MUSC 117 Copyright, Originality, and Theft in American Popular Music
This course studies how ideas about musical copyright, originality, authenticity, property, imitation, appropriation, and theft have evolved over the history of the American popular music industry. We begin with the earliest forms of popular music in the 1800s and work up to the present, examining how legal definitions of musical copyright have changed to keep up with changes in technology, and how changes in cultural attitudes about originality, authenticity, and cultural ownership (especially with respect to race) have affected music industry practices (and vice versa). We will also study how these changing paradigms affect forensic musicology, the legal and philosophical tradition of how we judge the difference between imitation and theft. Assigned readings span a rich and interdisciplinary mix of scholarly research, newspaper articles, interviews with artists, blog posts, album reviews, legal proceedings, and (of course) music recordings themselves. The culmination of the course will be a research paper in which students examine the stakes and outcome of an act of musical larceny of their choosing. Music expertise is not required. This is not a practical music industry course; students interested in preparing for music industry careers should take MUSC 245.