Law Commons^™

Copyright And Information Theory: Toward An Alternative Model Of "Authorship", Alan L. Durham

BYU Law Review

Both literary scholars and students of copyright law have challenged the romantic model of authorship, a model emphasizing individual genius and creation ex nihilo. Authorship, they argue, is actually a collaborative effort. Authors assemble their works from the fragments of their cultural environment, transforming as much as creating. Copyright law, however, still champions the rights of authors and it requires a coherent theory of what authorship is. An alternative to the romantic model of authorship can be found in information theory, a branch of mathematics dealing, at a very fundamental level, with all forms of communication. Authorship could be defined …