Copyright Law, Cultural Appropriation, And Creative Expression in the Entertainment Industry

Abstract

Cultural appropriation and copyright laws have an intertwined relationship with each other. Copyright law is significantly used to counter cultural appropriation as it affects marginalized communities to a great extent. On the contrary, copyright law, which was created to safeguard original creations, currently dictates the limits of creative expression by scrutinizing cultural expressions and inspirations. This article attempts to analyze this dicey situation from a legal perspective. It is absolutely true that law evolves along with evolution of the society but considering the intellectual property law is a newer legislation, it is evolving slowly and at times the gap between the pace of evolution between the entertainment industry and copyright law, leads to a clash between both of them. This paper discusses the consequences of the intersection of copyright law and creative expression through the medium of culture. It also attempts to analyze the effect of cultural appropriation of marginalized and underrepresented communities. It highlights the systematic disenfranchisement that disadvantaged communities face when their culture is appropriated by big labels and corporations. This paper also analyses how it is easy for established artists to explore cultural inspirations as compared to independent artists who have limited resources to traverse the contours of copyright law. This paper makes a case for the importance of evolution of copyright law so as to create a balanced approach towards artistic expression and originality protection. It is essential for law to limit its scrutiny when it comes to creative expression but at the same it is also important for law to protect the genuine interests of cultural communities. Moreover, it is the need of the hour to create changes in the copyright law to clearly define what counts as copyright infringement in terms of cultural appropriation and to what extent an author can take inspiration from a particular culture whether his own or not. Lastly, this paper envisages certain recommendations for the future to create a better copyright safeguard mechanism to protect the interests of law, people belonging to cultural communities and creators in the digitized space.