In a 2016 acceptance speech during the Black Entertainment Television (BET) Awards, actor and activist Jesse Williams used the phrase “gentrifying our genius ” to refer to the insidious process of misappropriating the cultural and artistic productions of Black creators, inventors, and innovators. In that speech, he poignantly and unapologetically condemned racial discrimination and cultural misappropriation. This Article chronicles the nefarious history of the creative disempowerment of creators of color and then imagines an empowering future for those who successfully exploit their creations by fully leveraging copyright ownership and transfer termination.
To that end, Professor Evans references the considerable scholarship of Professor K.J. Greene, which explores and challenges cultural misappropriation of Black musicians and composers, and build upon her own scholarship that explores the copyright transfer termination right as a potential legal tool for social and economic justice for creatives of color with cryptographically secured assets and blockchain technology.
She also references an empirical study titled U.S. Copyright Termination Notices 1977-2020: Introducing New Datasets, to explore data and extrapolations regarding likely impacts of §203 terminations since 2013.
Access the abstract and article here: https://lnkd.in/g8t7paUN
