A series of performances and discussions at Yale Law School on December 10 will explore how the art of DJ music can survive in an era of tougher digital copyright laws.
The program, the 2004 Payson R. Wolff Lecture on Law and Music, will take place December 10, 2004, from 6:30 p.m. to 11:00 p.m., at the Levinson Auditorium, Yale Law School. Admission is free.
DJ Spooky, a leading spokesperson for the art and intellectual movement of DJ culture, and Mark Hosler, founding member of the appropriation art group Negativland, will take the stage to perform and discuss their art. Mike Godwin, the Legal Director at the non-profit Public Knowledge and a leading advocate of the public interest in information policy, will discuss recent legislative attacks on DJ culture. Activist Nelson Pavlosky, the student founder of the Free Culture campus chapter movement, will talk about the efforts of students nationwide to organize and support democratic culture.
"The event will provoke not only artistic reflection, but a re-examination of how law and music can evolve together," said Eddan Katz, executive director of Yale Law School's Information Society Project and co-organizer of the event. "Rooted in the digital appropriation of sound samples and image clips, DJ music takes shape in conflict with the legal regime of copyright not yet comfortably adapted to the digital age."
"It's important to see what's at stake in these digital 'copyright wars,'" said Sarah Brown, the strategic policy advisor at Public Knowledge and co-organizer of the event. "Overly strong copyright law doesn't just achieve the content industry's aim of stopping illegitimate piracy, it also threatens legitimate genera of American art based on creative sampling, collage, and re-mixing culture. We need to create policy that doesn't throw the baby out with the bathwater."
The Payson R. Wolff Lectureship was created to honor Payson R. Wolff '54, one of the leading entertainment lawyers of his generation, and is intended to explore the novel and complex questions of intellectual property, especially as they pertain to musicians and the music business.
The event is also sponsored by the Information Society Project at Yale Law School, which was created in 1997 to study the implications of the Internet, telecommunications, and the new information technologies on law and society; Public Knowledge, a public-interest advocacy and education organization that seeks to promote a balanced approach to intellectual property law and technology policy; and the New Haven Advocate, the news, arts and entertainment weekly for the New Haven Area.
For more program information, see the conference website