Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Arts and Humanities

All Faculty Scholarship

2019

Jurisprudence

Articles 1 - 1 of 1

Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

Rethinking Copyright And Personhood, Christopher S. Yoo Jan 2019

Rethinking Copyright And Personhood, Christopher S. Yoo

All Faculty Scholarship

One of the primary theoretical justifications for copyright is the role that creative works play in helping develop an individual’s sense of personhood and self-actualization. Typically ascribed to the writings of Immanuel Kant and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, personhood-based theories of copyright serve as the foundation for the moral rights prominent in European copyright law and mandated by the leading intellectual property treaty, which give authors inalienable control over aspects of their works after they have been created. The conventional wisdom about the relationship between personhood and copyright suffers from two fatal flaws that have gone largely unappreciated. First, in …