Performance as Intellectual Property

The Rights of Performers, Composers and Playwrights in France 1890-1950
Erscheinungsjahr 2027
ISBN: 978-1-5099-9282-9
Verlag: Bloomsbury Publishing plc

Buch, Englisch, 272 Seiten, Hardback, Format (B × H): 156 mm x 234 mm, Gewicht: 387 g

Reihe: Hart Publishing

This open access book is a cultural history of lawsuits that explains the development of French performance rights from la Belle Époque, via the roaring Twenties, and into Post-War France.

It does so by analysing the ways in which performers, composers, and playwrights used French court rooms, newspaper scandals, and international conferences to claim their rights to create and control musical and theatrical performance.

In 19th-century France, composers and playwrights organised in member-run societies that successfully used authors' rights legislation to curb the power of theatre managers. Towards the turn of the 20th century, these so-called collective management organisations had transformed French cultural industries by building out structures of royalty collection and improving litigation practices.

From the café-concert culture in 19th-century Montmartre, the rise of modern celebrity culture and mass media, to the French governments' management of radio entertainment in the interwar period, the book traces precedent-setting litigation that defined who creates and controls performance.

The book challenges previous narratives that centre the individualisation of authors in the expansion of the international copyright regime, while neglecting performers. Instead, it reveals the ways in which the personality and individuality of performers have played a constitutive role in discourses about genius, technology, and legal categories.

Performance as Intellectual Property is for anyone interested in the emerging of modern European cultural industries and the relationships between intellectual property systems, creativity, and art.

The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by the European Research Council.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Nesheim, Anna Marie Skråmestø

Fachgebiete

• Rechtswissenschaften Ausländisches Recht Common Law (UK, USA, Australien u.a.)
• Rechtswissenschaften Recht, Rechtswissenschaft Allgemein Rechtsgeschichte, Recht der Antike
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Mentalitäts- und Sozialgeschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Kultur- und Ideengeschichte

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Introduction

Part I: Defining and Delimiting Stage Performance

Entr'acte, 1895: The Dancer, the Author, and the One-Act Play

1. Battles on the Border of Repertories: Performance Rights in the Age of Industrial Liberalisation, 1851-1898
2. Moving Bodies, Moving Performance: The Ambivalent Power of Female Celebrity, 1889-1909
3. Publishing Performance? The Record Boom and the End of Industrial Liberalisation, 1905

Part II: Controlling and Contesting Broadcasted Performance

Entr'acte, 1924: Radiogenic Performance Lost at Sea

4. Communicating Performance? Radio Broadcasting and the State, 1925-1930
5. Ubiquitous and Profitable: Collectively Managing Radio Performance, 1924-1928
6. Performers' Moral Rights: Sound Fidelity and Stardom, 1926-1931

Part III: Expanding and Transforming Performance Rights

Entr'acte, 1942: Édith Piaf at the SACEM headquarter
7. SACEM on the Radio: Ontological Battles on International Air, 1953-1957
8. ADAMI: Collectively Managing Performers' Rights, 1955-1961

Über Autor(innen)

Nesheim, Anna Marie Skråmestø
Anna Marie Nesheim was awarded her thesis from the University of Oslo in 2024. She is currently working as a MSCA post-doctoral fellow at Uppsala University, with a project that investigates the shaping role of authors' rights systems (droit d'auteur, the 'French copyright') in North and West African performance cultures, in the period from the 1850s to the 1960s.

Anna Marie Skråmestø Nesheim is MSCA postdoctoral fellow at Uppsala University, Sweden.