Copyright and Authors
Posted by Celia Walter | 8 Jun, 2007On Copyright's
Authorship Policy
Source: Cyberprof (via SSRN)
It has
long been the stated aspiration of copyright to make authors the masters of
their own destiny. Yet more often than not, the real subject of American
copyright is distributors, book publishers, record labels, broadcasters, and
others, who control the rights, bring the lawsuits, and take copyright as their
industries' 'life-sustaining protection.'
This paper
offers a new theory and defense of the role of authors and authorial copyright
in the copyright system. I argue that the device of making authors
rights-bearers can seed new modes of production in the industries under
copyright. Rights-bearing authors can, in other words, help unsettle industry
structure, by taking their rights to competitive disseminators or new modes of
dissemination. Recent examples include the role of authorial rights in the rise
of open source software and creative commons, while older examples include the
rise of competing publishers in 18th century
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