Very Interesting

I guess I did the assignment wrong-so I'm revising it now-but before I summarize the other readings I 'd like to jump off of Kelly's question-Intellectual property becomes an even trickier notion when we consider that the rights to that property can be bought and sold and those who reap the rewards may not always be the creators of the work.


As a person familiar with political economy critiques of mass media I
found the readings , expecially Feather, very informative in looking at how copyright was formed and influenced by powerful political and economic actors, such as the stationers guild-these were very powerful entities in the renaissance/early modern era and they took great pains to protect their monoplies of trade that were granted to them. According to Feather, (p. 195), this was done "to control the ourput of the press, and to ensure that no book was printed unless it was properly liscensed by the censors appointed to the crown." So, in other words, the stationers were given power in a monoploy of their guild to control the ouput of the press in exchange for what the sovereign wanted them to do. In this rubric, authors, were yet another politcal and economic bloc that was beginning to form and press for their share of the pie. Again referring to Feather (p. 209), " The power of the author was soon to be asserted. Men- and a very few women-had been living by their pens since the 16th century." So, this new economic power, the author, was demanding rights over their product. I think people involved in English studies (unless they come from a Marxist perspective, like Terry Eagleton or new historicist, which look at political and cultural contexts) forget that texts are also products and therefore property.
hat
Feather's article neatly coincides neatly coincides with Rose's gripping tale of Pope v. Curll--Pope, it seems wanted to force the issue that was brewing and to which Feather referred to in the era when authors were asserting their property rights as holders of their intellectual property over publishers and collective entities like the stioner's guilds. Pope cleverly played thre law ton instigate a court battle. Ownership of a text, by an author was a novel notion accoridng to Rose, in the early modern era. Texts were act that might "serve to ennoble or immortalize worthy patrons ... they night move audiences to laughters or tears .. they might move men to sedition or heresy" (p.213). Authorship was an act, not a commodity. Pope essentially tricked a publisher, Curll, into publishing correspondence between Pope and Swift, "thereby creating a a situation which would allow him the to protest against the indignity of being exposed in print and at the same time, to open the way for an authorized version" (p.217). Pope won his case, established the primacy of authors as owners of their works and perhaps more importantly, for him, got to have an authorized version of his correspondence published. Well played, Pope!!

Jaszi's and Woodmansee's introduction to our set of readings, lays out some of the field. It is here where we learn of some of the above mentioned forces, like the stationer's guild. We also learn, among other things, that the lionization of the author as sole origninator of a work is a rather recent notion, really strating with the romantics. But the editors go on to say that some of the Romantics didn't really live up to their ideal and show, how for instance, Wordsworth collaborated with Coleridge and even his own sister Dorothy (p. 3). The introduction also raises a current events issue as some forces are advocating an extension (has this comew about yet?) of copyright to 70 years, plus the life of an author. I have heard this critiqued on some talk programs, so I'll quote the concern raised by the editors here about how this fails to square with an economic notion of copyright "justifies protection only insofar as it promotes social welfare by providing an incentive to create and/or distribute new works "(p.5). The concern raised by this trend is that it enforces an absolute property right and makes the cross-polinization of ideas by borrowing almost impossible. The editors use the introudction to lay out this and other issues that will be covered in the boook.

Moving on to the first essay by Woodmansee, she demonstrates how even giants of the early modern age, like Johnson, he was, for a lot of his career is letters, a collaborator (pp.17-20). This despite the fact that helped to create "the modern myth that genuine authorship consists in individual acts of orignination"(p.21). Woodmansee goes on to demonstrate that a lot of writing practices, including those in the information age, are in fact, collaborative. This was of no surprise to me as computer people started the whole "open-source coding" movement, which asserts the collaboration of the writing of code. She ends by saying that the struggle over the assertion of authorship has primarily been an economic one and that our laws assert sole authorship when we know that collaboration occurs so frequently in the creation of works.


MY question in reading thes text is-to what extent should economic and political critiques be applied to the authorship question, particularly seeing that authorship involves questions of property?