How do laws, case law, and historical power relations influence the potential for the emergence of new musical forms? According to the thesis of this essay from Mel Stanfill, the copyright dispute over the song “Blurred Lines” (2013) from Robin Thicke, Pharrell Williams, and Clifford Harris Jr., which an American court found to be a plagiarism of the song “Got to Give It Up” from Marvin Gaye from 1977 demonstrates that: The legal position is one side; case law, determined by subjective factors as well as historical conditions, is another. To article...

Who benefits from ideas of ownership, control, and exploitation of music? And what could alternatives look like? The legal ethnographer and DJ Larisa Kingston Mann talks with Jan Kedves about Dub, dancehall traditions and sound systems, about collective authorship, oral tradition strategies, and the reproduction of colonial relationships in the global music industry. To article...