Tuesday, March 21, 2006

Intellectual property comic

Duke University's Law School has produced a comic book Bound by Law, which focuses on the issue of documentary film making to explain and discuss issues to do with intellectual property. When it comes to explaining the detail of the law, it is US law, but still there is enough in common with (from my perspective) UK law to still make this a useful tool for unpacking the issue. The central figure is a woman trying to make a documentary about New York life and then realising all the problems about music, TV etc. being in the background of her shots. It will be interesting to see whether students here do find this a nice way of exploring the topic.
Bound by Law is available free on the web, or in print form from online bookstores or directly from Duke University. Also on the Duke site are entries in a competition for a short fim illustrating the problems of "documentarians" with intellectual property rights. Go to http://www.law.duke.edu/cspd/comics/

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