Julianna Yau’s blog

In the lecture, Professor Mazeh had pointed out that under UK law, a musical, dramatic or literary work automatically becomes copyrighted if it is fixed by anyone. One of the participants asked what happens if the author does not want their work to fall under the jurisdiction of copyright law. Although Professor Mazeh replied that people are free to waive or hold their copyright, I wonder how someone would know to waive their copyright if they didn’t know that it was protected by copyright in the first place.

During the discussion, several people challenged the last enhancement. One of the challenges I found to have most impact on artists was whether this accessibility would negatively impact the value of the work. I thought instantly of Matthew Barney, whose work The Cremaster Cycle is available to the public only through cinemas or to collectors who have half a million dollars for one of the limited edition DVDs of one of the five portions of the cycle (although bootleg copies exist, and occasionally make an appearance online, they have been quickly shut down; also, a portion of Cremaster 3 is available on DVD). To these challenges, Professor Mazeh responded that he didn’t care how the work was accessible—for example, the work could be publicly accessible in the form of a book for sale. I (and, from the questions being posed, others) wanted more discussion of the meaning of “publicly accessible”. The issue of accessibility is a topic unto itself, and I personally don’t think that any works would be protected by copyright law if public accessibility were a requirement because there are too many barriers to total accessibility.

During the discussion, many other questions were brought to light by the proposed justifications, proposed enhancements and the topic overall:

• because there is no requirement that artistic works be fixed, it seems to imply that artistic works are inherently fixed; however, there were many examples provided by the participants of artistic works which are not inherently fixed (e.g. an artistic display of light)
• the concept of an unfixed expression of an idea versus the idea itself
• authorship versus fixation (the author is the entity who created the work; the “fixer” is the entity which fixed the created work; the author and the “fixer” can be the same entity, but not necessarily)
• fair use as a user right or a feature of copyright
• what happens to works which are fixed in human/cultural memory (e.g. in a culture where its history is retained verbally rather than literally)
• what happens to works which are created and purchased but never seen by the public (in relation to the proposed requirement of public accessibility)

There was also the question of whether Professor Mazeh was actually proposing, through the enhancements, a requirement of registration. In the current Canadian copyright system, there is no requirement for registration but it is recommended by the Copyright Board of Canada. However, the registration process does not require (and actually prohibits) a copy of the work to be included in the registration. In a workshop on copyright I attended earlier this year, hosted by CARFAC Ontario, all of the artists in the workshop were surprised and concerned by the fact that the registration of copyright is not only relatively expensive, but doesn’t require any information about the work which can be used to identify it (except, perhaps, the title).