Copyright in Historical Context
SESSION 1
Introduction: Decoupling the Author and the Text: Consequences for Copyright
John Locke, “On Property,” from the Second Treatise on Government.
Michel Foucault, “What Is an Author?” (1969/79)
Roland Barthes, “The Death of the Author” (1968)
George P. Landow, “Reconfiguring,” in Hypertext 3.0, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
University Press, 2006.
SESSION 2
The Romantic Idea of Authorship
Martha Woodmansee, “The Genius and the Copyright: Economic and Legal Conditions
of the Emergence of the ‘Author,’” Eighteenth-Century Studies, Vol. 17, No. 4 (1984).
Edward Young, “Conjectures on Original Composition” (1759).
Mark Helprin, “Death on a Red Horse,” in Digital Barbarism, New York: Harper (2009).
Eldred v. Ashcroft, 537 U.S. 186 (2003).
Brief for Petitioners, Eldred v. Ashcroft.
SESSION 3
Authorship in Manuscript Culture
Lisa Ede & Andrea Lunsford, “Shifting Conceptions in the History of Authorship” in
Singular Text/Plural Authors: Perspectives on Collaborative Writing: Carbondale:
Southern Illinois University Press, 1990.
Margaret Ezell “The Social Author: Manuscript Culture, Writers and Reader,” in Social
Authorship and the Advent of Print, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003.
Sandra Sherman, “Printed Communities: Domestic Management Texts in the Eighteenth
Century,” JEMCS 3.2 (Fall/Winter 2003).
SESSION 4
Authorship in the Early Print Period
Jeffrey Masten, “Playwrighting: Authorship and Collaboration” (1997)
Martha Woodmansee, “On the ‘Author Effect’: Recovering Collectivity,” in The
Construction of Authorship by Woodmansee and Jaszi, eds., Durham: Duke University
Press (1994).
Excerpts from Valerie Hotchkiss and Fred Robinson, English in Print: Caxton to
Shakespeare to Milton, Urbana: University of Illinois Press (2008).
SESSION 5
Statutory Copyright and the Birth of Literary Property
“An Introduction to Bibliographical Politics,” from The Author's Due:
Printing and the Prehistory of Copyright by Joseph Loewenstein. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press (2002).
Mark Rose, “The Author as Proprietor: Donaldson v. Becket and the Genealogy of
Modern Authorship,” Representations 23, Summer 1988.
Tonson v. Collins, 1 Wm. Blackstone 301, 96 Eng. Rep. 169 [1761].
Reargued: 1 Wm. Blackstone 322, 96 Eng. Rep. 180 [1762].
Millar v. Taylor, 4 Burr. 2303, 98 Eng. Rep. 201 (K.B. 1769).
Donaldson v. Becket, 2 Brown's Parl. Cases 129, 1 Eng. Rep. 837; 4 Burr. 2408, 98 Eng.
Rep. 257 (1774); 17 Cobbett's Parl. Hist. 953 (1813).
SESSION 6
Literary Property in America
Oren Bracha, “The Ideology of Authorship Revisited: Authors, Markets, and Liberal
Values in Early American Copyright,” 118 The Yale Law Review 186 (2009).
Tyler Ochoa & Mark Rose, “The Anti-Monopoly Origins of the Patent and Copyright
Clause,” Journal of the Copyright Society of the U.S.A. v.84, p. 675 (2002).
“Liberalism and Republication: The Problem of Copyright for Authorship in America,”
in The Transformation of Authorship in America by Grantland S. Rice. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press (1997).
Wheaton v. Peters, 33 U.S. (Pet. 8) 591 (1834).
SESSION 7
Copyright as a Social Construction: Questioning the relationship of authorship to
property from various social perspectives
Myles W. Jackson. “Can Artisans Be Scientific Authors: The Unique Case of
Fraunhofer’s Artisanal Optics and the German Republic of Letters in Scientific
Authorship (Biagioli & Galison, eds., 2003).
Anne Ruggles Gere, “Common Properties of Pleasure: Texts in Nineteenth Century
Women’s Clubs” in The Constuction of Authorship: Textual Appropriation in Law and
Literature by Martha Woodmansee and Peter Jaszi, eds.
Bleistein v. Donaldson Litho. Co., 188 U.S. 239 (1903).
SESSION 8
Collective Authorship
Lior Zemer, “Authorial Collectivity,” in The Idea of Authorship in Copyright, Aldershot,
England: Ashgate (2007).
Yochai Benkler, “Peer Production and Sharing,” in The Wealth of Networks, New Haven:
Yale University Press (2006).
Andrea A. Lunsford and Lisa Ede, “Collaborative Authorship and the Teaching of
Writing” in The Construction of Authorship, Woodmansee and Jaszi, eds., Durham: Duke
University Press (1994).
Thomson v. Larson, 147 F. 3d 195 (2d Cir 1998).
Aalmuhammed v. Lee, 202 F.3d 1227 (9th Cir. 2000).
SESSION 9
Scientific Authorship
Mario Biagioli, “Rights or Rewards, Changing Frameworks of Scientific Authorship,” in
Scientific Authorship: Credit and Intellectual Property in Science (Biagioli and Galison,
eds.).
Corynne McSherry. Uncommon Controversies: Legal Mediations of Gift and Market
Models of Authorship in Scientific Authorship: Credit and Intellectual Property in
Science (Biagioli and Galison, eds.).
SESSION 10
Authors as Owners After Eldred
Eldred v. Ashcroft , 537 U.S. 186 (2003).
Brief for Respondent, Eldred v. Ashcroft
William F. Patry and Richard A. Posner, “Fair Use and Statutory Reform in the Wake of
Eldred,” 92 Cal. L. Rev. 1639 (2004).
SESSION 11
Authorship and Incentive
Landes, William M amd Posner, Richard A.
An Economic Analysis of Copyright Law,” 14 J. Legal Stud. 325 (1989).
Yochai Benkler, “Coase’s Penguin, or, Linux and The Nature of the Firm.” 112 Yale L.J.
369 (2002-2003).
SESSION 12
Authorship and Moral Rights
“The Intrinsic Dimension of Human Creativity,” in The Soul of Creativity by Roberta
Rosenthal Kwall Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press (2010).
SESSION 13
Authorship and Traditional Knowledge
Peter Jaszi and Martha Woodmansee. Beyond Authorship: Refiguring Rights in
Traditional Culture and Bioknowledge in Scientific Authorship (Biagioli & Galison,
eds.).
SESSION 14
Manuscript Culture Revisited?: Authorship in the Digital Era
Laurence Lessig, Chapter 4 in Remix, New York: Penguin (2008).
Jay David Bolter, "Writing as Technology" and "Hypertext and the Remediation of Print"
in Writing Space: Computers, Hypertext, and the Remediation of Print, Mahwah, NJ:
Lawrence Erlbaum (2001).
Cass Sunstein, “Many Working Minds: Wikis, Open Source Sofware, and Blogs,” in
Infotopia, New York: Oxford University Press (2006).
SESSION 15
Google’s Challenge to Authorship (readings for this session are subject to change as
the situation evolves)
Robert Darnton, “Google & he Future of Books.” New York Review of Books, Volume
56, Number 2 (February 12, 2009).
James Grimmelman, “How to Fix the Google Book Search Settlement,” 12 Journal of
Internet Law 1.
Anna Stolley Persky, Paper or Plastic? Google’s Plan to Digitize Materials Pits Book
Lovers v. Book Innovators, Washington Lawyer, June 2009, p. 35-40.
The Google Book Search Agreement: http://books.google.com/booksrightsholders/