maandag, april 03, 2006

Tales from the Public Domain: BOUND BY LAW?



I think I mentioned I'm teaching law in Maastricht. This interesting link to an on-line comic-book was in my University email inbox:
A documentary is being filmed. A cell phone rings, playing the "Rocky" theme song. The filmmaker is told she must pay '10,000 to clear the rights to the song. Can this be true? "Eyes on the Prize," the great civil rights documentary, was pulled from circulation because the filmmakers' rights to music and footage had expired. What's going on here? It's the collision of documentary filmmaking and intellectual property law, and it's the inspiration for this new comic book. Follow its heroine Akiko as she films her documentary, and navigates the twists and turns of intellectual property. Why do we have copyrights? What's "fair use"? Bound By Law reaches beyond documentary film to provide a commentary on the most pressing issues facing law, art, property and an increasingly digital world of remixed culture.

See the whole thing here.(Duke University School of Law)

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