge
Jared Jussim, Sony Pictures Entertainment Executive VP
I. Fred Koenigsberg, Counsel to ASCAP
Paul Mazursky, Film Director
Nicholas Meyer, Film Director & Screenwriter
John Perry Barlow, Electronic Frontier Foundation co-founder
Marybeth Peters, US Copyright Office Register
John Podesta, former White House Chief of Staff
Elliot Silverstein, Artists Rights Foundation President
Reverend Madison Shockley
Gigi Sohn, Adjunct Professor of Law, Yeshiva University
Harold Vogel, Adjunct Professor of Media Economics, Columbia University
Panel 1:
Opening remarks from Martin Kaplan and David Bollier and a panel discussion of Professor F. J. Dougherty’s case study, “A Vietnam Diary — Authorship, Collaboration, Persona Rights, Moral Rights, Conflicts Among Authors.” This case study was presented as a short film, Vietnam Story.
Click here to view the video on YouTube.
Panel 2:
Remarks from Professor Erwin Chemerinsky and a panel discussion of Professor Jane Ginsburg’s case study, “3 Dead Rats and Sound Recordings: Authorship, Ownership, Technological Protections and Digital ‘Private’ Copying.” This case study was presented as a short film, Three Dead Rats.
Click here to view the video on YouTube.
Panel 3:
Remarks from Elliot Silverstein, President of the Artists Rights Foundation, and a panel discussion of Arnold Lutzker’s case study, “A Little Cut, A Splash of Color, A Change of Mood – It’s Only a Movie! The Clash between Filmmaker and Film Owner Over Alteration in the Name of Commerce.” This case study was presented as a short film, Artista Speaks Out.
Click here to view the video on YouTube.
Panel 4:
Closing remarks from Professor Erwin Chemerinsky and Dean Ruth Weisberg, and a panel discussion of Sarah Diamond‘s case study, “Secret Mergers and Acquisitions: A Designers’ Game, or, Collective and Individual Creativity and Ownership in New Media Cross-Platform Design”.
The conference represented a year-long planning process by Martin Kaplan, director of The Norman Lear Center and associate dean of the USC Annenberg School for Communication; Erwin Chemerinsky, Sydney M. Irmas Professor of Public Interest Law, Legal Ethics and Political Science at the USC Law School; Ruth Weisberg, Dean of the USC School of Fine Arts; Elliot Silverstein, President, and Kathy Garmezy, Executive Director, of The Artists Rights Foundation; Lear Center staff Johanna Blakley, Caty Borum and Tim McKeon; and Amy Brotherton of the Artists Rights Foundation.
The Book
Artists, Technology & the Ownership of Creative Content, published by the Lear Center Press, explores the new digital environment and the impact of intellectual property rights on innovation and creativity. This publication, which includes a CD-ROM, is available for purchase online from the USC bookstore. Production of this book, which summarizes and expands on the conference, was funded by a gift to the Lear Center by the Center for the Public Domain, a nonprofit organization based in Durham, NC.
Read the Table of Contents :|: Read about the Authors
Praise for Artists, Technology & the Ownership of Creative Content
“A tour de force. Brilliantly argued, artistically rendered. This book cuts through the usual polemics on this complex and highly charged subject and engages the reader in the subtle twists and turns of the challenge the digital age forces us to re-consider how to honor and support the creative spirit.”
John Seely Brown
Former director of Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC)
Co-author of The Social Life of Information
____________________________________________________________
“In producing this book, the Lear Center has done a terrible thing. It has induced the pain of thought-honest, vexing, contradictory thought. It takes the reader to the edge of a precipice, where we gaze at the digital frontier and the many unanswered questions that dangle there. This is no legal or technological tome. In tech-speak, this book is reader-friendly. The writing is clear and vivid. We are reminded that technology can either be friend or foe; that the interests of creators sometimes clash with those of consumers or corporations. There are no glib answers, just important questions for the 21st century.”
Ken Auletta
Writer, The New Yorker
Author, World War 3.0: Microsoft and its Enemies;
The Highwaymen:Warriors on the Information Superhighway;
and Three Blind Mice: How the TV Networks Lost Their Way
____________________________________________________________
“Copyright and the control of creative work in the digital world is the most important policy issue that most important policy makers don’t yet begin to understand. In this book, the Lear Center has done something extraordinary: It has made understandable, to a world beyond lawyers, this vitally important topic, in a brilliant and beautiful form. Let this be the first of many such contributions to this important debate. This is, however, no doubt the first.”
Lawrence Lessig
Professor of Law, Stanford Law School
Founder, The Stanford Center for Internet and Society
Author, The Future of Ideas and Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace
____________________________________________________________
“This book is built around four evocative (and amusing) thought experiments illustrating the rich confusion that now arises when we take a song or film or other creative work and try to figure out who owns it, or for that matter, who made it. The fictive cases and David Bollier’s thoughtful essays on the problems they raise make a fine toolkit for anyone concerned to bring order back to the creative communities that have been so deeply disrupted by digital technology.”
Lewis Hyde
___________________________________________________________
The post Artists, Technology & the Ownership of Creative Content appeared first on The Norman Lear Center.