Copyright and Creativity

Copyright and Creativity discusses the making of property out of creative works through the legal mechanism of copyright. It shows the manner in which the law translates a great variety of expressions of the human mind into its normative system and transforms them into the property right of copyright or droit d auteur. This timely book examines the proprietary features of copyright, the inherent limitations of its powers, and its justification and relationship to the non-proprietary realm of the public domain. The latter part of the book deals with the 'propertisation/commodification' of human authors themselves through their works as alienable objects of property, the well-known 'Romantic author' critique as a sophisticated justification of that commodification, and at an international level, neo-feudal and neo-colonial developments as a result of this process.


This detailed study will appeal to undergraduate and postgraduate students, legal sociologists, and specialists in copyright, property theory, or legal theory and political philosophy with particular interest in property theory. Practitioners within bodies involved in legal policy, organizations concerned with law reform, European institutions, and international organizations will also find much to interest them in this book.

Contents: Preface; 1. Copyright as Property; 2. Copyright-Property and the Public Domain:Explanations and Justifications; 3. The Limitations to the Powers of Copyright Ownership; 4. The Attribution and Allocation of Copyright-Property: Authorship, Creativity and Ownership; 5. The Effects of Copyright-Property I: The Problem of Alienation; 6. The Effects of Copyright-Property II: Neo-Feudal and Neo-Colonial Features of International Copyright Protection; Conclusions; Index