Creativity and Copyright

US Constitution, Article I, Section 8, Clause 8

"The Congress shall have power ...
To promote the progress of science and useful arts,
by securing for limited times to authors and inventors
the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries."

Introductory Readings

1. The Right to Read, by Richard Stallman,
   Communications of the ACM, v.40, n.2, 1997.
2. The Purpose of Copyright, by Lydia Pallas Loren,
   Open Spaces Quarterly, v.2, n.1, 1999.
3. The Heavenly Jukebox, by Charles Mann,
   Atlantic Monthly, v.286, n.3, 2000.
4. Reclaiming the Commons, by David Bollier,
   Boston Review, v.27, n.3, 2002.
   A good, short overview of arguments made more extensively in his
   Silent Theft: The Private Plunder of Our Common Wealth.
5. Nine-Tenths of the Law: The English Copyright Debates and the Rhetoric of the Public Domain
   by Mark Rose, Law and Contemporary Problems, v.66, n.1&2, 2003.

Additional References

1. DMCA = Digital Millennium Copyright Act, 1998,
   Title II -- Online Copyright Infringement Liability Limitation.
2. US Copyright Office
3. Association of Research Libraries' Copyright Information
4. Creative Commons.
   "Get Creative" and "Then Things Really Got Interesting"
   offer Flash-based animations about the history and goals of this initiative.
5. Ten Big Myths About Copyright Explained, Brad Templeton.
6. University of California Copyright Web Site
   http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/copyright
7. Copyright Information from UCI HumaniTech
8. © Primer from University of Maryland University College (Requires Flash)
9. Geneva Declaration on the Future of World Intellectual Property Organization
10. Fair Uset Network

Additional Insight from
God bless you, Mr. Rosewater; or, Pearls before Swine,
by Kurt Vonnegut, 1965.

Additional Readings

• Digital Rights Management {and, or, vs.} the Law, by Pamela Samuelson,
  Communications of the ACM, v.46, n.4, 2003
  See also her (Powerpoint) tutorial with the same title.
• The Digital Dilemma: Intellectual Property in the Information Age,
  by the Computer Science and Telecommunications Board of the
  (United States) National Academies, 2000.
• Intellectual Property from Daedalus, Spring 2002.
  1. The law & economics of intellectual property by Richard Posner.
  2. Fencing off ideas by James Boyle.
     (An earlier, shorter form of his article cited below.)
  3. The Rise of Intellectual Property, 700 B.C. - A.D. 2000: An Idea in the Balance by Carla Hesse.
  4. On Diderot & Condorcet by Arthur Goldhammer.
  5. Letter on the book trade by Denis Diderot, excerpts translated by Arthur Goldhammer.
  6. Fragments concerning freedom of the press by Marquis De Condorcet, excerpts translated by Arthur Goldhammer.
  7. Property & privilege in the republic of letters by Roger Chartier, translated by Arthur Goldhammer.
  8. Pop music pirate hunters by Adrian Johns.
• The Public Domain from Law and Contemporary Problems, Winter-Spring 2003.
  1. The Second Enclosure Movement and the Construction of the Public Domain by James Boyle.
     (A later, fuller form of his article cited above.)
  2. Mapping the Digital Public Domain: Threats and Opportunities by Pamela Samuelson.
• Tales from the Public Domain: BOUND BY LAW? (a comic book) from the Duke University Law School's Center for the Study of the Public Domain/
• University of California References
  1. University of California Copyright Web Site
     http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/copyright
  2. University of California Standing Committee on Copyright
     http://www.ucop.edu/copyright/
  3. Digital Copyright Protection at the University of California
     http://www.ucop.edu/irc/policy/copyright.html
  4. UCI Fall 2003 Letter to Faculty and Staff
  5. UCI Fall 2003 Letter to Students
  6. UCI Computer and Network Use Policy
     http://www.policies.uci.edu/adm/pols/714-18.html
  7. Students' Understanding Copyright Policy at UCI
     http://eee.uci.edu/help/student/copyright/
  8. Disabling Outward Filesharing (UCI Residential Housing Network):
     http://resnet.uci.edu/p2p_page1.html

Digital Rhetoric -- Elizabeth Losh -- 9 October 2007  
 
HumaniTech:
http://www.humanities.uci.edu/humanitech/
 
HumaniTech copyright page: 
http://www.humanities.uci.edu/humanitech/copyright/
 
Sources for public domain images:
http://www.arts.uci.edu/vrc/page12a.htm#FairUse
 
Sources for images, videos, music in the public domain:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
 
What is fair use?
http://www.humanities.uci.edu/humanitech/copyrightworkshop.html
 
Overview of copyright, public domain, and fair use from Duke Law:
http://www.law.duke.edu/cspd/comics/
 
Youtube's guidelines:
http://www.youtube.com/t/howto_copyright
 

Situtations for further discussion

The Classic Triangle

The "Players": Musician (composer/creator), Student (audience/consumer/fan), Record Company Executive (publisher/intermediary/channel).
Student copies CD of Musician's work produced by RCE and shares/distributes it.

Web/Print

After getting permission from the professor of a course to print and use materials from the course website, a student takes an image of Picasso's Three Musicians from that site, prints it, and uses it for the front cover of a program for a local concert.

Educational Use

A member of the faculty in Classics who is teaching a course on "Heroes" wants the course website to include a 10 minute clip from "Blade Runner." He calls a friend at Time-Warner to ask her if he needs permission to do so.

Student Creativity

Students have group project to create a website for their graphics class website. They discuss various media they'll be including. They now understand basic concepts of copyright, fair use, public domain, etc, and are ready to apply them. How are they going to draw their own lines between the spirit of copyright and being a good net citizen? In other words, what digital dilemmas are they facing? Also, what do they want to do to protect their own website?

Coda (midi, mp3) and its context.

Barbara L. Cohen, Stephen D. Franklin

Comments are welcome.
Also http://snurl.com/creativitycopy
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