A Conversation with Yaniv Benhamou, Author of “Creative Value Chains,” on Copyright and Creative Industries in the Digital Era.

Digital platforms now dominate the creative industries, yet the value they generate is shared unevenly – from how streaming platforms compensate musicians to how AI companies use creative works as training data. This imbalance, Yaniv argues, threatens both human creativity and cultural diversity.

In his new book, Creative Value Chains: Copyright and Beyond for a Better Value Distribution (Bristol University Press, 2026), Yaniv Benhamou examines this problem across music, video games, and the visual arts, and proposes new models for fairer value distribution in the age of generative AI. Learn more about the book at
https://creativevaluechains.com/

To launch the book, Yaniv is traveling across the US and Canada, giving a series of book talks and discussions, as well as Law by Music performance-lectures combining live music and AI-generated visuals to illustrate the legal challenges facing creativity today – a format he first presented at the Montreux Jazz Festival in 2025.

At HLS, the event will take the form of a conversation between Yaniv and Annika Goldman from the Recording Artists Project (RAP) Transactional Clinic.

Yaniv Benhamou is Professor of Digital, Information, and Media Law at the University of Geneva’s Faculty of Law, where he directs the Digital Law Center. His research centers on copyright and privacy, with a focus on emerging technologies, the cultural sector, and the collective dimension of data – including open licensing and data class actions. He regularly serves as an expert for World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), the International Council of Museums (ICOM), and the Swiss IP Office, and has authored reports on copyright and museums for WIPO and on digital sovereignty and AI for the Latin Cantons.