Date of Submission
Spring 2022
Academic Program
Sociology
Project Advisor 1
Lauraleen Ford
Project Advisor 2
Kwame Holmes
Abstract/Artist's Statement
Western traditions, specifically in America, have adopted ownership and turned it into a major life practice.Intellectual property brings in new possibilities and challenges for how we imagine ownership. It allows us to claim ownership over more than just tangible items. For someone entering the music world as a creative musician, the challenge is to retain control over their own work, both so that they can ensure an adequate financial return and so that they can exercise agency over their creation. Yet, IP has been used against Black artists because of the white supremacist institutions that designed our legal system. I argue that through education and community building we can empower Black up and coming artists and help them not fall for predatory contracts imposed by major music conglomerates.
Open Access Agreement
Open Access
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.
Recommended Citation
Thiam, Maty, "Copywrong: Intellectual Property as a Weapon Against Black Musicians and The Efforts Made to Combat it Through Community Education" (2022). Senior Projects Spring 2022. 207.
https://digitalcommons.bard.edu/senproj_s2022/207
This work is protected by a Creative Commons license. Any use not permitted under that license is prohibited.