Professor Julie Cohen, Professor of Law at Georgetown University Law Center, gave a presesntation about copyright and creativity. Or more appropriately, copyright is not creativity. At the root of her argument is the claim that copyright law is premised on a defective model of creativity. It is the consequence of legal scholarship’s way of thinking about creativity which is not reflective of how creative practice actually occurs. She argued that the idea that the process of creating is an internalised, uncertain and undefinable activity is problematic. Rather, artists see and engage with cultural products around them all the time. This is of course the ‘standing on the shoulders of giants‘/’everything has been said before’ argument. So naturally at this point we want to throw…
