Allan Kohl: Copy . . . right? Creative Individuals and the Public Domain [Presentation & Film]

Gould Library Athenaeum, 7:30 p.m. [Sponsored by the Gould Library]

Recent developments in United States copyright law have reflected the agenda of an aggressive corporate mindset which regards all creative expression as intellectual property lacking in value unless it can be owned and commercially exploited. The result of many incremental steps, this approach may be viewed as an extreme manifestation of the Western mythos of the heroic individual as self-reliant originator. As such, it denies or obscures that fact that all art is to some degree derivative, and is dependent on collaboration with historic antecedents and living creative communities. This presentation urges respect for a robust Public Domain, and suggests ways in which creative people can both benefit from the Creative Commons and contribute to its flourishing as an alternative model.

The evening begins with a 50-minute film collage featuring Stanford Law Professor Lawrence Lessig, author of The Future of Ideas, presenting his argument against the the increasing corporate control of copyright at the expense of the free flow of ideas. Following this are selections from "Copyright Infringement Advisory," a DVD created as part of the current "Illegal Art" exhibition, along with sequences from Greg Hittelman's Willful Infringement: A Report from the Front Lines of the real Culture Wars.

Art historian Allan T. Kohl is Visual Resources Librarian at the Minneapolis College of Art & Design. He is a member of the Visual Resources Association's Intellectual Property Rights Committee, with a particular interest in copyright issues as they affect the educational use of images documenting works of art and visual culture. He collaborated in the formulation of the VRA's "Image Collection Guidelines: The Acquisition and Use of Images in Non-Profit Educational Visual Resources Collections," and was principal author and designer of the "Copy Photography Computator."

Reconstructing the Public Domain (Metaphor as Polemic in the Intellectual Property Wars) by Robert A. Baron
COPY PHOTOGRAPHY COMPUTATOR: An Interactive Program to Assist Visual Resource Professionals in Assessing Intellectual Property Rights Affecting the Educational Use of Derived Images by Allan Kohl and the Intellectual Property Rights Committee of the Visual Resources Association (VRA)
The Copyright Website: Public Domain by Benedict O'Mahoney.
When Works Pass Into the Public Domain by Lolly Gasaway, University of North Carolina
Fair Use of Copyrighted Works (CETUS): Fair Use: Overview and Meaning for Higher Education by the Consortium for Educational Technology in University Systems (CETUS)
Derivative Works (United States Copyright Office: Circular 14: Copyright Registration for Derivative Works)