ArtsJournal Classic

AJ Four Ways: Text Only (by date) | headlines only

DANCE

    IDEAS

    • Good Morning.

      Here are today’s AJ highlights.

      Fats Waller’s only full book musical, Early to Bed, is being pieced back together from scattered sketches and revived in concert, thanks to linguist-columnist John McWhorter (The New York Times). In the book world, the 2025 National Book Awards are dominated by titles set in or about the Middle East, from Rabih Alameddine’s Beirut novel to Omar El Akkad on Gaza (NPR).

      The battle over AI and ownership sharpens: Michael Rushton takes apart a Lawfare essay arguing copyright shouldn’t shield artists from AI, unpacking how the real fight is over who gets the rents (AJBlogs). On the industry side, Warner Music strikes a rights deal with AI-music startup Udio as generative tracks flood streaming platforms (AP News.)

      In the U.S., some arts organizations are now refusing National Endowment for the Arts grants rather than comply with new anti-DEI rules, a stance they say protects free expression from federal politics (The New York Times).

      Editor’s Note: The who-owns-what debates around AI are probably today’s defining issue. Big AI is making a grab to control as much human knowledge and art as they can. Today’s licensing deals may be radically undervaluing artistic content. Who gets to control culture’s future—artists, platforms, states, or audiences?

      All of today’s AJ stories below:

    • New York University, Department of Music and Performing Arts Professions, Performing Arts Administration-Non-Tenure Track Position

      Position Description

      New York University’s Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development invites applications for a continuing contract (non-tenure track) Clinical Assistant Professor in the Performing Arts Administration Program to begin on September 1, 2026. The appointed faculty member will be a member of the Department of Music and Performing Arts Professions. We seek a motivated, creative educator who has the potential to develop a strong record of teaching, scholarship, and service that will enhance the educational experience for students in the Performing Arts Administration program. They will have professional experience and academic expertise in performing arts administration, some artistic training in one of the performing arts, and the ability and desire to equip students with the skills and global perspective necessary to help them grow professionally and personally. Given the program’s long-standing commitment to internationalism, the successful candidate will be comfortable working with students from many backgrounds and be familiar with the performing arts practices of other countries to better prepare our graduates to assume leadership roles on the world stage.

      Ideal candidates will demonstrate a deep understanding of the evolving landscape of the performing arts field and possess the foresight to identify emerging skills and qualities essential to future arts managers. In addition, well-connected within the performing arts community, ideal candidates will possess valuable industry relationships that will provide students with opportunities for networking and professional development.
      They will have a commitment to working with a broad group of constituents and will be dedicated to supporting inclusive curricular design and classroom interactions, aligning closely with the strategic direction of the School.

      The Performing Arts Administration Program is designed to educate and prepare leaders in the performing arts through completing business courses, performing arts industry-specific courses, elective courses, and two internships supervised by professionals in the field. The program has approximately 90 students earning a master’s degree.
      NYU Steinhardt is a uniquely interdisciplinary school, committed to a holistic understanding of people and human development across the lifespan. NYU Steinhardt has one-of-a-kind integration of education, communication, health, and the arts, with eleven departments, seventeen research centers and institutes, nearly 300 full-time faculty and close to six thousand students.

      Responsibilities

      The successful candidate will be an excellent teacher, advisor, and mentor to undergraduate and graduate students; participate in program and curricular development; and serve on program, department, School, and University committees. Clinical Faculty may also engage in scholarly work or creative production. The teaching load for this position is six (6) 3-point to 4-point courses, or their equivalent: three (3) each semester, spring and fall. Course load may be adjusted for administrative and related/equivalent duties. Other duties include mentoring students, supervising major papers, and conducting some of the program’s operational/administrative duties, such as developing courses, reviewing applications, and leading program events and workshops.

      NYU’s dynamic Global Network University includes NYU Abu Dhabi, NYU Shanghai, and international programs and academic centers around the world. NYU Steinhardt faculty may have the opportunity to engage in teaching at these global sites.

      Qualifications

      Candidates must have an earned doctorate in arts administration or a related field, have college-level teaching experience, and be able to demonstrate professional and/or academic expertise in several of the areas listed in the curriculum.

