Posted: July 27th, 2010 | Author: Billy Barnes | Filed under: Copyright, Intellectual Property | 1 Comment »
In an essay entitled “Intellectual Property Norms in Stand-Up Comedy“, Professors Oliar and Sprigman of the University of Virginia present a study of how stand-up comedians have created a parallel system of protecting copyright based on social rather than legal norms. They also detail the differences that the emergence of these norms have made to the creative process. When jokes were held to be common property, comedians put less effort into individual jokes. Instead, comedians worked with short—often stolen—jokes and focused on creating performances that were tougher to duplicate. As the social system arose to protect their jokes, comedians turned to long-form routines, focusing on the text of the joke. The essay will be published in The Making and Unmaking of Intellectual Property from University of Chicago Press.
Posted: July 22nd, 2010 | Author: Matthew Derricott | Filed under: Intellectual Property, Trademark | No Comments »
It has been reported that the famous New York street musician Robert Burck, known as “The Naked Cowboy”, is suing rival busker Sandy Kane for trademark violation. Burck claims that his look is trademarked and that Kane was “seeking to earn a living by appropriating his intellectual property for her own commercial benefit”.
Posted: July 2nd, 2010 | Author: Matthew Derricott | Filed under: Copyright, Copyright Reform | No Comments »
There is an excellent article by Cory Doctorow on guardian.co.uk that highlights the problems with protecting digital locks and suggests that Canada is being bullied into the reforms by the United States. Doctorow points out that after wide public consultation regarding copyright reform the consensus was to “let us have protection for digital locks, but only if you’re breaking them in order to commit an act of actual copyright infringement”. Of course our government failed to heed the calls and has gone the other way in pursuing U.S. style protection for the digital locks themselves and we are left to wonder exactly whose interests are being protected.
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