Details
- Tells the story of colonial copyright history from the overlooked perspective of the colonized peoples
- Provides an innovative general framework for studying copyright history in former colonies
- An interdisciplinary study of an important area of legal history that continues to shape copyright law today
- Material drawn from rarely-seen archival resources, covering a variety of creative works and technologies
When the British Empire enacted copyright law for its colonies and called it colonial, or Imperial, copyright, it had its own interests in mind. Deconstructing the imperial policy regarding copyright offers a startling glimpse into how this law was received in the colonies themselves. Offering the first in-depth study from the point of view of the colonized, this book suggests a general model of Colonial Copyright as it was understood as the intersection of legal transplants, colonial law, and the particular features of copyright, especially authorship.
Taking as a case study the story of Mandate Palestine (1917-1948), the book details the untold history of the copyright law that became the basis of Israeli law, and still is the law in the Palestinian Authority. It queries the British motivation in enacting copyright law, traces their first, indifferent reaction, and continues with the gradual absorption into the local legal and cultural systems. In the modern era copyright law is at the forefront of globalization but this was no less true when colonial copyright first emerged. By shining a light on the introduction and reception of copyright law in Mandate Palestine, the book illuminates the broader themes of copyright law: the questions surrounding the concept of authorship; the relationship between copyright and the demands of progress; and the complications of globalization.
Readership: Scholars and students of legal history, colonialism, and imperialism; academics specializing in copyright and IP law
Introduction
1: Colonial Transplants
2: Colonial Copyright
3: The Making of British Colonial Copyright
4: Legislating Copyright in Palestine
5: Constructing Culture and the Image of the Hebrew Author
6: Copyright Law and Social Norms
7: Setting the Law in Motion
8: Copyright on the Air
9: Telegraphic News
10: Arab Copyright
11: At a Crossroad
Conclusion
Michael D. Birnhack, Professor of Law, Tel-Aviv University, Israel
Michael Birnhack is a professor of law at Tel-Aviv University, Israel. He is fascinated by the way the law treats information and the interaction between law and culture. His research focuses on copyright, privacy, and freedom of expression, which he views as different aspects of information. Before joining Tel-Aviv University in 2007, he was a member of the faculty of law at Haifa University, where he was co-founder and co-director of the Haifa Centre of Law & Technology. He served on the board of several Israeli public bodies, including the Public Council for Privacy, the Ethics Centre in Jerusalem, and the Association of Civil Rights in Israel. Birnhack testified in the Knesset numerous times, on issues of copyright and privacy. He studied law at Tel-Aviv and at NYU School of Law and prior to his academic career he was a news reporter (legal affairs) and news editor for an Israeli radio station and then a member of the founding team of Channel 2 Television News.
"This is a groundbreaking history of copyright law in British-ruled Palestine in the first half of the twentieth century. Birnhack provides a rich and detailed description of emergence of copyright norms based on a remarkable range of sources. The story is told from a number of different perspectives - British, Jewish, and Arab - and contains many fascinating episodes and actors. The book will prove indispensable to legal historians as well as comparative lawyers, students of nationalism and colonialism, historians of culture and technology, and anyone interested in legal globalization." - Professor Assaf Likhovski, Tel-Aviv University Faculty of Law
"Michael Birnhack's Colonial Copyright breaks new ground in the increasingly popular field of IP history by moving away from a focus on Britain, Europe, and the US and probing how copyright norms were transplanted into colonial settings. In this fascinating account of copyright's operation in Palestine between the 1920s and establishment of the state of Israel in 1948, Birnhack provides a wonderfully-researched and legally-sophisticated account of how copyright was (and was not) deployed in the fields of publishing, performing rights, broadcasting, and journalism." - Lionel Bently, Herchel Smith Professor of Intellectual Property, University of Cambridge