      Application Instructions

      Please submit the following materials via the Interfolio system:

      • Cover letter
      • Resume/Curriculum Vitae (CV)
      • Names and contact information of three references
      • Teaching Statement — Provide one to two paragraphs describing your teaching approach and philosophy.
      • Please submit applications through Interfolio. We do not accept electronic applications sent by email.
      • Review of applications begins immediately and continues until the search is complete.

      For any questions please contact the Performing Arts Administration graduate program at performingartsadmin@nyu.edu.

    • Resurrecting Fats Waller’s Lost Broadway Musical

      Early to Bed (1943) is the only book musical for which Waller wrote all the music, yet no official score or even libretto exists. Yet John McWhorter (yes, the Columbia University linguist/New York Times columnist) managed to find Waller’s sketches and is presenting the show’s score in concert. – The New York Times

    • AI and artists and rights

      There is a recent piece at Lawfare, by Simon Goldstein and Peter N. Salib, “Copyright should not protect artists from artificial intelligence.” The article has the strawman subtitle, “The purpose of intellectual property law is to incentivize the production of new ideas, not to function as a welfare scheme for artists.”

      I have a few problems with it, from their sloppy wording – they repeatedly say copyright is about protecting “ideas”, when it doesn’t; copyright law is pretty specific that it protects specific expressions, but not ideas in any grand sense – to what I think is a misguided understanding of the nature of the artist v AI dispute, to odd ideas about art in general, for example:

      Like humans, AI companies need incentives to produce AI systems that will, in turn, produce novel poetry, visual art, music, and more. But the incentive here need not necessarily come from intellectual property. Poetry is non-rival in that, once written, a single poem may be enjoyed by everyone at no cost. But there is no law that says everyone must or even will wish to read the original poem.

      In a world where new works of great poetry are cheap and abundant, contract law can do the work that copyright does today. Rather than one Whitman laboring a lifetime over one “Leaves of Grass” in hopes of compensation via millions of readers, one Claude will write millions of works on par with “Leaves of Grass.” Each personalized for one or two readers. With the labor compensated—and then some—by a $20/month subscription fee.

      I will just leave that there.

      But let me get to where I think their main argument goes awry.

      They point out correctly (notwithstanding their misuse of the word “ideas”) that copyright law is designed to strike a balance between incentivizing artists to produce new work, knowing copyright will give them the exclusive right to license publication, and access, for consumers (which is why it is good that works eventually enter the public domain), scholars, and the next generation of artists, who need room to be able to create new works without infringing on someone else’s copyright (if someone could copyright the “idea” of the chord sequence I IV I I IV IV I I V IV I I, we would have no more new blues songs). So far so good. The reason almost everybody thought the Copyright Term Extension Act (1998) was a terrible idea was that it further restricted access by delaying the entry of copyrighted works into the public domain for an additional twenty years, while having virtually no beneficial aspects in terms of incentives (my telling you that if you finally get around to writing that novel your copyright will last for seventy years after your death instead of just fifty is unlikely to have a prominent place in your decision to quit your day job and get writing).

      But copyright does something else: it creates valuable assets that generate rents. If the extension of the term of copyright was such a terrible idea, why did Congress agree to it? Because there were certain firms (eg Disney) and authors’ estates who owned very valuable properties, ones that continue to generate streams of income decades after they were created, indeed decades after the artists who created them had returned to dust, and they did not want those properties going into the public domain. If I were a beneficiary of the portfolio of intellectual property created by Ernest Hemingway, I would like to continue to receive a stream of income from that asset for as long as possible. So even though copyright term extension did not make any sense in terms of the incentives / access trade-off, it really did make sense to a small group who lobbied hard for it (cf. the logic of collective action).

      And it is this aspect of copyright, the battle for ownership of the income streams that can be earned from intellectual property, that the AI question is about.

      There have been similar battles in the past when new technologies came into being. When cable television became a thing, and all these new channels could start showing reruns of old shows through syndication, those who worked on those programs wanted a share of this new revenue source, and fought for their rights to it. When the internets became a thing, and journals and newspapers started digitizing content for which they could sell access, the people who originally wrote those pieces wanted a share of the rents.

