The comic book Bound by Law? Tales from the Public Domain addresses current issues of copyright, fair use, and so-called “intellectual property” (IP) in terms of the difficulties of using copyrighted material in documentary films, and is particularly relevant to CounterCorp because we screen a lot of documentaries that use such content to analyze and discuss issues of human rights, social justice, and public policy.
The steady co-opting by corporations and IP lawyers of the notion and legal norms of copyrights — convincing the public and media that copyright confers absolute control over any and all uses of a creative work, and is intended first and foremost to maximize the copyright holder’s profits — amounts to one of the most brazen daylight robberies in modern history.