[gnlakdzg] Swing dancing and copyright

Swing dancing was invented in the 1920s in Harlem, New York.  Many dancers contributed moves and styling to the dance form, developing it to what it is today.

Certainly, a new swing move is a human invention, so in principle ownable as intellectual property.  However, no such intellectual property rights were asserted, which was good.  If copyright were asserted on swing moves, you would have to negotiate licenses from each creator for each swing move you might do in a dance.  Instructors, even informal friends teaching friends (that's peer-to-peer sharing!), would have to acquire licenses for each move they plan to teach.  If you wish to modify a move, you would still need to acquire a license: a modification of an original move is a derivative work and protected by the original copyright.  For every license not acquired, you face a copyright infringement lawsuit of up to $150,000 per swing move.

I advocate weaker copyright law, especially for non-commercial copying.  The fear is that weaker copyright will destroy creativity and innovation.  Swing dance provides a counterexample: tremendous creativity and intellectual output happened despite no copyright protection.  In fact, the lack of copyright caused MORE innovation as dancers were free to build on others' work.  When you look at how much has been accomplished in the past century, swing is perhaps the most innovative, most creative, most profound development of dance ever, all made possible by the lack of copyright on moves.

Development of swing dancing continues today: it is a living art form -- it is culture, and by tradition, dancers still don't try to assert copyright on moves they create, even though the law certainly now permits it.

The tradition of not copyrighting swing dance moves stems from an earlier tradition of much weaker copyright 90 years ago, or even the complete lack of even the concept of copyright 500 years ago.  People now may find it hard to imagine a world without copyright, when straight copying without permission, or copying and modifying, was not considered morally or ethically wrong even in the slightest.  It's what people did, and there was never a problem with that. People created knowing they would be copied; in fact, hoping they would be copied, because then you have actually contributed something positive to the world.

So, in swing dancing we have a literally tangible preservation of what the mentality of copying was in the pre copyright era.  And we can still see how creativity and innovation thrives without copyright within the art form.

(Part 2 will continue about jazz music.)