The Future of Copyright and Entertainment

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Topic owners: Joe, Miriam

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Changing trends in Consumption & Creation of Music and other Performance Art

We are beginning to see more and more choices for where and how to get copyrighted music. Gone are the days when it was either download illegally on programs such as Limewire or pay for them on iTunes. In some instances, copyright is even receding as a battleground issue altogether. In this session, we would be exploring how these new avenues of music consumption & creation might affect the way we experience music in our day to day lives--and just what exactly copyright has to do with any of it. The following are a few examples of some points of tension.

First, we may consider the rise of alternative marketplaces for music. There have been attempts at creating new marketplaces from scratch such as at Aimee Street, which lowers the cost of discovering new music by setting price according to download popularity. Then there has been Grooveshark, which charges for downloads from its user-uploaded library but actually gives a cut to the original uploader. And then we find the advertisement-driven revenue model creeping in, such as at Imeem, the third-most popular social networking site on the Internet as of August (behind only facebook and MySpace). We also find Radiohead using a tip jar for their latest release, where customers pay as little or as much as they deem appropriate.

Second, it has been said that iTunes is changing our musical culture from an "concept based" one to a "song based" one. The transition means that the album becomes less and less of a meaningful unit of creativity; consumers are more likely to think of the tracks as individual songs than as parts of a coherent whole. Music critics might follow suit. It's worth asking whether this trend will continue--does the move to digital media necessarily produce this result? The potential demise of the album provides a useful case study of how means of consumption and distribution affects how we conceptualize the music we experience.

I've heard this complaint since the rise of the CD player and shuffle play! Interesting, but has it developed in the past 20 years? And how to move from crystal ball future-prediction questions towards issues with a policy dimension? JZ 05:30, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Third, with the rise of peer-recommendation services and internet-radio stations that are driven by a listener's past interests, it's worth asking just where & how we'll be discovering new music in the future. When we are downloading individual songs rather than albums, and discovering those songs through automated services, are we likely to discover new artists to follow? Or does "the artist" as a predictor of our aesthetic taste begin to recede in importance?

Of course, connects to Cass's Daily Me / Republic 2.0 worries. You might see if Cass wants to present something related to that this week. JZ 05:30, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Some possible questions of the week:

  • In 5 years, where are we likely to be getting our music from?
  • Are any of the models described above likely to succeed commercially?
  • Are our methods of music consumption likely to have an impact on our methods of music production? Is this likely to have an affect on the sort of music available to us?
  • How closely will we be following particular artist's careers? Is the rise of peer-recommendation services likely to decrease the importance of brand loyalty to an artist? With alternative indicators of whether we're likely to enjoy something, will we see fewer listeners buying the latest album? Does anyone even care about albums anymore?
  • What affect will all of this have on our inclination and capacity to branch out in our tastes? For those that worry about internet echo chambers, should we be just as worried about an echo chamber for the arts?
  • Just where does the recording industry fit in to all of this?
  • How much does copyright have to do with the new strategies being developed for distributing music online? Where would changes in copyright law make the most difference? The least difference?

Possible Readings

Possible Guests

  • Radiohead (worth a shot, right?)
  • Brian Burton, aka DJ Danger Mouse
  • Girl Talk
  • Jan Jannink (co-founder of imeem, formerly of Napster)
  • James Boyle (Duke Law School & chair of Creative Commons)
  • Terry Fisher (HLS & Noank Media)
  • John Buckman (Magnatune Records)
  • Downhill Battle

The Proliferation of Imagery Online

This topic is expansive, but there are three areas that are particularly interesting:

  • Mainstream media and fan culture
  • Changing expectations about privacy
  • Sharing media internationally


Web 2.0 allows people to create and share audio visual works that borrow from mainstream media. The proliferation of images online presents new challenges to the copyright regime. Music and video is taken from digital sources and manipulated to create new works. These "Fanvids" are easy to distribute because they are digital media. Their creators thrive in online communities with email listservs and blogs. Or you can visit www.fanfiction.net for a massive library of fictional works the build on well established story lines from books, movies and tv shows. "As of the week ending Aug. 25, 2007, the site ranked in the 159th position of over 1 million websites, putting Fanfiction.net ahead of sites such as Apple.com" (quote from Time Magazine)


Although many of these works potentially infringe upon the original works, industry figures are looking to harness the free marketing...

  • Marvel Studios head quoted saying “ I now consider [fans] filmmaking partners”
  • CBS has promised to allow fans to post clips of shows and even “mashups” or simple fanvids on the internet
  • Bravo has Video Mashups on its Project Runway website

The internet encourages semiotic democracy, but to what extent should we allow shared cultural references to be deconstruct by copyright infringers?


Social networking sites such as myspace.com, facebook.com and flickr.com feature many photographs that push the limits of people's privacy expectations. Lawsuits may proliferate, like Chang v. Virgin Mobile (complaint available here http://news.justia.com/cases/featured/texas/txndce/3:2007cv01767/171558/) Given the speed and ease with which we can communicate with each other on the internet using words, images and sounds, how does our consumption of media change?


International art forms are now enjoyed almost instantaneously across borders, as unauthorized copies are posted on the internet. We all know about American cultural products exported abroad, but the internet also allows many interesting forms to be brought in, such as Japanese anime, subtitled by amateurs ("fansubbing" is explained further http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fansub)


Possible Readings

  • Sarah Trombley, Visions and Revisions: Fanvids and Fair Use 25 Cardozo Arts & Ent. L.J. 647 (2007)
  • Sean Leonard, Celebrating Two Decades of Unlawful Progress: Fan Distribution, Proselytization Commons, and the Explosive Growth of Japanese Anime 12 UCLA Ent. L. Rev. 189 (2005)
  • IN THE FACE OF DANGER: FACIAL RECOGNITION AND THE LIMITS OF PRIVACY LAW (Harvard Law Review article, uploaded to site, but I cannot figure out how to link to it.)


Possible Guests

  • Rebecca Tushnet
  • reps from Mainstream Media to comment on ways to collaborate with/crush fan culture.
  • Terry Fisher
  • will think of more as soon as exams are over. :)


You might check out some of Terry's and others' work on "semiotic democracy," with an eye towards seeing (1) whether we buy the basic theory and (2) if so, what policy prescriptions or other action items might emerge from it. JZ 05:30, 16 December 2008 (UTC)
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