2 - Intellectual property rights and the media
from Part One - Theoretical issues in media rights
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 August 2013
Summary
But now we are facing a very new and a very troubling assault on our fiscal security, on our very economic life, and we are facing it from a thing called the video cassette recorder and its necessary companion called the blank tape. And it is like a great tidal wave just off the shore. This video cassette recorder and the blank tape threaten profoundly the life-sustaining protection, I guess you would call it, on which copyright owners depend, on which film people depend, on which television people depend, and it is called copyright.
(Jack Valenti, 1982, submission on Home Recording of Copyrighted Work: http://cryptome.org/hrcw-hear.htm)Introduction
As any manager in a media business will tell you, getting a good media lawyer goes a long way to finding financial success. Why? Well, increasingly, the definition, control and exploitation of intellectual property is getting more central to the media's operation but harder to actually understand. The mention of copyright to many executives in the media industry often initiates a sharp intake of breath and a nod of resignation that it is a ‘murky world’ best left to legal experts. The boom in media law, particularly in connection with intellectual property, reflects broader shifts in the media marketplace and significant transformations in technology and methods of distribution. Law firms with specialist arms providing consultation and conveyancing in intellectual property are now commonplace and have become the cutting edge of legal practice in the media industry.
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- Media Rights and Intellectual Property , pp. 12 - 30Publisher: Edinburgh University PressPrint publication year: 2005