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April 14th 2006 • Printer version
There you are with your new digital camcorder, wandering the gritty
neighborhoods of New York City as you shoot your latest documentary.
You pan across a busy street, where a musician in a worn tuxedo sings 'Pretty
Woman' through chapped lips.
But wait one minute. . .
Is this fair use?
Who holds the copyright on Roy Orbisons classic song?
Can you leave it in, or will you get sued?
Go no further University of Oregon law professor Keith Aokis new
comic book, Bound By Law?, tells you everything you need to know about
documentary film, copyright, and fair use.
Comic lovers, filmmakers, law students, and partisans of the public
domain can buy the print version from the UO Bookstore for $9.95.
Aoki and his coauthors created their new comic book because the public
domain in under siege. (And, although there are many serious texts on
the subject, comic books on copyright are thin on the ground. )
Bound by Law's heroine Akiko, pictured on the cover as a classic
Superhero, discovers that making a documentary on daily life in New
York City isnt as easy as she thinks. She is led through the history of
our copyright labyrinth and is shown what happens to recent filmmakers who
refused to kow-tow to the dictates of corporate copyright
holders. Akikos creators argue that if artists do not fight back
now, it will only get worse. Akiko and the creative team show artists how they
can
preserve their right to Fair Use and reassert their rightful hold over
the public domain.
ABOUT THE CREATIVE TEAM:
Keith Aoki is a longtime cartoonist who loves the late 1960s comic work
of Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, Jim Steranko and earlier greats like Will
Eisner, Chester Gould and Al Capp. He has also been influenced by the
vibrant contemporary work of Robert Crumb, Scott McCloud, Art
Spiegelman and Jamie Hernandez.
In the mid-1980s, Aoki decided to leave the bohemian art demimonde to
go to Harvard Law School. He is now the Philip H. Knight Professor of
Law at the University of Oregon School of Law, where he has taught
since 1993 and specializes in the area of intellectual property.
He has published law review articles in the Stanford, California, Iowa
and Boston College Law Reviews and is author of the forthcoming book
Seed Wars: Cases And Materials On Intellectual Property And Plant
Genetic Resources.
James Boyle is the William Neal Reynolds Professor of Law at Duke Law
School and one of founders of the Center for the Study of the Public
Domain. He is a columnist for the Financial Times online.
Jennifer Jenkins directs Dukes Center for the Study of the Public
Domain. She was on the legal team that defended the copyright
infringement suit against the publisher of the novel The Wind Done
Gone, a parody of Gone with the Wind.
Bound by Law? was made possible by grants from the Rockefeller and MacArthur Foundations
and from Duke University.
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