Abstract
AbstractThis article draws from data generated in existing studies in Australia and the U.S. to examine how creators describe themselves and their creative acts when they are recombining or trying to combine copyrighted work with their own work. It finds a surprising congruence of self-perception across very different copyright regimes and creative practices. An undercurrent of Romantic notions about the originality of creative genius runs through even cutting-edge digital practices. This attitude then bolsters strategies used by large media interests to expand copyright monopoly rights and extend them internationally. Results have implications both for policy and advocacy, in particular, how creators respond to campaigns for expanded copyright exceptions, and a reluctance by even remix creators to challenge the legal structures that restrict their creative practice.
Highlights
International debate over the extent and function of copyright law has intensified with the growth in digital media and Internet-based media distribution
While the ideal of romantic authorship, which glorifies creativity as something transcendent, can help creators to derive a sense of worth in what they do, it can be exploited to justify low commercial payments for creative work, stifle recombinant creation, and prevent meaningful legal and policy reform that might facilitate ongoing creation. We explore these complex and conflicting facets of romantic authorship in practice, and we seek to illuminate how contested notions of originality may impact the beliefs that creators hold. We argue that these notions should be carefully interrogated in future debates about copyright law and policy; appeals to the ‘interests of creators’ are more tortuous than they may seem
With some exceptions (Bowrey, 2002; Silbey, 2008; Aufderheide & Jaszi, 2018; Sprigman, 2018), there is remarkably little empirical evaluation of creative practice within copyright literature, and no qualitative studies that we know of that directly consider the role of Romantic authorship
Summary
International debate over the extent and function of copyright law has intensified with the growth in digital media and Internet-based media distribution. In what Bill Patry has called the ‘copyright wars’, large corporate interests, typically large media and software companies on one side, and large tech companies on the other, battle over the future of copyright policy (Patry, 2009). Media and software publishers and collection societies have conducted broad public campaigns linking copying with stealing and piracy (Patry, 2009; Sinnreich, 2013; Litman, 2006; Gillespie, 2007). ‘Copying’, in these debates, is not just wholesale copying for commercial purposes. Rather, it encompasses many of the copying practices that creators themselves employ in learning, building, creating and remixing, including copying of only small parts of a preexisting work
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