      When Goldstein and Salib say that copyright is not designed to “function as a welfare scheme for artists”, well, sure. But it is not designed to be a welfare scheme for big tech firms either. The claim of artists, as I understand it, is that various producers of AI material are infringing copyright, making use of materials that goes beyond what have been the (sensible) provisions of fair use, and that if they are going to use material they ought to pay for it. Clearly, contracting between AI firms and millions of authors and songwriters would be impossibly complex, but a system of compulsory license might work (such as exists in music: I can record a cover version of Out on the Weekend without contracting with Mr. Young, but he will be entitled to a share of any royalties arising out of my tragic version).

      They write:

      Intellectual property rights always and everywhere create social loss. Ideas are non-rivalrous and, therefore, free for anyone to use. When intellectual property protects content creators from AI outputs, it makes it more difficult for anyone anywhere to access the incredible ideas that could be produced by AI outputs (or by humans). This kind of social loss requires strong justification. Historically, this justification has come from the incentive to produce new ideas. Without such a justification, it is unacceptable.

      The alternative to intellectual property-as-welfare is actual welfare. Here, the best policy instrument is universal basic income, or something like it. Universal basic income avoids the problems of discrimination, distortion, and social loss. It could be given nonarbitrarily to all workers affected by AI automation. And it could be funded by general tax revenue. This means that the costs of universal basic income would not cause slowdowns on AI development, as compared with other technologies. Then the transition to cheap, abundant, AI-led innovation would allow everyone to costlessly access the immense value of innumerable non-rivalrous ideas.

      The first sentence is simply wrong – we have patents and copyright because on the whole the system is socially beneficial. The rest of the first paragraph is wrong because the debate is not about preventing AI, but of finding a way to divide the returns from this new technology between the artists who created works and the AI companies that want to use those works. You can have a system that pays artists and still has AI – the authors present a false dilemma.

      On the second paragraph, I just don’t know where to begin. Thanks for letting us use your book, here’s a welfare cheque.

      The AI and artists question is a hard one, especially because the technology is moving so fast, faster than any legislative body could keep up with, much less the comically hopeless United States Congress. Predictions about what comes next are a mug’s game, and I don’t care about polls that show people can’t tell the difference between real Wordsworth and fake Wordsworth. But at least for now we can say what is at the heart of the battle, and it’s not what these authors claim it is.

      Cross posted at https://michaelrushton.substack.com/

    • A Messy Crisis At France’s Leading Festival Of Graphic Novels And Comics

      Bande dessinée (comic strip) is considered the “ninth art” in France, and the Festival international de la bande dessinée d’Angoulême is its pinnacle. But the culture ministry has withdrawn €200,000 in subsidy while graphic novelists and publishers are boycotting the event after a staffer who lodged a rape complaint was fired. – The Guardian

    ISSUES

    MEDIA

    MUSIC

    PEOPLE

    • Good Morning.

      Here are today’s AJ highlights.

      Fats Waller’s only full book musical, Early to Bed, is being pieced back together from scattered sketches and revived in concert, thanks to linguist-columnist John McWhorter (The New York Times). In the book world, the 2025 National Book Awards are dominated by titles set in or about the Middle East, from Rabih Alameddine’s Beirut novel to Omar El Akkad on Gaza (NPR).

      The battle over AI and ownership sharpens: Michael Rushton takes apart a Lawfare essay arguing copyright shouldn’t shield artists from AI, unpacking how the real fight is over who gets the rents (AJBlogs). On the industry side, Warner Music strikes a rights deal with AI-music startup Udio as generative tracks flood streaming platforms (AP News.)

      In the U.S., some arts organizations are now refusing National Endowment for the Arts grants rather than comply with new anti-DEI rules, a stance they say protects free expression from federal politics (The New York Times).

      Editor’s Note: The who-owns-what debates around AI are probably today’s defining issue. Big AI is making a grab to control as much human knowledge and art as they can. Today’s licensing deals may be radically undervaluing artistic content. Who gets to control culture’s future—artists, platforms, states, or audiences?

