Does Gender Influence Attitudes toward Copyright in the Filk Community?

60 Pages Posted: 23 Apr 2009 Last revised: 5 May 2017

See all articles by Melissa L. Tatum

Melissa L. Tatum

University of Arizona - James E. Rogers College of Law

Robert E. Spoo

University of Tulsa College of Law

Benjamin Pope

University of Arizona

Date Written: September 1, 2009

Abstract

Over the past few decades, the filk community has expanded from a small group of science fiction convention-goers who occupied unused convention rooms during the late night hours to a community large enough to organize several dedicated filk conventions each year, a Hall of Fame, and an annual awards ceremony. While many filk songs are original lyrics set to original music, many more filk songs consist of lyrics written to existing music and/or lyrics based on characters/worlds created by other people. These practices potentially create problems in light of existing intellectual property law. In this paper, we explore those issues and whether a filker's gender influences his or her attitude towards intellectual property law. After setting out a basic explanation of filk and the intellectual property issues, the article details the various statistical results generated from the databases we built (one objective and one subjective) and draws some conclusions about gender and filk.

Keywords: Filk, Gender, Copyright, Intellectual Property

Suggested Citation

Tatum, Melissa and Spoo, Robert E. and Pope, Benjamin, Does Gender Influence Attitudes toward Copyright in the Filk Community? (September 1, 2009). 18 American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law 219 (2010), Arizona Legal Studies Discussion Paper No. 09-21, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1393611 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1393611

Melissa Tatum (Contact Author)

University of Arizona - James E. Rogers College of Law ( email )

P.O. Box 210176
Tucson, AZ 85721-0176
United States

Robert E. Spoo

University of Tulsa College of Law ( email )

3120 E. Fourth Place
Tulsa, OK 74104
United States

Benjamin Pope

University of Arizona ( email )

Department of History
Tucson, AZ 85721
United States

Do you have negative results from your research you’d like to share?

Paper statistics

Downloads
242
Abstract Views
2,262
Rank
229,839
PlumX Metrics