BCLT Lunch Speaker Series – The New Copyright Law Manifesto: A Roadmap for Racial Justice for Black Artists

Join BCLT for a special presentation featuring Professor Kevin “K.J.” Greene  in Room 100 from 1-2 PM on September 19th. The abstract for Professor Greene’s talk “The New Copyright Law Manifesto: A Roadmap for Racial Justice for Black Artists” can be found below. This event is open to the entire Berkeley Law community—faculty, staff, alumni, and students are all welcome to attend. Learn more about Professor Greene’s talk below and RSVP today!

Lunch will be provided on a first-come-first-served basis. 

Abstract:
In their seminal work, “The Communist Manifesto”, Marx and Engels posited that “a specter is haunting Europe—the specter of communism.” This paper contends that a specter has long haunted and continues to haunt copyright law in the entertainment industry–the specter of racial inequality and rampant expropriation of the creative works of African American artists. The field of studies in race and inequality over the last two decades in intellectual property (“IP”) has grown from a “backwater” in the IP academy to one of IP scholarship’s most dynamic branches. Professor Greene was among the first legal scholars to uncover how copyright law, while seemingly “race-neutral” on its face has fostered the extraction and rampant expropriation of Black cultural production, and to apply a “critical race theory” lens to imagine reforms.

In this presentation, Professor Greene will articulate a set of policy proposals in the form of demands that reimagine what “copyright justice” would look like in the context of redress for past harms rooted in discriminatory industry practices, legal doctrine, and policies of the U.S. Copyright Office. The one unifying thread in this long travesty of injustices impacting Black creators is the need for serious reform of copyright policy, and for reparations for Black creators for past harms and ongoing economic exploitations.