      All of today’s AJ stories below:

    • New York University, Department of Music and Performing Arts Professions, Performing Arts Administration-Non-Tenure Track Position

      Position Description

      New York University’s Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development invites applications for a continuing contract (non-tenure track) Clinical Assistant Professor in the Performing Arts Administration Program to begin on September 1, 2026. The appointed faculty member will be a member of the Department of Music and Performing Arts Professions. We seek a motivated, creative educator who has the potential to develop a strong record of teaching, scholarship, and service that will enhance the educational experience for students in the Performing Arts Administration program. They will have professional experience and academic expertise in performing arts administration, some artistic training in one of the performing arts, and the ability and desire to equip students with the skills and global perspective necessary to help them grow professionally and personally. Given the program’s long-standing commitment to internationalism, the successful candidate will be comfortable working with students from many backgrounds and be familiar with the performing arts practices of other countries to better prepare our graduates to assume leadership roles on the world stage.

      Ideal candidates will demonstrate a deep understanding of the evolving landscape of the performing arts field and possess the foresight to identify emerging skills and qualities essential to future arts managers. In addition, well-connected within the performing arts community, ideal candidates will possess valuable industry relationships that will provide students with opportunities for networking and professional development.
      They will have a commitment to working with a broad group of constituents and will be dedicated to supporting inclusive curricular design and classroom interactions, aligning closely with the strategic direction of the School.

      The Performing Arts Administration Program is designed to educate and prepare leaders in the performing arts through completing business courses, performing arts industry-specific courses, elective courses, and two internships supervised by professionals in the field. The program has approximately 90 students earning a master’s degree.
      NYU Steinhardt is a uniquely interdisciplinary school, committed to a holistic understanding of people and human development across the lifespan. NYU Steinhardt has one-of-a-kind integration of education, communication, health, and the arts, with eleven departments, seventeen research centers and institutes, nearly 300 full-time faculty and close to six thousand students.

      Responsibilities

      The successful candidate will be an excellent teacher, advisor, and mentor to undergraduate and graduate students; participate in program and curricular development; and serve on program, department, School, and University committees. Clinical Faculty may also engage in scholarly work or creative production. The teaching load for this position is six (6) 3-point to 4-point courses, or their equivalent: three (3) each semester, spring and fall. Course load may be adjusted for administrative and related/equivalent duties. Other duties include mentoring students, supervising major papers, and conducting some of the program’s operational/administrative duties, such as developing courses, reviewing applications, and leading program events and workshops.

      NYU’s dynamic Global Network University includes NYU Abu Dhabi, NYU Shanghai, and international programs and academic centers around the world. NYU Steinhardt faculty may have the opportunity to engage in teaching at these global sites.

      Qualifications

      Candidates must have an earned doctorate in arts administration or a related field, have college-level teaching experience, and be able to demonstrate professional and/or academic expertise in several of the areas listed in the curriculum.

      Application Instructions

      Please submit the following materials via the Interfolio system:

      • Cover letter
      • Resume/Curriculum Vitae (CV)
      • Names and contact information of three references
      • Teaching Statement — Provide one to two paragraphs describing your teaching approach and philosophy.
      • Please submit applications through Interfolio. We do not accept electronic applications sent by email.
      • Review of applications begins immediately and continues until the search is complete.

      For any questions please contact the Performing Arts Administration graduate program at performingartsadmin@nyu.edu.

    • Resurrecting Fats Waller’s Lost Broadway Musical

      Early to Bed (1943) is the only book musical for which Waller wrote all the music, yet no official score or even libretto exists. Yet John McWhorter (yes, the Columbia University linguist/New York Times columnist) managed to find Waller’s sketches and is presenting the show’s score in concert. – The New York Times

    • AI and artists and rights

      There is a recent piece at Lawfare, by Simon Goldstein and Peter N. Salib, “Copyright should not protect artists from artificial intelligence.” The article has the strawman subtitle, “The purpose of intellectual property law is to incentivize the production of new ideas, not to function as a welfare scheme for artists.”

