The Law and Business of the Entertainment Industry

The Law and Business of the Entertainment Industry is designed to give the reader an inside understanding of the range of factors that come into play in entertainment industry transactions. The book examines major areas of entertainment industry endeavor such as books, film, music, television, and theater from the transactional side, while also looking at some of their other aspects, such as copyright, right of publicity, and negotiation.

Each chapter of the book opens with a dialogue between the course professor and three representative students: an artist student, a business student, and a law student, in order to frame the issues dealt with in the chapter for the diverse perspectives that these students may sometimes bring to the subject matter. After having read these dialogue openings, the reader is then exposed to an informational article and several legal disputes which have been resolved in the courts in each of the subject areas. To stimulate interest in the readers, they will find that these legal disputes often involve well known entities in the entertainment industry, from rock stars and movie stars to television networks and Hollywood Studio and films.

To enhance the learning experience for the reader, each chapter closes with a simulated negotiation scenario in the subject area. After having become familiar with both the overt and covert issues in each of these industries, readers can then stage negotiations in class where they role-play characters in the negotiation scenario. This exercise serves as a tool to entrench their knowledge and understanding of the entertainment industry discipline.

The author has spent over forty years working in many areas of the entertainment industry. Professor Greene has worked in the television industry, the music industry, the motion picture industry, theater and books. As an artist he has performed all over the world. As an entertainment executive, he has been a Hollywood studio vice-president, run a record label, and been a producer of theater and film. The range of his experiences from having performed at the Woodstock Festival in 1969, to graduating from Columbia, Harvard, and Yale Universities infuses this book with a range of unique perspectives and experiences that makes it stand out from every other book of its type in the marketplace.