click here to read poster....
This is the final schedule for the conference, which promises to be diverting:
UPDATE 4/25/06: DOWNLOAD FINAL SCHEDULE + BIOS [PDF]
THE NEW YORK INSTITUTE FOR THE HUMANITIES 3-day conference:
COMEDIES OF FAIR U$E
A Search for Comity in the Intellectual Property Wars
FREE and open to the public
APRIL 28-30, 2006
All events located in:
Hemmerdinger Hall
100 Washington Square East
New York, NY 10003
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.
full program schedule (still subject to minor changes...):
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:
Friday 4/28/06
7:30-7:45 Introductory remarks: Robert Boynton
7:45pm-9:30pm On Fair Use: Siva Vaidhyanathan, moderator
Featuring keynote speaker Lawrence Lessig and Allan Adler, Hugh Hansen,
Saturday will see separate sessions devoted to the confounding situations swirling around the practices, respectively, of artists, scholars, musicians and documentary filmmakers:
Saturday 4/29/06
9:30am Introductory remarks: Lawrence Weschler
10:00am -11:30am Art: Lawrence Weschler, moderator
Susan Meiselas, Joy Garnett, Carrie McLaren, Art Spiegelman, Joel Wachs, Lebbeus Woods
11:45am-1:15pm Scholarly:
Geoff Dyer, Susan Bielstein, Allan Adler, James Boyle
1:15pm-2:30pm Break for Lunch
2:30pm-3:15pm: Films
826NYC kids’ films; best of Free Culture remix contest - Leon Friedman
3:30pm-4:45pm Documentary Film:
Pat Aufderhide, Hugh Hansen, James Boyle, Charles Sims, Amy Sewell
5:00pm-6:30pm Music:
Lawrence Ferrara, Kembrew McLeod, Paul Miller (aka DJ Spooky), Hank Shocklee, Claudia Gonson
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:
Sunday 4/30/06
9:30am Introductory Remarks: Robert Boynton
9:45am-11:15am Overview:
Siva Vaidhyanathan, Lewis Hyde, Jonathan Lethem, James Boyle
11:30am-1:00pm What Is To Be Done:
Judge Kozinski, Pat Aufderhide, Carrie McLaren