      I have a few problems with it, from their sloppy wording – they repeatedly say copyright is about protecting “ideas”, when it doesn’t; copyright law is pretty specific that it protects specific expressions, but not ideas in any grand sense – to what I think is a misguided understanding of the nature of the artist v AI dispute, to odd ideas about art in general, for example:

      Like humans, AI companies need incentives to produce AI systems that will, in turn, produce novel poetry, visual art, music, and more. But the incentive here need not necessarily come from intellectual property. Poetry is non-rival in that, once written, a single poem may be enjoyed by everyone at no cost. But there is no law that says everyone must or even will wish to read the original poem.

      In a world where new works of great poetry are cheap and abundant, contract law can do the work that copyright does today. Rather than one Whitman laboring a lifetime over one “Leaves of Grass” in hopes of compensation via millions of readers, one Claude will write millions of works on par with “Leaves of Grass.” Each personalized for one or two readers. With the labor compensated—and then some—by a $20/month subscription fee.

      I will just leave that there.

      But let me get to where I think their main argument goes awry.

      They point out correctly (notwithstanding their misuse of the word “ideas”) that copyright law is designed to strike a balance between incentivizing artists to produce new work, knowing copyright will give them the exclusive right to license publication, and access, for consumers (which is why it is good that works eventually enter the public domain), scholars, and the next generation of artists, who need room to be able to create new works without infringing on someone else’s copyright (if someone could copyright the “idea” of the chord sequence I IV I I IV IV I I V IV I I, we would have no more new blues songs). So far so good. The reason almost everybody thought the Copyright Term Extension Act (1998) was a terrible idea was that it further restricted access by delaying the entry of copyrighted works into the public domain for an additional twenty years, while having virtually no beneficial aspects in terms of incentives (my telling you that if you finally get around to writing that novel your copyright will last for seventy years after your death instead of just fifty is unlikely to have a prominent place in your decision to quit your day job and get writing).

      But copyright does something else: it creates valuable assets that generate rents. If the extension of the term of copyright was such a terrible idea, why did Congress agree to it? Because there were certain firms (eg Disney) and authors’ estates who owned very valuable properties, ones that continue to generate streams of income decades after they were created, indeed decades after the artists who created them had returned to dust, and they did not want those properties going into the public domain. If I were a beneficiary of the portfolio of intellectual property created by Ernest Hemingway, I would like to continue to receive a stream of income from that asset for as long as possible. So even though copyright term extension did not make any sense in terms of the incentives / access trade-off, it really did make sense to a small group who lobbied hard for it (cf. the logic of collective action).

      And it is this aspect of copyright, the battle for ownership of the income streams that can be earned from intellectual property, that the AI question is about.

      There have been similar battles in the past when new technologies came into being. When cable television became a thing, and all these new channels could start showing reruns of old shows through syndication, those who worked on those programs wanted a share of this new revenue source, and fought for their rights to it. When the internets became a thing, and journals and newspapers started digitizing content for which they could sell access, the people who originally wrote those pieces wanted a share of the rents.

      When Goldstein and Salib say that copyright is not designed to “function as a welfare scheme for artists”, well, sure. But it is not designed to be a welfare scheme for big tech firms either. The claim of artists, as I understand it, is that various producers of AI material are infringing copyright, making use of materials that goes beyond what have been the (sensible) provisions of fair use, and that if they are going to use material they ought to pay for it. Clearly, contracting between AI firms and millions of authors and songwriters would be impossibly complex, but a system of compulsory license might work (such as exists in music: I can record a cover version of Out on the Weekend without contracting with Mr. Young, but he will be entitled to a share of any royalties arising out of my tragic version).

      They write:

      Intellectual property rights always and everywhere create social loss. Ideas are non-rivalrous and, therefore, free for anyone to use. When intellectual property protects content creators from AI outputs, it makes it more difficult for anyone anywhere to access the incredible ideas that could be produced by AI outputs (or by humans). This kind of social loss requires strong justification. Historically, this justification has come from the incentive to produce new ideas. Without such a justification, it is unacceptable.

      The alternative to intellectual property-as-welfare is actual welfare. Here, the best policy instrument is universal basic income, or something like it. Universal basic income avoids the problems of discrimination, distortion, and social loss. It could be given nonarbitrarily to all workers affected by AI automation. And it could be funded by general tax revenue. This means that the costs of universal basic income would not cause slowdowns on AI development, as compared with other technologies. Then the transition to cheap, abundant, AI-led innovation would allow everyone to costlessly access the immense value of innumerable non-rivalrous ideas.

