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Adeney, Elizabeth --- "A matter of respect: the moral rights of the entertainer" [2017] ELECD 302; in Richardson, Megan; Ricketson, Sam (eds), "Research Handbook on Intellectual Property in Media and Entertainment" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2017) 220

Book Title: Research Handbook on Intellectual Property in Media and Entertainment

Editor(s): Richardson, Megan; Ricketson, Sam

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781784710781

Section: Chapter 8

Section Title: A matter of respect: the moral rights of the entertainer

Author(s): Adeney, Elizabeth

Number of pages: 25

Abstract/Description:

What we call ‘entertainment’ is the activity to which human beings naturally resort once their basic needs have been satisfied. Entertainment can be self-generated or it can be derived – a pleasure provided by others to the receiving or participating individual. In that case the entertainment may be generated by those who write, tell and otherwise depict entertaining stories and dramas; those who devise and facilitate games and puzzles; those who mount, or participate in, interesting, beautiful or intriguing spectacles (sports or performance spectacles, or achievements of the visual arts); and those who make sequences of sounds that others enjoy listening to. To fall within the category of entertainment the experience of the consumer must, it seems, be beyond everyday life. The word ‘entertainment’ is not generally used of experiences which, while pleasurable, exist as a constant background to human life – the enjoyment of food, of birdsong and natural scenery, of scents, of family and friends. Self-entertainment involves no ‘entertainer’. Only entertainment that offers pleasure to others can be said to involve an entertainer, the potential subject of moral rights. Indeed, the modern term ‘entertainer’ connotes an element of showmanship, so that even those who entertain others are not necessarily included in the term. A novelist, for example, would not commonly be called an entertainer, though the novel is undoubtedly a form of entertainment. Neither would a football player. On the other hand, there would be little argument that a performing singer or acrobat is an entertainer.