I need to buy some books in Amazon.

In My Humble Opinion
1

An argentinian college has asked me to buy some books dealing with copyright and the entertainment business.
I need three kind of books.

  1. Copyright and Entertainment Law “introductions”.
    I mean “hard” texts that are used in american colleges. For me this is the most difficult ones because I don’t know any.

  2. Practical books.
    Books like the “Pocket Lawyer for the Filmmaker Guide”.
    I use several of these but I want your opinion about the best for musicians, writers, tv producers, etc.

  3. Copyright “revolutionaries”.
    Books about new challenges for copyright in our brave new world. Free Culture is an example.

Of course, they need to be up to date.

2

[moderating]
Moved from General Questions to IMHO.
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3

Suggestion: Visit a university bookstore where they’ll have appropriate selections and possibly someone who can make recommendations.

4

I was going to suggest Lawrence Lessig, but I see you’ve already listed “Free Culture” as one of your initial suggestions. When it comes to copyright law, I don’t think anyone else in the field is as accessible and more easily read than Professor Lessig. He writes for the public, not for the lawyers, and it makes the entire situation much more understandable. He obviously has a bias towards freedom of copyright and against the status quo, but his books are great if you keep that bias in mind. They’re not “up to date” in that he’s now working more in the realm of Constitutional law and hasn’t focused on media law issues for a few years now. But the basics haven’t changed.

It’s been, well, almost a decade since I used a college or law school textbook so even what I know is out of date. But I’ll e-mail my media law professor and see if he has any suggestions for #1.

5

The one tricky thing is that legal Textbooks in America aren’t textbooks the way you usually think of them; they’re “casebooks” – selections from cases that illustrate particular lines of reasoning, particularly famous cases, and a very small amount of commentary.
This is a copyright casebook:
http://www.amazon.com/Copyright-Law-Essential-Materials-American/dp/0314168869

The Examples and Explanation series, is widely used by American Law students trying to understand what the heck is going on with their casebooks :slight_smile: The series is recommended by students and faculty alike.
Examples and Explanations in Copyright: http://www.amazon.com/Copyright-Examples-Explanations/dp/0735552878
(see also, Examples and Explanations in Intellectual property: http://www.amazon.com/Intellectual-Property-Examples-Explanations/dp/0735556652/ref=pd_sim_b_1)

And then there are shorter treatises and hornbooks, like these:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1594607877
http://www.amazon.com/Intellectual-Property-Copyrights-Trademarks-Hornbook/dp/0314065997
http://www.amazon.com/Understanding-Copyright-law-Beginners-Layperson/dp/0199730229
that aren’t that widely used (and thus tend to vary in clarity and helpfulness) but may prove helpful for your purposes.

Note that all of these will assume a basic knowledge of the structure of the common law legal system in general, and US Courts in particular, which the Argentinian students may very well lack.

6

Thanks a lot for your suggestions. And thanks Ender for writing to your Media Law professor.
Hello Again, I am not that interested in “casebooks”. In Argentina, as you have guessed, we tend to study either laws commentaries or manuals. I have also already suggested all the Argentinian books that are necessary.
But the entertainment business is truly global and in order to fully understand it I need some books about US copyright and entertainment laws.
Thankfully there are lots of practical books that deal with contracts, deals, etc. I just need to find one or two well regarded manuals or commentaries.
For example, were you to ask me what book you should read in order to understand Argentina’s copyright laws I would suggest two by our most renowned authors.
I need that.