Copyright, IP, and AI in Popular Music

Catalog description

To understand the ethical, commercial, aesthetic dimensions of AI in music andcopyright law today, we must consider the history of copyright law and popular musicin the United States. Music copyright law was established in 1831 when sheet musicbecame protected under federal law. During this time (the antebellum period and theexponential growth of slavery), blackface minstrelsy emerged as the first commercialform of American popular music in both live performance and through sheet musicpublications. Because blackface minstrelsy was founded upon the exploitation andnegation of Black people primarily enslaved in America, they themselves may haveeither been considered property or had limited recourse to claim property forthemselves. Music copyright law and property laws in general have continued todevelop out of this racialized context, though this history is often left out of litigation.In this course will revisit the history of copyright law from the inaugural Copyright Actof 1790 through the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (1998) and Music ModernizationAct. In doing so we will interrogate the function and form of music copyright law today,while also considering ethical and economic questions and power dynamics (includingrace) around how the technologies that facilitate (e.g., phonograph recordings andartificial intelligence) and aesthetics that make up popular music are protected (or not)under copyright law (and why).