ABSTRACT
While copyright is arguably the single most powerful legal discourse governing commercial cultural activities around the globe, many of us studying contemporary culture are not familiar with its basic vocabulary and principles. This chapter is an overview of copyright fundamentals for the general reader, and it also clarifies specific concepts that are central to the arguments presented in later chapters. As a basic introduction, this chapter does not detail the history and related legal arguments of the entire copyright system. Instead, it focuses on the relevance of copyright discourse to the study of contemporary culture, and my illustrations of basic copyright concepts are drawn chiefly from legal-studies textbooks or handbooks (e.g. Johnston 1978; Miller and Davis 1983; Strong 1993; Fishman 1996; Elias 1999; J. Cohen 2002; McJohn 2003), selected academic writings, and on-line reference like the Wikipedia encyclopedia.1 I want to demonstrate in this chapter how copyright, like many other contemporary legal discourses, is conceptualized and employed in the present commercial environment. From a cultural studies perspective, I find copyright to be caught up in its conflicting missions of protecting culture and maximizing profit: copyright becomes a platform on which different vested parties negotiate their interests, making it a highly unstable discourse.
