Music, Creativity, and the Law

Catalog description

When a musician or other creator uses (copies, imitates, quotes, borrows, samples, alludes to) pre-existing material, who decides what kind of use is fair or unfair, legitimate, or illegitimate, borrowing or stealing—and how are those decisions reached? This course examines these questions through the lens of the law, in particular the law governing copyright. As the industry’s “currency,” copyright affects all aspects of how music is made, distributed, and consumed today. Equally important, copyright law affects our understanding of music’s very identity—our sense of what a “work” of music really is . Only one of A MUS 280 or A MUS 380 may be taken for credit.