Description

April 2, 2004, 10am-5:30pm
Duke Law School, Room 3043

This conference, held in association with Full Frame, the premier documentary film festival in the United States, examined the impact of intellectual property law on documentary filmmaking and music. It brought together artists - documentary filmmakers and directors, classical composers, jazz musicians and audio collage artists - with a distinguished roster of legal experts to explore the complex interplay between law and art.

First Panel: 10am-1pm

CULTURE ON THE LEGAL CUTTING ROOM FLOOR

"You're totally free to make a movie in an empty room, with your two friends." -Davis Guggenheim, filmmaker

Documentary films are records of our culture. But our culture is full of legally protected objects - songs, films, signs, even logos or buildings. Sometimes filmmakers need to use pre-existing copyrighted material to tell a story. Sometimes they accidentally capture copyrighted work in their documentary footage. However, in order to distribute their documentaries, filmmakers must often clear the rights to every protected fragment of film or song - whether it is a focal point of the scene or merely an incidental or fleeting detail. This first panel will bring to light the intellectual property hurdles faced by documentary filmmakers, and the conflict between their need to access protected material, and their desire to protect their own works and maintain the integrity of those works after production.

Lunch: 1pm-2:30pm

Screening and discussion of "Nuestra Hernandez," a fictional documentary treating issues in appropriation.

Second Panel: 2:30pm-5:30pm

MUSIC, BOUND BY LAW?

"Culture...grows by accretion, each new creator building on the works of those who came before." - Judge Kozinski, Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals

From classical and folk, to jazz and blues, to rock and roll, hip hop and mash-ups, music has a long tradition of borrowing, recombining, and building upon existing musical elements. How has this history of borrowing been seen by the law? What lines do artists themselves see between borrowing and theft? This panel will examine the treatment of creative practices across musical genres, and consider the musical forms that would be enabled by different ways of doing business within the music industry.