Department of Music

For much of the 1990s musicians and critics grew obsessed with the question of whether musical creativity could survive the pressure put upon it by amplified copyright law. Lawsuits and threats of lawsuits silenced much unauthorized digital sampling. Musicians and composers increasingly consulted lawyers before embarking on a new project. And the specter of digital locks on music files threatened to limit the free flow of music among passionate fans. Yet in the past 10 years we have seen a remarkable phenomenon: The music industry has consistently won cases in court and altered legislation to fit its agenda; yet musical culture thrives above and beyond such strictures. Now the question we must as is: Can copyright survive music?

Siva Vaidhyanathan, a cultural historian and media scholar, is the author of Copyrights and Copywrongs: The Rise of Intellectual Property and How it Threatens Creativity (New York University Press, 2001) and The Anarchist in the Library: How the Clash between Freedom and Control is Hacking the Real World and Crashing the System (Basic Books, 2004). His most recent book is the edited (with Carolyn de la Pena) collection, Rewiring the Nation: The Place of Technology in American Studies (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007).

After five years as a professional journalist, Vaidhyanathan earned a Ph.D. in American Studies from the University of Texas at Austin. He has taught at Wesleyan University, the University of Wisconsin at Madison, Columbia University, New York University, and now is an associate professor of Media Studies and Law at the University of Virginia and a fellow at both the New York Institute for the Humanities and the Institute for the Future of the Book.