Spring 2011 Workshops: Intellectual Property and the Arts
The History and Politics of Policing Intellectual Property
Presented by Adrian Johns, Professor in the Department of History, Chair of the Committee on Conceptual and Historical Studies of Science, and author of Piracy: The Intellectual Property Wars from Gutenberg to Gates
Tuesday, March 29, 12:00-1:20 p.m.
Harris School of Public Policy Studies
1155 E. 60th St.
Room 224
Intellectual property has become a fundamental bone of contention in today's information culture. But the arguments that have raged around the concept have been at least partly misdirected. They have focused on doctrines, principles, laws and treaties - and have failed to see IP as a matter of practical policing. In fact, over the last generation a global industry has developed, devoted precisely to the policing of this contentious property. Many of our fiercest debates are sparked by the practices of this industry and revolve around the politics of those practices. I want to show why this is so. I shall seek to place the intellectual-property police in a long-term historical context, indicating how it grew to its present prominence and what we should do about it today.
Adrian Johns is a professor of history at the University of Chicago, where he also chairs the Committee on Conceptual and Historical Studies of Science. He previously taught at the University of California, San Diego, and at the California Institute of Technology. He is the author of The Nature of the Book: Print and Knowledge in the Making (1998), Piracy: The Intellectual Property Wars from Gutenberg to Gates (2009), and Death of a Pirate: British Radio and the Making of the Information Age (2010).
Fair Use, The Digital Millennium Copyright Act, and Documentary Filmmakers
Gordon Quinn, founder and artistic director of Kartemquin Films, will share DVD clips and personal stories to explain how documentary filmmakers regained the rights described by the fair use doctrine. He will also clarify the current restrictions imposed by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
Tuesday, April 5, 12:00-1:20 p.m.
Harris School of Public Policy Studies
1155 E. 60th St
Room 224
Gordon Quinn is the founder and artistic director of Kartemquin Films, the Chicago-based production company that has been described by the Chicago Reader as a “documentary powerhouse.” He has directed many films, including Home For Life; Vietnam, Long Time Coming; Golub; and Prisoner of Her Past; and has produced many more, including Hoop Dreams, which received the Audience Award at the Sundance Film Festival, The Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award, the Chicago Film Critics Award for Best Picture, and an Academy Award Nomination. Recently he directed A Good Man, about choreographer Bill T. Jones, which will be aired on PBS's "American Masters." Gordon is a supporter of public and community media, and has served on the boards of several organizations including The Illinois Humanities Council, The Chicago Public Access Corporation, and The Public Square Advisory Committee, The Illinois Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. A key leader in creating the Documentary Filmmakers Statement of Best Practices in Fair Use, Gordon encourages filmmakers to educate themselves on the tenets of the fair use doctrine, frequently speaking to the media, legal, and educational communities about this fundamental right.
Constitutional Boundaries of Intellectual Property Law
Presented by David Beeman, lawyer at Pattishall, McAuliffe, Newbury, Hilliard & Geraldson LLP
Tuesday, April 12, 12:00-1:20 p.m.
Harris School of Public Policy Studies
1155 E. 60th St
Room 224
"Intellectual property law" is an umbrella term for disparate — and occasionally conflicting — doctrines that demarcate and grant rights in intangible objects. This discussion will use copyright, trademark, and right of publicity cases to explore the contours of IP law, debate the effect these doctrines have on artistic expression and artists' rights, and highlight points where IP law runs up against constitutional limitations. During the conversation, we will delve into the nature of real versus intangible property, the policies underlying the Constitution's IP clause(s), and cross-border comparisons with the UK and Europe.
David Beeman is a lawyer at Pattishall, McAuliffe, Newbury, Hilliard & Geraldson LLP, where he counsels clients on intellectual property matters, including trademark and copyright selection, prosecution, and enforcement, Internet law, the rights of publicity and privacy, the First Amendment, and promotion and marketing law. David received a Master of Public Policy from the Harris School in 2004 and J.D. from Northwestern University School of Law in 2007, where he was an associate editor for the Northwestern University Law Review. David is admitted as a solicitor of the Senior Courts of England and Wales.
Historic Preservation Policy in Chicago
Presented by Douglas Noonan, Associate Professor at the School of Public Policy at Georgia Institute of Technology
Tuesday, April 19, 12:00-1:20 p.m.
Harris School of Public Policy Studies
1155 E. 60th St
Room 224
This talk will explore Chicago's historic landmarks ordinance in light of its political and economic drivers and implications. Prof. Noonan will provide some empirical evidence on the complex impacts of Chicago's preservation policy on sale prices and also how it affects the supply of buildings, especially those of historic quality. Evidence from a variety of analyses will be woven together to address some of the more politically pressing questions in historic preservation debates: How will preservation affect property values? Is it quality architecture or official designation that drives prices? Why do we put some things on the list to protect and not others? And if preserving existing historic quality doesn't actually create more landmarks, what do mandates do to the long-term supply of new worthy landmarks? A controversial 2009 court ruling placed Chicago's venerable Landmarks Ordinance in jeopardy after raising some of these questions. The answers are unlikely to please preservation advocates but, Noonan argues, a more economically informed approach to preservation policy might both defuse some controversy and improve its effectiveness in enhancing and protecting local cultural heritage.
Dr. Douglas Noonan is an Associate Professor at the School of Public Policy at Georgia Institute of Technology. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago (2002) in Public Policy. The core of Prof. Noonan's research is at the intersection of environmental, urban, and cultural economics, emphasizing the provision of and adaptation to urban amenities. This includes projects on economic valuation of environmental and cultural resources, the determinants of state arts agency funding, and the economics of historic preservation. He is currently developing new projects on measuring the "sense of place" people have for cities and on identifying the optimal mix of new and old elements in the built environment. He serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Cultural Economics.