      The first sentence is simply wrong – we have patents and copyright because on the whole the system is socially beneficial. The rest of the first paragraph is wrong because the debate is not about preventing AI, but of finding a way to divide the returns from this new technology between the artists who created works and the AI companies that want to use those works. You can have a system that pays artists and still has AI – the authors present a false dilemma.

      On the second paragraph, I just don’t know where to begin. Thanks for letting us use your book, here’s a welfare cheque.

      The AI and artists question is a hard one, especially because the technology is moving so fast, faster than any legislative body could keep up with, much less the comically hopeless United States Congress. Predictions about what comes next are a mug’s game, and I don’t care about polls that show people can’t tell the difference between real Wordsworth and fake Wordsworth. But at least for now we can say what is at the heart of the battle, and it’s not what these authors claim it is.

      Cross posted at https://michaelrushton.substack.com/

    • A Messy Crisis At France’s Leading Festival Of Graphic Novels And Comics

      Bande dessinée (comic strip) is considered the “ninth art” in France, and the Festival international de la bande dessinée d’Angoulême is its pinnacle. But the culture ministry has withdrawn €200,000 in subsidy while graphic novelists and publishers are boycotting the event after a staffer who lodged a rape complaint was fired. – The Guardian

    PEOPLE

    • Good Morning.

      Here are today’s AJ highlights.

      Fats Waller’s only full book musical, Early to Bed, is being pieced back together from scattered sketches and revived in concert, thanks to linguist-columnist John McWhorter (The New York Times). In the book world, the 2025 National Book Awards are dominated by titles set in or about the Middle East, from Rabih Alameddine’s Beirut novel to Omar El Akkad on Gaza (NPR).

      The battle over AI and ownership sharpens: Michael Rushton takes apart a Lawfare essay arguing copyright shouldn’t shield artists from AI, unpacking how the real fight is over who gets the rents (AJBlogs). On the industry side, Warner Music strikes a rights deal with AI-music startup Udio as generative tracks flood streaming platforms (AP News.)

      In the U.S., some arts organizations are now refusing National Endowment for the Arts grants rather than comply with new anti-DEI rules, a stance they say protects free expression from federal politics (The New York Times).

      Editor’s Note: The who-owns-what debates around AI are probably today’s defining issue. Big AI is making a grab to control as much human knowledge and art as they can. Today’s licensing deals may be radically undervaluing artistic content. Who gets to control culture’s future—artists, platforms, states, or audiences?

      All of today’s AJ stories below:

    • New York University, Department of Music and Performing Arts Professions, Performing Arts Administration-Non-Tenure Track Position

      Position Description

      New York University’s Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development invites applications for a continuing contract (non-tenure track) Clinical Assistant Professor in the Performing Arts Administration Program to begin on September 1, 2026. The appointed faculty member will be a member of the Department of Music and Performing Arts Professions. We seek a motivated, creative educator who has the potential to develop a strong record of teaching, scholarship, and service that will enhance the educational experience for students in the Performing Arts Administration program. They will have professional experience and academic expertise in performing arts administration, some artistic training in one of the performing arts, and the ability and desire to equip students with the skills and global perspective necessary to help them grow professionally and personally. Given the program’s long-standing commitment to internationalism, the successful candidate will be comfortable working with students from many backgrounds and be familiar with the performing arts practices of other countries to better prepare our graduates to assume leadership roles on the world stage.

      Ideal candidates will demonstrate a deep understanding of the evolving landscape of the performing arts field and possess the foresight to identify emerging skills and qualities essential to future arts managers. In addition, well-connected within the performing arts community, ideal candidates will possess valuable industry relationships that will provide students with opportunities for networking and professional development.
      They will have a commitment to working with a broad group of constituents and will be dedicated to supporting inclusive curricular design and classroom interactions, aligning closely with the strategic direction of the School.

