COPYRIGHT, COPYLEFT AND THE CREATIVE ANTI-COMMONS

COPYRIGHT, COPYLEFT AND THE CREATIVE ANTI-COMMONS

Anna Nimus

> A Genealogy of Authors’ Property Rights

The author has not always existed. The image of the author as a wellspring of originality, a genius guided by some secret compulsion to create works of art out of a spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings, is an 18th century invention. This image continues to influence how people speak about the “great artists” of history, and it also trickles down to the more modest claims of the intellectual property regime that authors have original ideas that express their unique personality, and therefore have a natural right to own their works - or to sell their rights, if they should choose. Although these ideas appear self-evident today, they were an anomaly during their own time. The different pre-Enlightenment traditions did not consider ideas to be original inventions that could be owned because knowledge was held in common. Art and philosophy were products of the accumulated wisdom of the past. There were no authors - in the sense of original creators and final authorities - but only masters of various crafts (sculpture, painting, poetry, philosophy) whose task was to appropriate existing knowledge, re-organize it, make it specific to their age, and transmit it further. Artists and sages were messengers, and their ability to make knowledge manifest was considered a gift from the gods. Art was governed by a gift economy: aristocratic patronage was a gift in return for the symbolic gift of the work. Even the neoclassical worldview that immediately preceded Romanticism viewed art as imitation of nature and the artist as a craftsman who transmitted ideas that belonged to a common culture.

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This text developed out of a series of conversations and correspondences between Joanne Richardson and Dmytri Kleiner. Many thanks to all who contributed to its production: Saul Albert, Mikhail Bakunin, David Berry, Critical Art Ensemble, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Michel Foucault, Martin Fredriksson, Marci Hamilton, Carla Hesse, Benjamin Mako Hill, Stewart Home, Dan Hunter, Mark Lemley, Lawrence Lessig, Karl Marx, Giles Moss, Milton Mueller, Piratbyran, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Toni Prug, Samuel Richardson, Patrice Riemens, Mark Rose, Pamela Samuelson, the Situationist International, Johan Soderberg, Richard Stallman, Kathryn Temple, Benjamin Tucker, Jason Toynbee, Tristan Tzara, Wikipedia, Martha Woodmansee, Wu Ming.

Berlin, 2006. Anticopyright. All rights dispersed.