Dance and Intellectual Property: tracking ownership in live and virtual bodies
Presented by Julia Rhoads, Chicago-based choreographer and Artistic Director of Lucky Plush Productions
Tuesday, May 3, 12:00-1:20 p.m.
Harris School of Public Policy Studies
1155 E. 60th St.
Room 224
Julia Rhoads will share her project website StealThisDance.com and video clips of her critically acclaimed work Punk Yankees, a dance-theater work that unpacks ideas about authenticity, originality, and the ownership of dance in the digital age. Questions around these concepts become vital to raise as dance media becomes increasingly easy to reproduce electronically and propagate worldwide, and Punk Yankees addresses them with transparency and humor. Featured in the Chicago Reader’s "Best of Chicago 2010" for Best Commentary on Modern Technology by a Choreographer, "the fast-paced, witty Punk Yankees…is fundamentally paradoxical, tongue-in-cheek, subversive, and, best of all, great fun."
Julia Rhoads is a choreographer who has been described as "Chicago's resident surrealist" in the Chicago Sun Times, and "adept at both provocative and humorous material" in PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art. She is the founder and artistic director of Lucky Plush Productions, a contemporary dance-theater company. Julia was recently named one of Dance Magazine's "25 to Watch" in 2010" and included in New City's 2010 feature "The Players: The 50 people who really perform for Chicago." She earned a BA in History from Northwestern University and an MFA from the School of the Art Institute Chicago, and currently teaches in the theater department at Columbia College Chicago and the dance department at Northwestern University.
Copyright and Appropriation Art: Recent Legal Controversies
Presented by William Landes, Clifton R. Musser Professor Emeritus of Law and Economics at the University of Chicago, and Anthony Hirschel, Dana Feitler Director at the Smart Museum of Art
Tuesday, May 10, 12:00-1:20 p.m.
Harris School of Public Policy Studies
1155 E. 60th St.
Room 224
The talk will discuss recent legal cases involving visual artists (including Jeff Koons, Richard Prince and Shepard Fairey) who incorporate copyrighted materials (often photographs) into their works without authorization from the copyright owner. Typically, the defendant in these cases claims his borrowing is a fair use and, therefore, does not violate copyright law. Courts, however, have been unsympathetic to the artist's position. Landes and Hirschel will discuss the "economic" arguments for fair use and how the law employs economic considerations to distinguish between permissible and impermissible borrowing of copyrighted material in the case of appropriation art.
Anthony Hirschel has served as the Dana Feitler Director of the Smart Museum of Art at the University of Chicago since 2005. Trained as an historian of the art of the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance first at the University of Michigan (B.A. in History and Art History, 1979) and then at Yale (M.A. in Art History, 1981; M.Phil in Art History, 1982) he has been active in art museum administration for over twenty years, seventeen of them as a museum director. He has also taught at Yale, Randolph-Macon Women’s College in Lynchburg, Virginia and, currently, at the University of Chicago Law School. Among other professional affiliations, Hirschel is a member (and former Board member) of the Association of Art Museum Directors and is a Board member of the American Federation of Arts.
William Landes joined the faculty of the Law School in 1974 and was the Clifton R. Musser Professor of Law and Economics in the Law School from 1992 to 2009. Prof. Landes has written widely on the application of economics and quantitative methods to law and legal institutions, including torts, intellectual property, judicial behavior, legal decision-making, and art law. His most recent book, The Economic Structure of Intellectual Property Law (2003) with Judge Richard Posner (Senior Lecturer at the Law School), applies economic analysis to the many legal doctrines in trademark, copyright, trade secret, and patent law. Prof. Landes has been an editor of the Journal of Law and Economics (1975–1991) and the Journal of Legal Studies (1991–2000), is past president of the American Law and Economics Association, and is a member of the American Economic Association, the Mont Pelerin Society, and the Council of Economic Advisers of the American Enterprise Institute. He is also a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Live from Your Neighborhood: A National Study of Outdoor Arts Festivals
Carole Rosenstein, Assistant Professor of Arts Management at George Mason University, will present her recent NEA report on outdoor arts festivals.
Tuesday, May 17, 12:00-1:20 p.m.
Harris School of Public Policy Studies
1155 E. 60th St.
Room 224
Scholars and policymakers know that, as a whole, audiences for performances and exhibitions of canonical fine arts forms are better educated, wealthier, older, and whiter than the U.S. population. However, a somewhat different portrait of the audience for the arts in the U.S. was drawn in the 2010 National Endowment for the Arts study of outdoor arts festivals. This audience appears to be very highly educated while at the same time being markedly racially and ethnically diverse. In this paper, Prof. Rosenstein uses the NEA data to present detailed profiles of African American, Latina/o, and Asian American festival attenders, and discusses both why we might find diversity among festival audiences and what lessons this research may lend to the arts and cultural sector about how to diversify our audiences.
Carole Rosenstein is Assistant Professor of Arts Management at George Mason University and an Affiliated Scholar at the Urban Institute in Washington, DC. She has co-directed numerous cultural policy studies including "A Study of Outdoor Arts Festivals in the United States" (for the National Endowment for the Arts) and "Assessing the Effectiveness of Various Methods Used to Distribute Public Funding to U.S. Museums" (for the Institute for Museum and Library Services). Her most recent policy brief, "Cultural Development and City Neighborhoods," was listed in the UNESCO Knowledge Network and can be found at www.urban.org. Dr. Rosenstein holds a PhD in Anthropology and was 2007 Rockefeller Humanities Fellow in cultural policy at the Smithsonian Institution Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage.