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Program on Information Justice and Intellectual Property

USER RIGHTS WORKSHOP SERIES

"AN Hundred Stories in Ten Days": COVID-19 Lessons for Culture, Learning, and Copyright Law

With Carys Craig and Bob Tarantino
November 6, 2020
10:00am


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In the face of a pandemic, copyright law may seem a frivolous concern; but its importance lies in the ever-expanding role that it plays in either enabling or constraining the kinds of communicative activities that are critical to a flourishing life. In this article, we reflect on how the cultural and educational practices that have burgeoned under quarantine conditions shed new light on a longstanding problem: the need to recalibrate the copyright system to better serve its purposes in the face of changing social and technological circumstances. We begin by discussing how copyright restrictions have manifested in a variety of contexts driven by the coronavirus lockdown, focusing first on creative engagement and then on learning, foregrounding the damage done by encoding a permission-first approach into governance structures and digital platforms. These stories unsettle the common copyright narrative鈥攖he one that tells us that copyright encourages learning and the creation and dissemination of works鈥攍aying bare its disconnect from the current realities of our digital dependency. Turning to consider the justifications for copyright control, we underscore the critical role of user rights and substantive technological neutrality in crafting a flexible and fair copyright system for the future. The article concludes with some lessons that might be drawn from these tales of copyright in the time of COVID19 to inform the development of new digital copyright norms for whatever 鈥渘ew normal鈥 emerges.

Carys Craig and Bob Tarantino

Carys J. Craig


Bob Tarantino

User Rights Network Series

This event is part of a series presenting research from the Global Expert Network on Copyright User Rights.