      The Performing Arts Administration Program is designed to educate and prepare leaders in the performing arts through completing business courses, performing arts industry-specific courses, elective courses, and two internships supervised by professionals in the field. The program has approximately 90 students earning a master’s degree.
      NYU Steinhardt is a uniquely interdisciplinary school, committed to a holistic understanding of people and human development across the lifespan. NYU Steinhardt has one-of-a-kind integration of education, communication, health, and the arts, with eleven departments, seventeen research centers and institutes, nearly 300 full-time faculty and close to six thousand students.

      Responsibilities

      The successful candidate will be an excellent teacher, advisor, and mentor to undergraduate and graduate students; participate in program and curricular development; and serve on program, department, School, and University committees. Clinical Faculty may also engage in scholarly work or creative production. The teaching load for this position is six (6) 3-point to 4-point courses, or their equivalent: three (3) each semester, spring and fall. Course load may be adjusted for administrative and related/equivalent duties. Other duties include mentoring students, supervising major papers, and conducting some of the program’s operational/administrative duties, such as developing courses, reviewing applications, and leading program events and workshops.

      NYU’s dynamic Global Network University includes NYU Abu Dhabi, NYU Shanghai, and international programs and academic centers around the world. NYU Steinhardt faculty may have the opportunity to engage in teaching at these global sites.

      Qualifications

      Candidates must have an earned doctorate in arts administration or a related field, have college-level teaching experience, and be able to demonstrate professional and/or academic expertise in several of the areas listed in the curriculum.

      Application Instructions

      Please submit the following materials via the Interfolio system:

      • Cover letter
      • Resume/Curriculum Vitae (CV)
      • Names and contact information of three references
      • Teaching Statement — Provide one to two paragraphs describing your teaching approach and philosophy.
      • Please submit applications through Interfolio. We do not accept electronic applications sent by email.
      • Review of applications begins immediately and continues until the search is complete.

      For any questions please contact the Performing Arts Administration graduate program at performingartsadmin@nyu.edu.

    • Resurrecting Fats Waller’s Lost Broadway Musical

      Early to Bed (1943) is the only book musical for which Waller wrote all the music, yet no official score or even libretto exists. Yet John McWhorter (yes, the Columbia University linguist/New York Times columnist) managed to find Waller’s sketches and is presenting the show’s score in concert. – The New York Times

    • AI and artists and rights

      There is a recent piece at Lawfare, by Simon Goldstein and Peter N. Salib, “Copyright should not protect artists from artificial intelligence.” The article has the strawman subtitle, “The purpose of intellectual property law is to incentivize the production of new ideas, not to function as a welfare scheme for artists.”

      I have a few problems with it, from their sloppy wording – they repeatedly say copyright is about protecting “ideas”, when it doesn’t; copyright law is pretty specific that it protects specific expressions, but not ideas in any grand sense – to what I think is a misguided understanding of the nature of the artist v AI dispute, to odd ideas about art in general, for example:

      Like humans, AI companies need incentives to produce AI systems that will, in turn, produce novel poetry, visual art, music, and more. But the incentive here need not necessarily come from intellectual property. Poetry is non-rival in that, once written, a single poem may be enjoyed by everyone at no cost. But there is no law that says everyone must or even will wish to read the original poem.

      In a world where new works of great poetry are cheap and abundant, contract law can do the work that copyright does today. Rather than one Whitman laboring a lifetime over one “Leaves of Grass” in hopes of compensation via millions of readers, one Claude will write millions of works on par with “Leaves of Grass.” Each personalized for one or two readers. With the labor compensated—and then some—by a $20/month subscription fee.

      I will just leave that there.

      But let me get to where I think their main argument goes awry.

      They point out correctly (notwithstanding their misuse of the word “ideas”) that copyright law is designed to strike a balance between incentivizing artists to produce new work, knowing copyright will give them the exclusive right to license publication, and access, for consumers (which is why it is good that works eventually enter the public domain), scholars, and the next generation of artists, who need room to be able to create new works without infringing on someone else’s copyright (if someone could copyright the “idea” of the chord sequence I IV I I IV IV I I V IV I I, we would have no more new blues songs). So far so good. The reason almost everybody thought the Copyright Term Extension Act (1998) was a terrible idea was that it further restricted access by delaying the entry of copyrighted works into the public domain for an additional twenty years, while having virtually no beneficial aspects in terms of incentives (my telling you that if you finally get around to writing that novel your copyright will last for seventy years after your death instead of just fifty is unlikely to have a prominent place in your decision to quit your day job and get writing).

