What is Art? - Southwestern Law School

116 J. INT’L MEDIA &ENTERTAINMENT LAW VOL. 4,NO. 2copyright in the common law world. 15 The first such law was enactedin 1709/10 by the English Parliament, commonly known as the Statuteof Anne, 16 and was soon emulated in other countries. 17Visual artists 18 subsequently lobbied governments to include theirworks in copyright laws, which initially protected recognised artforms—drawings, paintings, prints, sculpture, architecture—againstcopying and publishing without the artist’s prior consent; and to doso irrespective of artistic content or quality (a subject to which we returnlater). Over the last hundred years or so, artists have developedmany new and radically different forms of art—reaching far beyondthe traditional forms recognised at the end of the 19th century. Duringthis dramatic period of artistic innovation, copyright legislation hasbeen very slow to respond in recognising such new art media and practice(a subject to which we also return later).However, over the last century copyright legislation has kept betterpace with the development of new technology and processes for reproducingand publishing copies of artworks. Legislative changes weremade to outlaw copying and dissemination of copyright works throughunauthorised audio/visual recording, physical copying by analogueor digital means and physical or digital distribution thereof. Digitaldistribution, especially the development of online sharing and storagemethods, is an area where the law has struggled to keep pace. Cloudcomputing, where personal data is stored across a network of servers,is a recent lawful development of methods used by illegal file sharingnetworks, facilitating interaction between users who wish to share copyrightmaterial across a vast network of individual computer systems.In recent years, major television broadcasters have established ondemandservices for their viewers that operate in a similar way to You-Tube 19 ; or have a YouTube channel where current programmes arelawfully available on-demand for no fee, and with targeted webspecificequivalents of the broadcast advertisements: a celestial juke-15. It is known as le droit d’auteur in French, diritto d’autore in Italian, and derechosde autor in Spanish.16. The Copyright Act 1709 gave authors the exclusive right to reproduce theirworks for 14 years. See http://www.copyrighthistory.com/anne.html17. This includes the Copyright Clause in the U.S. Constitution “The Congressshall have Power . . . To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securingfor limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respectiveWritings and Discoveries.” (U.S. CONST., art. I, § 8, cl. 8); and the Copyright Act1790, 1 Stat. at Large 124 (1790).18. The Engraving Copyright Act 1734 was enacted in Britain; sometimes calledHogarth’s Act after the popular artist who lobbied for this law. William Hogarth(1697–1764) was an English painter, printmaker, illustrator and satirical cartoonist.19. Such as the BBC iPlayer.