Regulating the Creative Economy

• Credit value: 30 credits at Level 7
• Convenor: Dr Henrique Carvalho
• Assessment: a 4000-word research essay (100%)

This module will enable you to understand and critically assess key legal aspects of the regulation of the creative economy. By inviting you to explore issues in copyright, cultural heritage, contract, labour and business law, we will provide you with theoretical perspectives that enable critical reflection on the copyright system and its relationship with other legal devices and regimes for regulating cultural production. These perspectives will be located within a series of case studies that examine the role, operation and impact of legal regulation in specific sectors of the creative economy such as film, music, fine arts and performing arts.

Indicative syllabus

• Theoretical analysis of entanglements between law and creativity
• Copyright and cultural production
• The political economy of copyright law
• Managing creativity: Commons, negative spaces and IP franchises
• Copyright and cultural property regimes
• Contractual issues in the creative industries
• Precarity and cultural work
• Case study on the film industry
• Case study on the music industry
• Case study on the performing arts
• Case study on AI and copyright

By the end of this module, you will be able to:

• understand the relationship between copyright law and cultural production in theoretical perspective
• analyse a range of theoretical and political perspectives that address the political economy of the international copyright system
• locate significant points of intersection between copyright law and other areas of law concerned with the regulation of creativity and cultural production
• critique the role of copyright law in specific sectors of the creative economy.