The Digital Revolution: Copyright and Creativity

Abstract

Before we explore the relationship between the so-called digital revolution and creativity, we should take just a brief pause to remember Thomas’s dictum. This dictum states that the way people perceive a situation predisposes them to behave in ways that are in line with those perceptions even if the perception is problematic. Furthermore, once a belief takes hold, such as a Romantic or inspirational view of creativity, ‘gradually a whole life-policy and the personality of the individual himself’ (Thomas 1967, p. 42) becomes premised on the belief system and they act according to that belief system. This state of affairs has been seen in the way many contemporary Western popular musicians and their audiences have responded to the beliefs they hold about authenticity and its manifestation in the creative action many of these people then take. But what if the belief system has no solid basis in research? What if our cultural assumptions have very little evidence to support them other than our ongoing faith? As Keith Sawyer asserts, a rational explanation of creativity ‘requires us to look critically at our own cultural assumptions about how creativity works’ (2006, p. 33), and the problem is that research studies ‘fail to support our most cherished beliefs about creativity’ (ibid.).