Taking an unorthodox approach to teaching law, three law professors have collaborated on a comic book that explores the impacts of copyright on creativity, and examines both the benefits and costs of copyright in a digital age.
"Bound by Law? Tales from the Public Domain" was co-authored by James Boyle, the William Neal Reynolds professor of law at DukeUniversity, Jennifer Jenkins, director of Duke's Center for the Study of the Public Domain, and Keith Aoki, the Philip H. Knight professor of law at the University of Oregon Law School. Aoki also drew the comic, which features a classically curved and muscled heroine shooting a documentary about a day in the life of New York City.
While the treatment may be entertaining, the subject matter -- threats to cultural history and documentary filmmaking posed by a "permissions culture" and the erosion of the "fair use" doctrine -- is serious. One "tale" described in the comic involves "Eyes on the Prize," the great civil rights documentary that was pulled from circulation after the filmmakers' rights to music and footage had expired. In another real-life situation, a filmmaker is told she has to pay $10,000 to clear the rights to the "Rocky" theme song, captured incidentally in her footage as a cell phone ring-tone.
"Many young artists today only experience copyright as an obstacle, a source of incomprehensible demands for payment, cease and desist letters, legal transaction costs," Boyle said. "This is a shame because copyright can be a valuable tool for artists and creators of all kinds -- even for those who are trying to share their work without charge."
"Artists often form their impressions about intellectual property based on rumors and one-sided sources," Jenkins added. "This can lead to self-censorship, restrictive clearance practices and legal misunderstandings. We want to give people better information, to encourage them to educate themselves further.
"The ultimate goal is to bring about a more balanced intellectual property system that enables artists to protect their works, but also ensures the availability of raw materials for future creation. That's not just an issue for artists, it's an issue for all of us."
Why a comic book? "We care about the subject and, for some strange reason, none of our intended audiences seemed eager to read scholarly law review articles," Boyle said. "What's more, there is something perverse about explaining a visual and frequently surreal reality in gray, lawyerly prose."
The book will be launched on April 6 at Durham's Full Frame Documentary Film Festival. An expanded version, with exclusive textual commentary from notable artists and culture critics, will be available in bookstores later this year, published by Soft Skull Press.
"Bound by Law? Tales from the Public Domain" is the first in a series of comic books planned by DukeLawSchool's Center for the Study of the Public Domain. The book is supported by grants from the Rockefeller and MacArthur foundations, and is published under a Creative Commons license. The next comic in the series will deal with music and copyright.
For more information and to read the comic online, visit http://www.law.duke.edu/cspd/comics/zoomcomic.html.