Joost Smiers

Joost Smiers is a leading expert on decision-making in cultural matters and new approaches to cultural and intellectual property. He is perhaps best known for his proposals to eliminate copyright and to break up large publishers, music producers, and movie studios in order to encourage cultural diversity and eliminate market dominance by a small number of corporations.

Smiers received his Ph.D.in Political Science in 1977 from the University of Amsterdam. He is currently Professor Emeritus of Political Science of the Arts and a Research Fellow in the Research Group Arts & Economics at the Utrecht School of the Arts, the Netherlands, where he served as Professor from 1985 until his retirement in 2007. He is Dutch and lives in Amsterdam. He speaks Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, and Spanish.

He is a member of the AHRB Research Network on New Directions in Copyright Law, Birkbeck, University of London, University of London. He was a member of the board of trustees of ERICArts, the European Research Institute for Comparative Cultural Affairs and the Arts, and an expert for the Council of Europe in Moldova.

Publications

• 1977. Cultuur in Nederland 1945-1955. Meningen en beleid, Amsterdam, PhD thesis, University of Amsterdam, Nijmegen.
• 1995. Artists and the infrastructure for their work, , Council of Europe. Contribution to the World commission on Culture and Development. (with Suzanne Capiau).
• 1999. Kunst en kunstonderwijs in lookal en mondiaal perspectief, Utrecht, Utrecht School of the Arts. (with Marieke van Schijndel).
• 2000. Tout ce qui est fragile exige une protection. Une collaboration entre les mouvements culturel et ecologiques., Paris, Institut neerlandais.
• 2003. Arts under Pressure. Promoting Cultural Diversity in the Age of Globalisation. London: Zed Books. ISBN 1 84277 262 7/ 263 5.
• 2004. Artistic Expression in a Corporate World. Do We Need Monopolistic Control?. Utrecht: Utrecht School of the Arts.
• 2006. Un mundo sin copyright. Artes y medios en la globalización, Barcelona, Gedisa, ISSN/ISBN 84-9784-052-6
• 2006. (editor). UNESCO’s Convention on the Protection and the Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions: Making it Work. Zagreb: CultureLink. (with Nina Obuljen).ISBN 953-6096-40-4.
• 2009. Adieu auteursrecht, vaarwel culturele conglomeraten, Boom Uitgevers, the Hague, ISBN 978-90-8974-110-3 (with Marieke van Schijndel).
• 2009. Imagine There Is No Copyright and No Cultural Conglomerates Too: An Essay. ISBN 978-90-78146-09-4 (with Marieke van Schijndel).

References

• Biographical note (Dutch)
• Article proposing elimination of copyright
• Paper Imagine a world without copyright
• Curriculum vitae