Creative Asia

Ross, A. (2009) ‘The Copyfights Over Intellectual Property’, Nice Work If You Can Get It: Life and Labor in Precarious Times. New York and London: New York University Press.

Ross claims that the only way to preserve and promote the creativity in the knowledge intensive industries is through collective sharing as in the public domain model. Ross’ argument is not unusual among many who have come to the realization that creativity emerged out of an environment within which individual genius can be encouraged through interaction with multiple agents.

“The overwhelming evidence from IP law suggests that American courts have little interest in thinking outside the box of singular authorship. They will not recognize the potentially legitimate IP claims of participants in the kind of collective creative work that is the norm in the culture, IT, and other knowledge-intensive industries, and they have even less interest in hearing the argument that the true source of most creative works is the public domain itself. Instead, judges are increasingly fixed on assigning monopoly rights (and lots of them) to single, indivisible authors, who are more than likely to be corporate entities. As several scholars have observed, the courts have invested more and more exclusive rights and privileges in the category of proprietary authorship at a time when [according to Ross here, at least] cultural critics have been doing exactly the opposite – dissolving the Romantic mystique that supports such notions about the extraordinary rights of creative geniuses. The state has obliged the courts’ interpretation by passing punitive legislation to protect these privileges. ” (Ross, 2009: 167)