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Owne®ship, Autho®ship, and the Publi©
Owning and Copyright
- A firm cannot make money on a cultural object unless
it can exclude other firms from also doing so. Hence, a cultural object
must be legally converted into intellectual property (i.e. copyrighted)
before it can be exploited.
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- The most common transactions for a mega-corporation like
Viacom are "finance for rights" transactions and copyright purchasing.
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- The business of these corporations is to exploit
their copyrighted material.
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- Witness Batman: Time Warner owns
, the figure. Any object that bears this name or any resemblance
to the characters or stories is the property of Time Warner Industries.
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8 may 1997