Vision in Copyright: The Political Economy of Composition

This volume marks out a new theoretical direction in the study of copyright. The work directly challenges the dominant perspectives of policy markers and anti-copyright activists who see the creative power of the individual and distribution of property as the centre of the law. Vision in Copyright sets out a new perspective. It argues that copyright represents a moment in a longer and more complex history: that of composition. Composition is the 'other law' of subject matter. Far from being contained by copyright, composition is external to the law, ordering activities across the arts and sciences. Composition thus marks out the ground of copyright's potential and limits. Part I explores the tangled history of the concept of composition from ancient times into the modern period where it is first represented in European law. Part II examines the theoretical and practical developments in the 20th and 21st centuries, which demonstrate the inability of positive law to fully circumscribe and contain composition. In the concluding chapters the author discusses the knowledge economist's discourse on intellectual property and countervailing free market critiques of intellectual property. Deploying composition as a mode of analysis, the study suggests that political arguments over the role of IP in economic growth rest on different visions of composition. Vision in Copyright is addressed to the growing cross-disciplinary audience for intellectual property studies at the moment digital technologies and popular activism threaten the future viability of copyright. It will have acute relevance for those interested in the critiques and defences of copyright in contemporary society.