All That to Say
All That To Say
How can philosophy help us think about the boom in musical copyright cases?
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How can philosophy help us think about the boom in musical copyright cases?

Artists and labels have spoken out against copyright lawsuits. How can we use philosophy to think through this phenomenon and reconsider our use of copyright law?

It’s just me today approaching the issue of a boom in copyright lawsuits in the music industry. In light of these lawsuits, I ask: is copyright law serving artists the way it’s supposed to? To find out, we need to think about what the purpose of copyright law is and whether it is fulfilling or stifling this purpose. To do so, I look philosophical theories of property and apply them to musical copyright to help us reason through this problem.

This is a project for my intellectual property law class that I took this semester at UBC under Professor Jon Festinger. Thank you to Professor Festinger for teaching the class! I hope my listeners and newsletter subscribers enjoy as well. As a musician with a philosophy degree, I thought this would be an appropriate topic to cover.

Show Notes and Bibliography:

Bruncken, Ernest. “The Philosophy of Copyright,” (1916) 2:3 The Musical Quarterly.

Canadian Admiral Corporation Ltd v Rediffusion Inc [1954] Ex CR 382, 20 CPR 75

CCH Canadian Ltd v Law Society of Upper Canada 2004 SCC 13.

Cinar Corporation v Robinson 2013 SCC 73.

Decibel Peak. “Which Parts of a Song Can Be Copyrighted.” Decibel Peak. 15 January 2021. <https://decibelpeak.com/which-parts-of-a-song-can-be-copyrighted/>.

Ghorayeb, Mila. “Dua Lipa’s Levitating” and the moral realm of musical copyright.” Intellectual Property Law 422: Issues/Your Take. 19 March 2022.

Gould Estate v Stoddart Publishing Co Ltd (1998) 39 OR 555 (Ont CA).

Gregory, Sven. “Brute-Forced Copyrighting: Liberating All the Melodies.” Hackaday. 5 March 2020. <https://hackaday.com/2020/03/05/brute-forced-copyrighting-liberating-all-the-melodies/>.

Hagen, Greg et al, eds. Canadian Intellectual Property Law: Cases and Materials 2nd ed. Toronto: Emond, 2018.

Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Fredrich. Hegel: Elements of the philosophy of right. Cambridge University Press, 1991.

Locke, John. Second treatise of government: An essay concerning the true original, extent and end of civil government. John Wiley & Sons, 2014.

Mill, John Stuart. "Utilitarianism (1863)." Utilitarianism, Liberty, Representative Government (1859): 7-9.

Théberge v Galerie d’Art du Petit Champlain Inc 2002 SCC 34.

Urban, Mark. “Ed Sheeran: Copyright case was about honesty, not money.” BBC News. 8 April 2022. <https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-61026308>.

Wang, Amy X. “How Music Copyright Lawsuits are Scaring Away New Hits.” Rolling Stone. 9 January 2020. <https://www.rollingstone.com/pro/features/music-copyright-lawsuits-chilling-effect-935310/>.

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