COMEDIES OF FAIR U$E: April 28-30, 2006

COMEDIES OF FAIR U$E: A Search for Comity in the Intellectual Property
Wars…

(whereby among other things "Joywar" is revisited in the flesh by Joy
Garnett and Susan Meiselas, and many other stories are traded and
fleshed-out…. scroll down for a list of panelists that include Art
Spiegelman, Geoff Dyer, Jonathan Letham, Joel Wachs, Siva Vaidhyanathan, et
al….)

*please distribute + post at will* - more info, scheduling details, to
come…
………………………………………………………….

The New York Institute for the Humanities at NYU, in association with the
NYU Humanities Council present a weekend long symposium:
http://www.nyu.edu/fas/institute/nyih/public/upcoming.html

*COMEDIES OF FAIR U$E*
A Search for Comity in the Intellectual Property Wars
Friday, April 28 through Sunday, April 30, 2006
Free and open to the public

Friday April 28, 7:30-9:30 p.m.
Hemmerdinger Hall
100 Washington Sq. East

Saturday 9:30-6:30 p.m. and Sunday 9:30-1:00 p.m.
Hemmerdinger Hall
100 Washington Sq. East

*Panelists to include Lawrence Lessig, Art Spiegelman, Susan Meiselas,
Jonathan Letham, Errol Morris, Geoff Dyer, and others. *

Some of the most contentious issues bedeviling cultural life today are
increasingly coming to revolve around the question of what proper deference
ought to be paid to the notion of intellectual property. Just what is
copyright, what is its point, who is it designed to protect (individual
creators and their legatees, be they individual or corporate, and
necessarily to the same extent?) and what is it designed to foster (the most
thrivingly fertile intellectual community and intercourse possible?)? How
might such objectives, thus stated, be internally at odds, and how might
such tensions in turn be resolved? What sorts of product ought to be
copyrightable and for how long? To what (increasing?) extent is the
cultural/intellectual commons being divied up, fenced off into ever more
diminutive swaths of barbed and monetarized terrain? And what exceptions
ought to be made to this tendency? What is "fair use" and how ought it to be
extended (and perhaps expanded)? How do all these issues play out across
different media-textual (books and magazines), visual (photos, paintings,
films), and aural (musical)? And to what extent are rampaging developments
on the cyberfront expanding or constricting all possibilities in this
regard?

The last weekend of this coming April (April 28, 29, and 30), the New York
Institute for the Humanities at NYU will be bringing together practioners
and artists (many from among the ranks of its own distinguished fellowship),
along with lawyers, judges, historians, theorists and philosophers, in order
to explore various aspects of these questions. Robert Boynton of the NYU
Journalism faculty, one of the principal chroniclers of developments in this
field, and Lawrence Lessig of Stanford University, arguably the field's most
dynamic activist, are collaborating in helping to convene and steer the
conference.

The Friday evening session will focus on Google's highly controversial
project of digitizing the entire contents of some of the world's greatest
libraries, not necessarily with the prior approval of the relevant copyright
holders.

Saturday will see separate sessions devoted to the confounding situations
swirling around the practices, respectively, of artists, scholars, musicians
and documentary filmmakers.

On Sunday, panelists will try to see if there is some way to move past the
various impasses involved, and toward a regime of greater comity among
creators and users of intellectual property, especially when these are often
the same people in different phases of their work.

Panelists, in addition to Mr. Lessig and Mr. Boynton and Institute director
Lawrence Weschler will include:

Photographer Susan Meiselas
Painter Joy Garnett
Novelist Jonathan Letham
Comix artist Art Spiegelman
Essayist Geoff Dyer (Out of Sheer Rage, The Ongoing Moment)
Documentary filmmaker Errol Morris
Joel Wachs, head of the Andy Warhol Foundation
Judge Alex Kozinski of the Ninth Circuit
NYU's Siva Vaidhyanathan (Copyrights and Copywrongs)
Essayist Lewis Hyde (The Gift, Trickster Makes This World)
NYU's Lawrence Ferrara, expert on musical issues
Carrie McLaren of Stay Free
James Boyle, of digital environmentalist movement (Shaman, Software, and
Spleens)
and others