authorship and ownership

This week in our readings and in the prompt for our blog post, we have been challenged to consider the question of authorship and ownership, specifically in reference copy right laws and cultural property.

McLeod, Gains, and Nesbit all take a look at the intersection of culture, technology, legal and what it means to be author as defined by each sector as well as the way that they interact and interfere with one another. I believe that the hip-hop and rap traditions of sampling music provides an interesting case study of these areas. Culturally, the hip-hop artist enjoys considerable esteem as an author/composer of new songs based in part on older melodic lines. In essence, their practices date back to older traditions of song-making where a bard drew from a common pool of themes, phrases, and melodies to create and recreate.

Advances in technology have enabled artists in this area considerable power in creating new and disseminating their works and, as these technologies become more commonplace, we can encounter a range of authors of varying ability through the Internet and other genres. It is in the dissemination of their work that we really encounter the legal issue. When a new song created from the borrowing from others is shared with a few friends, it is no big deal. However, when that song is released for profit and sold or even handed out for free but seen as a threat to the profit of the original work, then legal action often follows.

Thus, we end up with a definition of authorship that seems to be based on cultural, technological, or legal grounds, but only rarely do we find examples that hold up across all areas. Despite dictionaries, questions of authorship seem more likely to be resolved moment to moment instead of bowing to an external standard.

Personally, I believe that authorship through copyright must somehow be limited in time and space if we hope to maintain fair compensation for the investment of labor into the creation of new cultural symbols. In the absence of fair limitations that recognize fair use, I believe that after a time the court of public opinion rather than the court itself will begin to address these issues.