Pascale Chapdelaine: Graffiti, Street Art, Walls, and the Public in Canadian Copyright Law

In Enrico Bonadio, ed., The Cambridge Handbook of Copyright in Street Art and Graffiti (Cambridge University Press, 2019).

This book chapter offers a novel contribution to the copyright law literature by using Graffiti and street art as a case study to test the claim that Canada’s copyright law is apt to balance conflicting interests among competing claimants. Here the graffiti or street artist, the owner of the wall or other structure on which the graffiti resides, and the public accessing this artistic work. In doing so, the book chapter provides a detailed analysis of an under- explored area of Canadian law, i.e. the copyright protection of illegal graffiti, moral rights thereto, the rights of property owners of the tangible copy of the graffiti, as well as of the significance of graffiti and street art as public acts and at what this may signify to the entitlements of passers-by and the public to such artistic works.

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