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KEYNOTE SPEAKER - Walter McDonough
Sat Oct 24, 1pm Cavalier Room
$10 + fees or included in Conference Pass
COPYRIGHT, CREATIVITY AND CANADA
Walter F. McDonough is the General Counsel and one of the founders of the Future of Music Coalition.
He will be discussing the migration of distribution from the physical to how the digital has had a profound and disruptive impact on the entertainment industry. Throughout the world, industries and governments are attempting to adapt to this new reality. From “three strikes and you’re out” to P2P licensing concepts, a myriad of ideas have been proposed to monetize internet uses. Some studies indicate that 95 per cent of all downloads are unauthorized. If this is true, what is the proper way for creative industries to react? How does this affect musicians and songwriters, and how can they prosper and grow under these circumstances? And, finally, does this mean that the actual music will get better?
Mr. McDonough has taught copyright law at Suffolk University Law School, and serves as a board member on the American performing rights society Sound Exchange and the Alliance of Artists and Recording Companies. He has travelled throughout North America to speak at the University of Texas Law School and the World Congress of Information Technology, the Annual Meeting of the Canadian Music Publishers Association, the American Bar Association Annual Intellectual Property Conference, Canadian Music Week, South by Southwest, the MUTEK International Music and Technology Conference, the Harvard Law School Berkman Center Signal/Noise 2k5 Conference, the Columbia Journal Of Law and the Arts Symposium, the University of Alberta, Music and the Entertainment Industry Educators’ Association Annual Conference, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the Harvard Law School Journal of Law & Technology. Mr. McDonough was an associate at Carroll Guido & Groffman in New York City, one of America’s leading music law firms, a former assistant Massachusetts Attorney General and a law clerk for the Honorable Edward F. Harrington of the United States Court for the District of Massachusetts.
