| MEDIA CONTACT: Stacia
Smith
561-297-2971, ssmith@fau.edu FAU
Conference Addresses Intellectual Property Rights BOCA
RATON, FL (March 18, 2004) - Who controls music,
film, publishing and visual communication? Should downloading music from file
sharing services such as Kazaa be allowed? What are the implications of the Napster
ruling? These are some of the many questions that will be addressed at the "Battling
for the Ownership of the Arts" conference Friday, April 16 through Sunday,
April 18 at the Boca Raton Marriott at Boca Center, 5150 Town Center Circle in
Boca Raton, Florida. The conference, hosted by Florida Atlantic University's Dorothy
F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters, will include presentations and round table
discussions with the goal of stimulating an on-going dialogue on intellectual
property issues.
"We need to find
workable solutions for upholding exclusive property rights in intellectual creations,"
said Jeffrey Galin, professor of English in FAU's Dorothy F. Schmidt College of
Arts and Letters. "We also need to work to foster a competitive marketplace
by giving the freest possible public access to works of authorship and ideas."
The conference will bring together industry
representatives from music, film, publishing and visual communications with specialists
in intellectual property law and online security. With this foundation, conference
organizers hope to establish a network of professionals willing to participate
in a policy think tank and ultimately initiate a University Center for Intellectual
Property in the Arts.
Keynote speakers
for the conference include Peter Dekom, co-chair of American Cinematheque; Ann
Chaitovitz, director of sound recordings for the American Federation of Television
and Radio Artists (AFTRA) in Washington; and Steven M. Marks, president of business
and legal affairs of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). Other
speakers include Wendy Seltzer, staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation;
Ted Cohen of EMI Music; Neil Crilly of the Florida Chapter of the National Academy
of Recording Arts and Sciences (NARAS);
Bruce
Phillips, senior acquisitions editor for music and dance at Scarecrow Press; and
Daphne Ireland, IPM manager at Princeton University Press.
Conference organizers are Michael Zager, Grammy-nominated composer, arranger and
producer and FAU Dorothy F. Schmidt Eminent Scholar in the Performing Arts and
Jeffrey Galin, assistant professor of English and director, FAU University Center
for Excellence in Writing.
The registration
cost for the conference is $250. FAU faculty and staff can register for $85. There
will be some sessions that are free and open to the public. For more information
on the program and speakers, please visit www.fau.edu/ipconference or call 561-297-3185.
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