Introducing “Ruling Imagination: Law and Creativity”

I want to thank the founders of Geniocity.com for inviting me to write for them.  Today, I will try to introduce my subjects.  I will, in short, be writing about both the ways law affects creative endeavors and the ways in which law itself is a creative endeavor.

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 The former, the ways in which law affects creativity, is, to put it mildly, topical.  We are living through interesting times.  I would almost say that Walter Benjamin could not have imagined in 1936 the means we have to reproduce and disseminate art, but he apparently did, quoting Paul Valery near the beginning of his famous essay:

 

Just as water, gas, and electricity are brought into our houses from far off to satisfy our needs in response to a minimal effort, so we shall be supplied with visual or auditory images, which will appear and disappear at a simple movement of the hand, hardly more than a sign.

 

But I won’t limit myself to copyright law, or even the broader topic of internet law.  While I do have enough of an interest in copyright law that I have maintained a blog about it for the past six months, I hope to address here any and all legal matters that touch on creativity, whether they pertain to the internet and other media, the legal implications and concerns regarding attribution in art, or the ownership of art plundered by Nazis or others.  I of course always welcome questions and suggestions for topics.  The burden of producing on a deadline, as anyone in a creative field knows, can be overwhelming.

 

And I am in a creative field.  Law is not, as most beginning law students believe, a matter of learning and applying rules in a mechanical fashion.  It is, rather, advocacy and rhetoric – the persuasion of a decision-maker to decide in one’s favor.  As rhetoric, it is one of the most ancient of arts.  I hope to introduce my audience to these arts and to learn from them ways to improve my own artistic skills.