Intellectual property and creative freedom within the cultural vernacular

Abstract

In a world dominated by the distribution of global media franchises, what are the impacts on creativity when intellectual property law seeks to control what can and cannot be written? The development of modern distribution mechanisms that allow corporations to distribute copyright protected works such as film franchises globally and across many different media has had a significant effect on the cultural vernacular. Generations are now growing up with storyworlds that are the intellectual property of multinational businesses, rather than within the public dimain (as might previously have been the case with folk stories and religious texts). With Jenkins’ ideas of Participatory Culture perhaps sidestepping the consequences of intellectual property ownership, this paper looks to Hyde and others to question whether current intellectual property discourse properly acknowledges the issue of how the pervasive marketing of ringfenced storyworlds is affecting the creative community’s relationship with the cultural vernacular when seeking to create commercially exploitable work. This paper argues that moral as well as legal questions must be raised regarding the extent to which corporations should be effectively allowed to own elements of the collective story consciousness and, as a consequence, to exert control over the creation of new works.