scholarly journals “UNE CHOSE PUBLIQUE”? THE AUTHOR’S DOMAIN AND THE PUBLIC DOMAIN IN EARLY BRITISH, FRENCH AND US COPYRIGHT LAW

2006 ◽  
Vol 65 (3) ◽  
pp. 636-670 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jane C. Ginsburg
Keyword(s):  
Public Domain ◽  
Copyright Law ◽  
Industrial Complex ◽  
The Public ◽  
Moral Claims ◽  
Cultural Commons ◽  
The Mind

THE public domain is all the rage. It is invoked to breach copyright’s encroaching enclosure of what one might grandiloquently call the cultural commons of the mind. The heralds of our “remix culture” deploy the public domain to smash that icon of the entertainment–industrial complex, the Romantic Author. But even before the Author became Romantic, he still served as a shill for concentrated industry, then the printing–bookselling complex. Authors’ moral claims of labourious entitlement merely masked the power grab of the printers. If we speak of a grab, we imply that copyright was seised from somewhere. So whence, in this account, was copyright wrested? From the public domain.

Copyright and the Commons

2017 ◽  
pp. 106-126
Author(s):  
Erika Balsom
Keyword(s):  
Visual Culture ◽  
Public Domain ◽  
Fair Use ◽  
Moving Image ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Commons ◽  
Digital Reproduction ◽  
Cultural Commons ◽  
Made In ◽  
Do So

This chapter interrogates how artists’ moving image has grappled with the increased ridigification of copyright that has occurred over the last two decades. Many artists champion the freedom to reuse copyrighted materials, but fail to interrogate the particular circumstances that it make possible for them to do so without retribution, while simultaneously avoiding an engagement with the significant encroachments on fair use and the public domain that have been implemented as part of new copyright legislation that seeks to control the unruliness of digital reproduction. As a counterpoint to such positions, this chapter examines Ben White and Eileen Simpson’s Struggle in Jerash (2009), a work made by repurposing a public domain film of the same title made in 1957 in Jordan. Simpson and White contest the increasing privatization of visual culture, insisting on the wealth of the cultural commons precisely as it is under threat.

Creative Choices: Changes to Australian Copyright Law and the Future of the Public Domain

2005 ◽  
Vol 114 (1) ◽  
pp. 71-82 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Moore
Keyword(s):  
Free Trade Agreement ◽  
Potential Role ◽  
Current Model ◽  
Trade Agreement ◽  
Public Domain ◽  
Copyright Law ◽  
The Public ◽  
Creative Commons ◽  
Extended Duration

Changes to Australian copyright law introduced under the Australia–United States Free Trade Agreement will diminish the public domain, criminalise common copyright infringing practices and locally introduce significant portions of the controversial 1998 American Digital Millennium Copyright Act. This paper examines these imminent changes to Australian copyright law, with specific attention to the potential effects of the extended duration of copyright protection and the introduction of technological anti-circumvention measures. It argues that public domain-enhancing activities are crucial for sustaining cultural creativity and technological innovation, and discusses the potential role of the Creative Commons movement in establishing economically viable and legal alternatives to the current model of trade-oriented copyright reform.

The Public Domain: Enclosing the Commons of the Mind

2011 ◽  
Vol 31 (4) ◽  
pp. 414-416
Author(s):  
Robert A. Mittelstaedt
Keyword(s):  
Public Domain ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Commons ◽  
The Mind

scholarly journals Property on the Line: Life on the Frontier between Copyright and the Public Domain

2013 ◽  
Vol 44 (1) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Graeme W Austin
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Intellectual Property ◽  
Public Domain ◽  
Copyright Law ◽  
Human Rights Law ◽  
Line Life ◽  
The Public ◽  
Inaugural Lecture ◽  
Creativity And Innovation ◽  
The Relationship

This article is an edited transcript of Professor Graeme W Austin's Inaugural Lecture, delivered in the Council Chamber of Victoria University of Wellington on 15 November 2012. Professor Austin was appointed Chair in Private Law in the Faculty of Law in November 2010. This lecture explores claims that in copyright law, the public domain is necessarily in opposition to proprietary rights, and suggests that in many contexts the incentives offered by copyright contribute to the vibrancy and volume of material that is available for downstream creativity and innovation. Drawing on his earlier work on the relationship between human rights law and intellectual property, Professor Austin's lecture advances the idea that cognisance of the human rights dimensions of intellectual property, including creators' human rights, should inform our understanding of the appropriate scope of the rights of copyright owners. The lecture concludes with a warning against the "Walmartization" of copyright.

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