Concentration(s):
- Music
- Public Policy
- English
Music Award(s):
- Walter J. Nelson Prize – 2021
Honors in Music Project:
- Music Copyright’s Overdetermination Problem
Since the early 1900s, music has been at the center of increasingly protracted, numerous, and expensive litigations, which occasionally reach the Supreme Court. At the center of this spurt of lawsuits are a set of factual and legal confusions over what exactly constitutes infringement, an inquiry which must be conducted over statutory language that was not originally construed with the particularities of music composition and practice in mind. The recent dispute in Williams v. Gaye, popularly known as the “Blurred Lines” case, highlights what I identify as music copyright’s overdetermination problem, which unduly punishes or implicitly constrains composers and hurts the taxpaying public. To resolve music copyright law’s procedural inefficiencies and undesirable societal externalities, an independent music copyright tribunal must be established; litigation funding must be made available to defending composers; and copyrights for sound recordings and musical scores must be amalgamated.
Personal Statement:
Hi! My name is Xiaoyu (he/him) and I am a senior from Fuzhou, China/Vancouver, BC concentrating in Music, Public Policy, and English. For my thesis, I studied U.S. music copyright law’s propensity to “overdetermine” with regard to findings of infringement, which also affects alternative dispute resolutions in a way that disproportionately disfavors the defending composer. Outside of Brown, I am vice president of an education company based in the Vancouver, BC area (www.pansophyedu.com), and I am a former (and hopefully future!) collaborative pianist. I plan to go to law school after Brown. Feel free to connect! I can always be reached via email at xhuang@pansophyedu.com.
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