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Hi all,

Thanks very much for a great multi-stranded discussion - actually discussions - which have been fascinating and the start of even more great conversations off-list.

In no particular order, some of what we have covered has included, the:

ways that copyright is used in the relationship between artists and others, whether they are museums, galleries, corporations or other artists; 

various kinds of limitations that may be placed on the use of work, which include restrictions ranging from those imposed by donors of work to public institutions through to copyleft;

nature and history of the relationship between artists, activists, intellectuals and the hacker scene;

ability of corporations to exploit their entitlement to intellectual property rights as legal personalities with a presence that is dispersed, sometimes on a global scale;

ways that licensing revenues and related services may be used by publicly funded institutions to help them provide public access to collections;  

alternative business models that could be employed, which aren't so restrictive on the appropriation and re-use of art;

relationship between copyright and freedom of (artistic) expression;

nature of copyright as being an economic/property right  that is intended to reward authors when what they created is used in the market place;

difficulties and uncertainties associated with the idea/expression dichotomy and the fact that different countries have different copyright laws;

chilling effect of copyright on the social nature of making art and the importance of the range of cultural sources by which artists are influenced and from which they borrow and appropriate; and to bring this list to an end for now, 

the capitalistic reification of the desire to communicate as being antithetical to the ways in which we are constantly becoming ourselves as subjects.

I would like to thank the invited respondents for all your great contributions from such a wide a range of perspectives. I hope that anyone who wants to continue the discussions through November will do so. 

Cheers
Jeremy