      But copyright does something else: it creates valuable assets that generate rents. If the extension of the term of copyright was such a terrible idea, why did Congress agree to it? Because there were certain firms (eg Disney) and authors’ estates who owned very valuable properties, ones that continue to generate streams of income decades after they were created, indeed decades after the artists who created them had returned to dust, and they did not want those properties going into the public domain. If I were a beneficiary of the portfolio of intellectual property created by Ernest Hemingway, I would like to continue to receive a stream of income from that asset for as long as possible. So even though copyright term extension did not make any sense in terms of the incentives / access trade-off, it really did make sense to a small group who lobbied hard for it (cf. the logic of collective action).

      And it is this aspect of copyright, the battle for ownership of the income streams that can be earned from intellectual property, that the AI question is about.

      There have been similar battles in the past when new technologies came into being. When cable television became a thing, and all these new channels could start showing reruns of old shows through syndication, those who worked on those programs wanted a share of this new revenue source, and fought for their rights to it. When the internets became a thing, and journals and newspapers started digitizing content for which they could sell access, the people who originally wrote those pieces wanted a share of the rents.

      When Goldstein and Salib say that copyright is not designed to “function as a welfare scheme for artists”, well, sure. But it is not designed to be a welfare scheme for big tech firms either. The claim of artists, as I understand it, is that various producers of AI material are infringing copyright, making use of materials that goes beyond what have been the (sensible) provisions of fair use, and that if they are going to use material they ought to pay for it. Clearly, contracting between AI firms and millions of authors and songwriters would be impossibly complex, but a system of compulsory license might work (such as exists in music: I can record a cover version of Out on the Weekend without contracting with Mr. Young, but he will be entitled to a share of any royalties arising out of my tragic version).

      They write:

      Intellectual property rights always and everywhere create social loss. Ideas are non-rivalrous and, therefore, free for anyone to use. When intellectual property protects content creators from AI outputs, it makes it more difficult for anyone anywhere to access the incredible ideas that could be produced by AI outputs (or by humans). This kind of social loss requires strong justification. Historically, this justification has come from the incentive to produce new ideas. Without such a justification, it is unacceptable.

      The alternative to intellectual property-as-welfare is actual welfare. Here, the best policy instrument is universal basic income, or something like it. Universal basic income avoids the problems of discrimination, distortion, and social loss. It could be given nonarbitrarily to all workers affected by AI automation. And it could be funded by general tax revenue. This means that the costs of universal basic income would not cause slowdowns on AI development, as compared with other technologies. Then the transition to cheap, abundant, AI-led innovation would allow everyone to costlessly access the immense value of innumerable non-rivalrous ideas.

      The first sentence is simply wrong – we have patents and copyright because on the whole the system is socially beneficial. The rest of the first paragraph is wrong because the debate is not about preventing AI, but of finding a way to divide the returns from this new technology between the artists who created works and the AI companies that want to use those works. You can have a system that pays artists and still has AI – the authors present a false dilemma.

      On the second paragraph, I just don’t know where to begin. Thanks for letting us use your book, here’s a welfare cheque.

      The AI and artists question is a hard one, especially because the technology is moving so fast, faster than any legislative body could keep up with, much less the comically hopeless United States Congress. Predictions about what comes next are a mug’s game, and I don’t care about polls that show people can’t tell the difference between real Wordsworth and fake Wordsworth. But at least for now we can say what is at the heart of the battle, and it’s not what these authors claim it is.

      Cross posted at https://michaelrushton.substack.com/

    • A Messy Crisis At France’s Leading Festival Of Graphic Novels And Comics

      Bande dessinée (comic strip) is considered the “ninth art” in France, and the Festival international de la bande dessinée d’Angoulême is its pinnacle. But the culture ministry has withdrawn €200,000 in subsidy while graphic novelists and publishers are boycotting the event after a staffer who lodged a rape complaint was fired. – The Guardian

    THEATRE

      VISUAL

      WORDS