Professor Mohamed Khimji teaches a course on copyright and Taylor Swift on Jan. 7 at Queens University.Fred Lum/The Globe and Mail
Professor Mohamed Khimji takes his place at the front of the class with that James Dean daydream look in his eye.
And if you don’t get that reference, his new entertainment law course at Queen’s University – Law (Taylor’s Version) 397-002 – may not be for you. The class, which made its debut last month, uses the career and business decisions of megastar singer Taylor Swift to explore some of the most pressing legal issues in the music industry.
Perhaps most famously, Ms. Swift made a game-changing decision to start rerecording and rereleasing her early albums after she was unable to purchase the copyright herself. (Her former label, Big Machine Records, sold the singer’s music to celebrity talent manager Scooter Braun.) She also famously pulled her music from Spotify over concerns that the streaming service wasn’t fairly compensating artists. And the ticket-buying frenzy surrounding her blockbuster Eras tour has led to a hard look at modern-day monopolies such as Live Nation, the parent company of Ticketmaster.
These are just some of the ways that Ms. Swift has fundamentally changed the entertainment landscape – and why Prof. Khimji felt her career was perfect fodder for a law course.
“Structuring a law course around a pop culture phenomenon – it’s relatable,” he says. “But I’m not making a Taylor Swift reference every second. It’s still very much a substantive class.”
For example, on this Wednesday afternoon in early January – the first lesson of the course – Prof. Khimji is lecturing on the history of music and the law. The discussion covers off Beethoven as a musical changemaker, medieval laws on music composition and how the invention of the printing press affected the concept of copyright.
And this is where Ms. Swift comes in.
Before class, the course’s two dozen third-year students were assigned a reading on the contrasting views between Ms. Swift and Canadian musician Grimes around music ownership.
“Music,” Prof. Khimji explains, “was not always – in fact, for much of human history was not – thought of as an asset or as a commodity.”
Grimes, the professor continued, has said she believes copyright should be abolished to maximize creativity. She has criticized gatekeeping in the industry.
“When it comes to Swift, she doesn’t have a problem with music being treated as a commodity,” the professor said. Instead, the singer’s focus is on artists and their labels maintaining control of their product and what it costs.
From there, Prof. Khimji explores the impact that different technological platforms – think Spotify, Apple Music and Napster – have had on the industry. (A quick show of hands reveals that the majority of students in Law 397-002 were either in diapers or not yet born when the file-sharing application Napster launched in 1999.)
Iain Fisher, 25, is among that group.
Mr. Fisher grew up in Toronto as a musical theatre kid. He likes Taylor Swift, but he took the class because of the area of law it focuses on. He wants to become an entertainment lawyer.
“I already know this is going to be my favourite course, ever,” Mr. Fisher said.
“You could do this course without Taylor Swift, but there’s so much about her journey as an artist and a businesswoman that’s so fascinating. And she’s gone through so many very public legal disputes that touch so many facets of entertainment law.”
Third-year student Lexi Lewis, who is a serious Swiftie aspiring to become a corporate lawyer working on mergers and acquisitions, said she’s also interested in digging into some of the ethical debates that the pop icon has raised.
In one famous example that the class is set to consider, Kanye West (who now goes by Ye) included a naked lookalike of Ms. Swift in his Famous music video, with crude references to the singer in the lyrics. Mr. West has publicly feuded with Ms. Swift for years.
Ms. Lewis said she’s interested in the legal and ethical discussion around whether Mr. West is able to use an individual’s likeness and characteristics and profit off of it.
“This is such an inventive way to structure a course – taking very important principles of music law and entertainment law and making it palpable for younger people,” the 26-year-old said. “Most of our courses are structured by textbooks.”
This is exactly the reaction that Prof. Khimji hoped students would have when he dreamed up the course early last year.
Typically, the 48-year-old teaches mergers and acquisitions and corporate law. But during the pandemic, he discovered Ms. Swift’s music. He fell in love with her Folklore album, which became a gateway to the rest of her music. Then he was swept down a YouTube rabbit hole watching Ms Swift’s interviews and learning about her career and business prowess.
“As a young person, I took great pride in discovering obscure artists and then acting like I’m so cool for having discovered the artists that nobody’s heard of,” he laughs. “But I became captivated by this person. She is a very good songwriter. She’s very relatable and clever and expresses ideas with economy.”
Prof. Khimji now identifies as an “obsessive” fan. The nameplate by his office door reads: Mohamed F. Khimji, David Allgood Professor in Business Law; Professor; No. 1 Swiftie.
And then last year, as Ms. Swift’s history-making Eras tour marched around the globe – it generated an estimated US$2 billion – Prof. Khimji found his colleagues asking him questions about the singer, because they knew he was such a fan.
“My colleagues would ask me things like, ‘oh well, why did she re-record her albums?’” he said. “Copyright became kind of office water cooler conversation because of this musician. And so why not make it a course?”
Law (Taylor’s Version) runs until April and it’s already been approved for rerelease in the fall.
